Eastern Mennonite University - Shenandoah Yearbook (Harrisonburg, VA)

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EE . rw I wake up each morning with a deep sense of gratefulness for life and health. Just to live is constantly the experience of new creation for me. The stimulation of new ideas, the widening of horizons through sharing with other persons, and the awareness of the reality of Jesus as Lord become my source of daily renewal. — Richard Detweiler 18 Administration President Richard Detweiler Peggy Shenk, Administrative Assis a

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Faculty Staff 17

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Hertzler Horst, Assistant Dean. “Worldy”’ Wise by Albert N. Keim hose were special weeks, those three eeks in August, 1980. The entire college culty read papers to each other, orshipped together, ate together, even layed together. Out of the maelstrom of eas and argumentation came new iderstanding about what an EMC college ducation should be. We said: EMC students should be worldly.” In the good sense, of course. Get to other societies and cultures. Broaden eir outlook. We said: They have to know their own ory. Recover their memory. Know where iey came from. Water their roots. We said: A small Mennonite college ould have much shared learning. Think, ‘gue, speculate, create, and do so together. iared life and study brings coherence. And »pth. And freedom. Life, we decided, is paradoxical. It bristles ith ambiguity. EMC students we said, sould be both broad and narrow, nbracing the whole world, but cherishing eir peculiar ethnic and spiritual roots. Both ibal and universal. Talk about paradox! alk about presumption! | But paradox and ambiguity never exist in }vacuum. Nor as abstractions. They require context. Gritty history. Mucky society. rittle culture. Marshall McLuhan once spoke of the orld, made intimate with communication chnology, as a global village. There it was. ie image and the metaphor for EMC. The }tradox of the tribal and the cosmic. |e would be a village. Close. Secure. Deep. pmiliar. Rooted. Gentle. Loving. On a human scale. Our place, in time and space. We would be global. Broad. Dangerous. Pluralistic. Raucus. Bewildering. Exciting. Chaotic. Mindless. Tragic. Hopeful. EMC a global village? Certainly presumptuous. Probably impossible. And yet, why not? If not this college, then who? Or where? And so we began, as the Bible has it, by faith. And hard work. And hope. Education is like life. One begins with intentions. Patience, perseverence, a large dose of intelligence mixed with Godly benevolence are necessary ingredients. We created a set of courses and learning exercises to encompass Global Village learning. The humanities help with the broadening. They treat the mystery, the tragic and comic dimensions of life. They are the stuff of paradox and ambiguity. They are built on the incredible ability of human beings to imagine what has not been experienced. Hence their power. And charm. Bible and religion help with the narrowing. Narrowing not in the parochial sense, but in the sense of purposefulness in the midst of global aimlessness. Identity in the face of universal anonymity. Truth in the context of relativity. Love over against war. Justice confronting evil. Jesus, Lord of history and purveyor of grace. God the creator and sustainer of time and eternity. Each year, we decided, EMC students should participate in a building-block sequence of Biblical and theological courses designed to foster spiritual growth and theological reflection. As they study they learn to link their personal story of faith to the faith story of their people, the Left: Al Keim, Dean. Below: Marie Shenk, Administrative Assistant; and Marie Anabaptist-Mennonite story. And ultimately the relation of that people-story to all the other stories of God’s people, past and present. The faculty also realized there are certain “learning for life’ exercises which all students need so they designed a series of courses in English (writing), social science, aerobics, health, science, psychology. These learnings help the student succeed in college as well as in life. Finally, all students must study in another culture sometime during their stay at the college. They will visit villages and other cultures and histories. And will hopefully discover the extraordinary variety the planet affords its inhabitants. But the global village is more than courses of study. It is a way of life. For four years students and teachers study, play, worship and live together. This sojourn is not a retreat from life of the world. But it is special. To be a college student — 20 years old; adult, but not yet ¢umbered-in by mor- tgage, kids or career, with time to explore, and create and dream, with the entire range of the past, a slice of present and a chunk of the future at one’s disposal — is magical. And to make the most of the magic, to plumb the mystery; that is what global village education is about. When it’s all finished — this four year encounter in the Global Village — we hope all of us will have shared both the deep and the broad dimensions of a good education. We will be willing to shoulder the burdens of being citizens and servants of both the global village — our village — and the global city — our world. Administration 19