Clarion 1987-09-04 Vol. 63 No. 01

              i    LEARNING RESOURCE CENTER
BETHEL COLLEGE
| 3900 Bethel Drive
[     St. Paul, Minnesota 551
CLARION
4 September 1987
Vol. 63 No.
Goals designed to make Brushaber more effective president
In a continuing effort to meet the needs of
the student in the latter 1980's, Bethel College is reaching toward a series of eight
goals that were identified over a year ago
in the Strategic Planning Process. "During
the course of the year, we tried to work on
all eight at the same time and found that
we were probably best served by developing three of them intensely and then
we'll develop three more and so fourth,"
said Bethel College and Seminary President George K. Brushaber.
The three goals currently under development: maintaining and improving
Bethel's enrollment, enhancing community life at Bethel and improving the campus climate, and revitalizing and expanding student life and development programs.
The reorganization is targeted at making
President Brushaber more effective at
meeting the responsibilities and duties of
a college president. "Bethel is a complete
institution, more complex than many of
the other private colleges in Minnesota
because we have both a college and a
seminary. Most other schools like Macal-
ester and St. Olaf are stand-alones,
they're single institutions. Secondly, the
Seminary has another campus and a fullblown program in California. And it's important that I spend significant amounts
of time working with the California campus and that necessitates being gone
quite a lot. Third, Bethel is one of only a
very few private colleges that has its own
foundation; a free-standing independent
corporation, developed solely to support
the programs and services of Bethel. 1
happen to be president of that foundation. And finally, I have a denominational
role. Bethel is owned and operated by the
Baptist Genera! Conference, with denominational headquarters in Chicago, and I
serve as the secretary of higher education
for the Conference," said President
Brushaber.
Three years ago the Committee on Program Review recommended that the
president delegate more authority and
consolidate some of the offices reporting
to him. At one point as many as 11 people
reported directly to the president, spreading him thinly among an array of job
duties.
A component necessary to realizing the
three goals is the reorganization of
Bethel's upper administrative tier. President Brushaber said, "Reorganization is
one of the things that we hope helps
serve those three goals. This is something
that has been in the process for several
years and something in which the Board of
Regents has taken a keen interest, and has
been very supportive and has encouraged me to move in this direction. We're
trying to do a lot of other things to meet
those three goals."
The first visible step in the delegating and
consolidating process, or reorganization,
took place in January of last year with the
creation of the post of Executive Vice-
President for Finance and Administration,
and the hiring of Sherm Swenson to fill the
position. "Which, incidentally, 1 think has
been a terrific piece of good news for
Bethel," said Brushaber. Swenson is responsible for managing all areas of central
administration, which includes the business offices, recruiting, admissions, fin<in-
cial aid, fund-raising, marketing, advertising, physical plant and the food service. In
short, all areas that do not fall under the
headings of faculty and academic affaris
and student development.
The reorganization plan calls for appointing two other executive vice-presidents,
one for the seminary and the other for the
college. Dr. Millard Erickson will continue
to oversee the affairs of the seminary,
while on the college side a position for a
provost has been opened and recruitment efforts are underway to find the best
possible candidate.
The creation of a provost at the college
has been the most controversial of the
reorganization plans because it appears
in the face of recent faculty cuts. President
Brushaber has been criticized for the
move, because it appears to be insensitive to ailing academic programs on campus, such as the recently suspended
socio-linguistics major and the nominal
foreign language program. Brushaber offered this response, "One of the things
the provost will be expected to do is to
George K. Brushaber, president of Bethel College
and Seminary.
lead strongly the efforts to build those
areas and strengthen those areas. If you
have a last place baseball team, you have
Faculty sheds sedate image at retreat
by Tracy Stocking
Does the species of savants, more commonly known to Bethel students as faculty members, know how to have a good
time?
The answer is yes, according to unanimous reports. Under the guise of a retreat,
92 members of Bethel's staff had a wild
and crazy time as well as a productive
experience at Camp Courage on August
26 &, 27.
Perhaps even the faculty were surprised
at what a great time they were able to
produce. Directed by retreat chairman
John Herzog, a committee worked to
make this year's gathering different from
others by eliminating the business matters and focusing on developing community among faculty members. Only the
staff directly involved with teaching or
with the students' educational experience
were invited to attend, thus promoting a
sense of unity through purpose.
"Betheling" was the term coined to describe the activities the faculty enjoyed during the two days. Betheling means "a syn-
cratic process indigenous to the Bethel
(St. Paul) College community which produces a unique whole from the interac
tion of its parts." (Their scholarly mode of
thinking is difficult for the faculty to escape even when they are trying to have
fun.)
The Betheling the faculty engaged in
ranged from the serious to the hilarious.
On the more solemn occasions they participated in morning devotions and evening communion and attended discussion groups on their diverse and united
roles. Dale Rott noted his appreciation of
the "variety of people who participated,
not just one person yakking away the
whole time."
Rott also commented on how "the only
business [at the retreat] was monkey business." He was referring specifically to the
program held on the evening of the 26th,
a talent show organized by Neil and Virginia Lettinga. For 90 laughter-filled
minutes, various faculty members entertained their colleagues with crazy skills.
Tom Becknell opened with ragtime piano
playing, followed by Tom Greenlee
"preaching" in the style of Jim Bakker and
Jerry Falwell. Virginia Lettinga and Dan
Ritchie's talents were channeled into writing a mini-opera in the style of Gilbert and
Sullivan, only with Bethelized lyrics to be
performed by a lusty chorus. Art Lewis
provided a 1940's style music-comedy
show, playing the marimba, and Nancy
Vail pulled volunteers from the audience
to participate in a melodramatic skit of
Dudley Do-right. Closing the show was a
barbershop quartet composed of biology
department staff: Jim Reynhout, Robert
Kistler, Weldon Jones, and Tim Shaw,
accompanied by Don Albright, completed the "Biodegradables."
As if the talent show weren't enough, the
entire group of 92 went out for a snack of
pizza in Buffalo and took over the entire
Pizza Barn in the process. While they
might have become a little unruly and
noisy, they went home and settled down
to a bedtime story about Winnie the Pooh
and a heffalump, read by John Lawyer. The
next morning they went back to tamer
Betheling activities, and by mid-afternoon departed for home and their scholarly roles. Lest they forget the wilder side of
their personalities, a video tape of the
talent show, courtesy of Dale Rott, can
always be reviewed.
Was the retreat a success in terms of
meeting its goal of unity? If unity is promoted by better understanding of one
another, then yes, the retreat was a huge
success. Elaine Gunderson commented
that it was "very effective in building relationships." Says Neil Lettinga, "We found
we like each other better when we came
home than when we left." And Lorraine
Eitei concludes, "We had a good time."
to work on both fronts. You have to hire a
strong second baseman and a leading
home-run hitter, butyou also have to hire
a good coach who will be good in the
recruitment draft, and trading and so
forth. And that's part of the game, building that faculty is in part a matter of wise
recruitment and energetic promotion. For
instance if we could get a foundation to
give us money to support the foreign language program, at least for the first couple of years."
The reorganization reduces the number
of people reporting directly to the president to three. Underneath the three executive vice-presidents is a layer of divisional vice-presidents. They include Tom
Johnson, marketing and enrollment; Dave
Lissner, Bethel Foundation; Mark Kron-
holm, development and public relations;
Dwight Jessup, academic affairs; and Judy
Moseman, student life. The latter two
vice-presidents wilI report to the provost,
the other three report to Sherm Swenson.
The focus of the reorganization is on making the president's job obligations outside of the Arden Hills campus easier to
meet, while enhancing communication
on all levels of the college, but it will also
serve to aid in implementing the three
goals under development from the Strategic Planning Process.
Wet squirrel shorts
CLICnet system
Even though students may use the
library's new electronic catalog, nobody
should be surprised if the system downs.
Power has failed four times in the last six
weeks at Macalester College where the
Cooperating Libraries in Consortium
(CLIC) network is located. Although some
power failures are the trials of large computer systems, at one time a wet squirrel
shorted the electricy, according to Northern States Power.
Carlyle Systems Inc., who has supplied
CLIC with the million dollar system has
installed terminals at all nine cooperating
libraries, but has not certified a single one
to work. Library Director Robert Suder-
man said this shakedown period might
last a half year. And until the confidence
level is good and high, the out-of-date
card catalog and microfiche will stick
around.
The installation of CLICnet may take another two years to complete as features
are phased in and tested one by one.
Within a year, CLICnet hopes to provide
on-line information about each book,
whether it is being borrowed or not. Plastic cards with magnetic bars will also be
issued. Eventually the inter-library loan
request forms will be obsolete when
books can be loaned on-line.
The advantage of this system is that students do not need the alphabet to find a
book. Instead of the usual four access
points with the conventional card catalog,
the computer allows 35 access points. It
functions in a way so that only certain
parts of the title is all that a user knows.
But the disadvantage concerns the load
average at the central site. Current stress
allows 150 terminals. Bethel hasten. However, plans are underway to allow all
campus terminals to have access to
CLICnet.