future GC faculty members or their spouses were required to do Civilian Public

Service as an alternative to military service. Although generally CPS

assignments were restricted to stateside locations, following the war many

Mennonites volunteered to resettle refugees and rebuild Europe and parts of

Asia. "In the midst of the emergency," wrote former president Victor Stoltzfus,

"I doubt that the volunteers considered that the educational byproduct of such

service would be language learning and greater cross-cultural sensitivity.

The immediate, human reality was hungry, homeless people scarred by World

War II."²⁷Those who "reached out to a war-torn world" in the 1940s and 1950s

included present and later GC faculty members in history, chemistry,

psychology, French, English, speech, physics, education, Spanish, Bible and

religion, philosophy, economics, nursing, art, and physical education, as well

as two business managers, one registrar, two deans, one bookstore manager,

and two presidents. They served in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria,

Greece, Paraguay, east Africa, Japan, China, India, Korea and Thailand. Many

others who later joined the faculty studied in European universities, or worked

with Mennonite Central Committee or other service-oriented, church-related

programs overseas.

At the outset of the 1965-66 school year, Goshen President Paul

Mininger appointed a Committee on the Future of the College. At the

committee's second meeting, members were thinking creatively about ways to

internationalize the college, prompted by a 1965 report from an accrediting

team from the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges. The

27_{Victor Stoltzfus, "Faculty Experience Factor in SST Origin," Goshen College}
Bulletin(November 1988):24. See also Susan Fisher Miller's description of the
impact of Civilian Public Service in Culture for Service:A History of Goshen
College, 1894-1994 (Goshen:Goshen College, 1994):170-176.

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