Bluffton University will welcome leaders, teachers and scholars to campus Oct. 16-18 for a conference on “Mennonite Education: Past, Present and Future.”
Also open to the public, the conference will include about 50 workshops and panel and roundtable discussions on Mennonite education topics from early childhood through graduate school. Making keynote presentations will be Dr. Felipe Hinojosa, an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University; Dr. Perry Bush, a professor of history at Bluffton; and Dr. Sara Wenger Shenk, president of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary.
Bush will speak at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, in Yoder Recital Hall, following a 6 p.m. banquet in the Marbeck Center Commons to celebrate the release of his new book, “Peace, Progress and the Professor: The Mennonite History of C. Henry Smith.”
Smith, a 20th-century Mennonite historian and professor at Bluffton and Goshen College, will also be the subject of Bush’s keynote, “The Right Kind of Education and Perhaps Re-education: C. Henry Smith and Mennonite Schooling.” Bush will sign copies of his new book following his 7:30 p.m. presentation.
Hinojosa, author of the 2014 book “Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture,” will speak Friday, Oct. 16, also at 7:30 p.m. in Yoder Recital Hall. His topic is “From Goshen to Delano: Towards a Relational Mennonite Studies.”
The conference will conclude Sunday morning, Oct. 18, moving to First Mennonite Church in Bluffton for worship and Wenger Shenk’s address, “Leaves of the Tree Healing the Nations.”
Most academic conferences tend to be oriented toward particular interest groups, whether administrators, teachers or scholars, says Dr. Gerald Mast, a professor of communication at Bluffton and a conference organizer. But this one—which was planned around the celebration of Bush’s book—will bring together people representing “the full scope of Mennonite education—from elementary to graduate school, from classroom to office, and from the science lab to the Bible study,” Mast adds.
“That mix of people,” he says, “is one of the most exciting things about this conference,” which is sponsored by the university, the C. Henry Smith Trustees and the Mennonite Historical Society.
The registration fee is $65 before Sept. 30 and $75 thereafter; for undergraduate and graduate students, those prices are $30 and $40, respectively. Meals on Friday evening and Saturday—including the 6 p.m. banquet—are extra. Go to www.bluffton.edu/conference/ for more information and to register.
