FEATURE
STEP BY STEP by MELANIE ZUERCHER
The career path can lead around some blind curves, but a liberal arts education helped these three alumni find their way.
Cassidy McFadden with her DAISY Award
A
n important part of completing a Bethel (or any college) education comes when you declare a major and start down the career path. What also happens a lot more often than people might think are the sharp turns along the way. Cassidy McFadden ’12 grew up in a Church of the Brethren family (her mother, Wendy McFadden, is well known in Brethren publishing circles) in suburban Chicago. She took a gap year after high school with Brethren Voluntary Service (BVS), and was placed at CooperRiis, which describes itself as “a residential healing community and progressive transitional living program” for adults dealing with a variety of mentalhealth challenges, located in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. “During that year,” Cassidy recalls, “one of the nurses told me I should go to nursing school. I ignored her, or at least said it wasn’t happening. I was going to go to Bethel and study psychology with Paul Lewis [professor emeritus of psychology, who retired in 2017] and become a clinical psychologist or similar.”
6 AROUND THE GREEN | BETHELKS.EDU
