The Bluffton University Board of Trustees has a new chairperson for the first time since 2001.
The trustees’ recent spring meeting was the last for Morris Stutzman, who retired from the board after 33 years, including the last 14 as chairperson. Kent Yoder, a trustee and Middlebury, Ind., businessman, assumed the chairperson’s duties from Stutzman, a Wooster, Ohio, attorney.
Single-event tickets for the 2015-16 Bluffton University Artist Series go on sale Friday, July 10. This year’s series features:
• Apollo’s Fire, a baroque chamber ensemble • Heinavanker, an Estonian vocal ensemble
• pianist Anne-Marie McDermott
• the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players
• and the Columbus-based Raise gospel choir
Two incoming students at Bluffton University have been awarded the university’s full-tuition Presidential Scholarship, valued at more than $110,000 for four years.
Katelyn Amstutz of Dalton, Ohio, and Edwin Martin of Goshen, Ind., are the scholarship recipients.
Amstutz, the daughter of Michael and Lisa Amstutz, was homeschooled, graduating this year. She has been active in tennis, the Heartland String Quartet and Science Olympiad. She attends Sonnenberg Mennonite Church, near Dalton.
It’s called the Community-to-Classroom (C2C) Living-Learning Community, but “community” isn’t the only word you might hear more than once in a discussion of the campus program that debuted in 2014-15.
First-year education majors who spent the year together on the fourth floor of Neufeld Hall also talked about “bonds,” “family,” “friends” and “home” when describing their shared experiences this spring.
Bluffton University will add to its list of more than 85 academic programs this fall semester by offering two new majors: teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and pre-art therapy.
TESOL, which has been available at Bluffton as a minor for roughly two decades, will have an expanded curriculum—including courses in language, education and the social sciences—for students to fulfill the new major.
The second annual running (and swimming and biking) of Bluffton’s Be A Beaver Triathlon brought about 100 competitors to town on Saturday, May 30.
The participants—up in number from 64 for the event’s debut last year—started with a jump into the Bluffton Community Pool for a 400-meter swim. A 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) bike ride and a 5K (3.1-mile) run completed the triathlon, won for the second straight year by Justin Kahle, 21, of Defiance, Ohio, in a time of 58 minutes, 28 seconds.
