In the year 2000, I began working for the Elkhart Township assessor’s office. In the prior 17 years, I worked in the private sector, where independent thought and productivity were highly valued attributes. Government is an entirely different environment.

Never before had I been given a voluminous employee handbook to read nor had I been required to withstand a day-long orientation covering everything from bathroom breaks to bomb threats (both of which I thought I could handle on my own without orientation). I was not at all prepared for the large number of rules and regulations and the small amount of space in my new work cubicle.

My saving grace in the transition from the real work world into bureaucracy was my co-worker, Grace Johnson. She had survived many years as a civil servant and that fact alone commanded my respect. Grace possessed the ability to work accurately and efficiently while maintaining a great sense of humor. Honestly, there is little hope of enduring local government without a robust sense of humor.

Part of the task of an assessor is to review blueprints of buildings that are under construction in an attempt to calculate an estimated value prior to the building being completed. One of my first blueprint reviews was that of the Music Center at Goshen College. There were more than 30 pages of blueprints with every detail itemized: plumbing, electrical, floors, walls, ceilings and even the parking lot with appropriate landscaping. The review of the plans took more than a week, during which time it became crystal clear that this was going to be an exceptional facility.

It took me until 2012 to ever set foot in this beautiful building….

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Dr. Lee Miller, a 1980 Goshen College graduate, and 2006 GC graduate Matt Bauman are working, along with other researchers, towards major advancements in long term paralysis treatment. Their team’s research with brain-controlled muscle simulation in monkeys was recently mentioned as one of the top 10 break-throughs of 2012 by Science Magazine.

Over the past few years, these researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago have been steadily working on projects which have the potential to help countless people. At Dr. Miller’s laboratory, their innovative approach combines Brain Machine Interface technology with Functional Electrical Stimulation.

How exactly does their project work? …

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As a young girl, she dreamed of being a park ranger. Or a Great Mouse Detective (the animated mouse version of Sherlock Holmes). She loved spending time outdoors, especially with animals, and enjoyed dressing up her dog and making up stories.

Many years later, that fun-loving, imaginative young girl produced the elaborate set designs for “Pippin,” “Translations” and “Urinetown” — three of Goshen College’s recent main stage productions. To this day, however, Maryn Munley would not call herself “creative.”

“My older sister was very artistic,” says Munley. “She was an art major, and she always seemed incredibly talented and visually in tune, and I was more into animals. Given the choice, I would still pick a dog over a box of crayons.”

Munley refers to a moment at Mundelein High School in Mundelein, Ill., as the beginning of her set design career. She was asked to help out with set design in her high school’s production of “Dancing at Lughnasa.” She painted and learned set design tricks like how to make a plain, flat wall look like a brick wall or how to make a believable building out of plastic foam, assorted metal pieces or piping.

“I never thought I was artistic at all, but it turned out I was pretty good at that type of thing,” she said. “I would be like, ‘Wow! I didn’t know I could do this. I’m surprised this works!’”

She enrolled at Goshen College in the fall of 2008, drawn by Goshen’s small but successful theater program. She took an array of classes she was interested in — many of them theater classes.  In her sophomore year,  she declared a theater major with an environmental science minor.

Originally, Munley was interested in theater for the acting. In  high school and college productions, she had many acting roles – such as Maria in the college’s production of “Twelfth Night”– and genuinely enjoyed her time on stage. However, she realized she had a deeper connection with theater design.

“Being in front of an audience is exhilarating,”  Munley said, “but you could cut that part out and I wouldn’t be hugely upset.”

>> Read the rest of this article on the Goshen Commons website.

An interview with Ben John Pollitt, a golfer from England. Pollitt is a sophomore at Goshen College. He was the lone golfer on the men’s team a year ago when intercollegiate golf returned to Goshen College. He described his best athletic moment as “winning a matchplay tournament at my club after giving my opponent 28 shots in 18 holes.”

Q: What brings you to Goshen College?

A: I went through a company that tries to find you a sports scholarship and Goshen was one of the colleges that offer one. The coach was very forthcoming, I could ask him any question and he would answer almost immediately, when other schools took weeks to answer.

Q: What are some differences that you have observed between America and England?

A: The sense of community. People are a lot friendlier than they are back home. Another weird thing for me is that in America you can turn on a red light, when in England you need to stop… you can’t do that.

Q: Do you think your accent has opened doors here in America in any way?

A: I guess it has given me more leeway with professors. Like, if I am late with something they don’t give me as big of a punishment.

Q: What is one thing that you cherish the most about England?

A: My little sister. I had to be a father for her, because we lost our dad a couple of years ago. She is always saying when is “my Ben” coming home, instead of “When’s Ben coming home?”

Q: How did your father pass away?

A: Motorcycle accident, when I was 18 years old.

Q: What are some things that you miss the most about your father?

A: He was my guiding light. When he was alive, before I did something I would ask myself “Will my dad do this?” Now, I just go ahead and do things that sometimes I regret.

Q: What things do you regret?

A: Right now? Smoking. That’s probably my only one.  I feel like I disappoint my dad every time I do it.

Q: What is the last thing that you remember your dad saying?

A: That’s awkward, because the last conversation that I had with him was an argument about money. The day that he died I was supposed to buy my mom a birthday present. I only had 20 pounds left and he was disappointed about that. So he said: “I am going to leave before I say something that I regret.” Afterwards, I waited for him to come home but he never did. I play this argument over and over again in my head.

>> Read the rest of this article on the Goshen Commons website.

Naomi Lederach rarely says “I.”

Whether she’s describing her time as a peace worker in Northern Ireland during the Troubles or her experience as a nursing professor at Hesston College in Kansas, Lederach, 79, habitually begins her sentences with “we.” The other half of Lederach’s “we” is invariably her husband, John, who has been her co-worker, best friend and partner for the last 58 years.

Together, Naomi and John have moved from Goshen to Oregon to Kansas—even to Israel and Northern Ireland during periods of great political conflict—always going where they feel called, Naomi as a nurse and John as a pastor and professor. No matter where they live, Naomi and John model for others how to have a lasting, loving marriage and have in fact led marriage workshops together for over 25 years.

Lesson number one? You’re never too old to hold hands, a practice Naomi and John demonstrate regularly.

Their affection for each other was immediately apparent on the sunny spring morning that I visited their Goshen home to interview Naomi. As she and I sat down at the kitchen table, John took drink requests and promptly prepared coffee for me and chamomile tea for Naomi.

“Would you like sugar or sweetener with your coffee?” John asked me politely.

“She wants sugar,” Naomi answered with a wink. John gave her shoulder a small squeeze as he handed her the tea.

Once John left the room, Naomi took a sip from her white mug and said what would become the first of many “we” statements: “We tell each other every day how lucky we are to have found each other. What a wonderful life it’s been.”

Although John has indeed been an integral part of Naomi’s personal narrative, the stories she proceeded to share were still uniquely and unequivocally her own. As she spoke, themes of reconciliation and forgiveness continually emerged as defining values of her life.

These are three of her stories. …

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Adam Scharf, a 2001 graduate of Goshen College, is a former City Council candidate, owner of Red Tail Farm, partner of Venturi Pizza Pub and owner/operator of Rethinking Buildings, a remodeling and construction business focused on aesthetic, social  and environmental responsibility.

Q: Where did you grow up?

A: Goshen is my hometown.

Q: You own the house just across Main Street from the college, the one with the sod roof; what’s the story there?

 A: As I was graduating from Goshen College I lived in the basement of that house and it was rough.

When I ended up moving back to Goshen I decided it would be a good project to take on and I thought that the building just behind it would be a neat spot. So I bought it and got it approved so I could live there.

Then I got going on a long-term project of salvaging materials and doing a green roof. I was working on LEED certification and going through checklists. The whole place is a collection of salvaged things. The Goshen High School gym floor is my floor, and I’ve used the old floor from Goshen College’s Union building as well.

Q: What did you intend to do with the sod roof house?

I wanted to move tenants out of renting into home ownership through savings programs and incentives, putting aside a certain amount of their rent for down-payment. But unfortunately the zoning didn’t go through for that.

Q: How did you become interested in remodeling projects?

A: When I was living in Seattle I got into natural building, cob building, straw bale building, and in moving back here there was a cob-and-straw-bale timber frame house going up on Middlebury Street. I saw a natural building community here that I thought was a nice jumping off point from what I was doing before in the Pacific Northwest.

Q: Were your projects in Seattle your first experience in remodeling?

A: I bought one house while I was living in that basement apartment in college. A buddy and I were looking for something to do so we fixed it up, and sold it. I had some sort of idealistic notion like “I want to do things with my hands, create things.  I have had my nose in a book for 22 years and I don’t have anything to show for my labor.”

Q: Are there other projects you’ve been a part of in Goshen?

A: I was part of Chain Reaction Bicycle Project, getting it up and going. I own Red Tail Farm just across the canal here. We have a community art show and a community garden down there.

I’ve done wetland restoration, and I’ve dabbled in some pasture-based, sustainable agriculture stuff.

I ran for City Council, organizing around trying to reroute some of the train tracks, and I got interested in the social justice issues in that, like how built environment and geography affect different groups of folks, how there literally are “the other side of the tracks.“

Q: What motivates you to get involved in projects like this?

A: I honestly think this is a pretty cool place and there are a lot of great people who have energy, are plugging in, cooperating and making things better.

I was in Mali for SST (Study-Service Term with Goshen College). That, and subsequent travels really impacted my view of urbanization and brain drain in small communities worldwide and how people leaving their hometowns is a real problem. Maybe that’s an ethic that motivates me to work in Goshen.

>> Read the rest of this article on the Goshen Commons website.

An interview with Laurie Neumann Nafziger ’78, president and CEO of Oaklawn, an organization that provides mental health and addiction services to individuals of all ages.

What did you study in college to get to where you are now?

At Goshen College, I got a bachelor in social work. You know you wonder sometimes why you make the decisions you do. Back then I would say there wasn’t much talk, at home or at school, about different career possibilities.

Somehow I landed on social work. I wonder today why I even chose that. The picture in my brain of me working was Laurie as a professional. This got clearer when I got to graduate school, but I think I always saw myself in an administrative position.

Where was grad school for you?

I went to Western Michigan. I really, really liked grad school because it was focused in a way that my undergrad wasn’t. So by the time I went to grad school, the MSW made sense; that’s a master’s in social work. I had the choice here either to take a clinical track or an administrative track.

What, if anything, would you change in terms of the path you took?

If I could do it all over I might have gotten an MBA.

How would that improve or influence the rest of your career?

In running Oaklawn, I’m aware that my understanding of financial areas is limited. I’ve got good people around me and I can always get it and follow along when financial information is presented, and I know a lot more than I used to, but I couldn’t get there without more capable people around me. So, I’d have an MBA instead of an MSW.

You’ve spent nearly 20 years in various other jobs at Oaklawn. What did those include?

It was kind of interesting; I had done one of my graduate placements at Oaklawn so I met some people there. Later Oaklawn called me and said, “We have a two-week job for you to write a grant. Do you want to do that?” And I was like, “Sure, I can do that.” So I wrote the grant and then we were successful and got the grant. It was a planning grant for a student health center. Then when it was time to implement the grant, they said, “Do you want to do the planning for this student health center?”

So that was a part-time job for a year. And then actually from there Oaklawn said, “Do you want to work part time indefinitely?” Along the way they said, “We need somebody to supervise the social workers.” Then I was VP of child and adolescent services for a while; then I was chief operating officer, COO, and then executive VP. Near the end I was starting to be positioned as having a shot for the CEO position but it took a while. I didn’t start at Oaklawn imagining to be the CEO; that emerged slowly.

Talk a little bit about role models and mentors. Or would you say you were more self-motivated?

That’s a good question. I’ll talk about both because on the one hand I am driven and focused and disciplined, and I’m a hard worker, just naturally. I mean the big joke here is my mantra that “Work is good!”

“Saving is good. Work is good!” (Smiles).

I really do believe that because I find work so satisfying. Often the people who succeed are the ones who are willing to work harder than the others. It’s that simple. I would also say I had some good mentors along the way.

What’s an ordinary day for you?

I usually leave at 7 and then I’m home by 6. I work through lunch or it’s a working lunch. And that feels about right. And the other thing, and this is so much better than the old days, with my computer I can be here at home with the TV on but be in my email and in my world. That doesn’t feel like work to me. I’m also at that point in my life where the kids are gone – huge, huge difference!

A really important thing I do every evening is to prepare myself for the next day, organize myself. I keep a running to-do list and I know exactly which of them are for today and which are for tomorrow. It is amazing what you can get done and just be really focused the next day. And that doesn’t feel like work to me. Organization is fun!

>> Read the rest of this article on the Goshen Commons website.

Rosanna Nafziger Henderson graduated from Goshen College in 2006 with majors in English and math, not the most obvious path to becoming an authority on food.

Henderson herself admits that she could not have predicted that six years after leaving Goshen she would be a cookbook author and food blogger.

On Oct. 2, she celebrated the official publication day of her second book, “The Lost Arts of Hearth & Home,” which Publishers Weekly called “an utterly charming collection of recipes and how-tos for the 21st-century hipster-homemaker.”

>> Read the rest of this article on the Goshen Commons website.

James Nelson Gingerich didn’t go to medical school to become a doctor. He went because he wanted to open an affordable health care center in Goshen that would build bridges across cultures.

Gingerich grew up in Luxembourg with missionary parents and after that in Tennessee where his father studied theology, including the work of John Howard Yoder. Gingerich describes their household as one “that was constantly talking about John Yoder and Christian community…and seeing ourselves as a little minority in a bigger society.” In this environment, he became “more challenged by what forms radical Christianity could take.”

Out of this theology and the challenge of radical Christianity, Gingerich began thinking about community development. When he started attending Goshen College for his undergraduate education in 1981, Gingerich quickly became involved with Assembly Mennonite Church, a congregation that that was only a year old at the time. Gingerich describes it as a “high-energy, high-intensity” kind of place. It was also the place where Gingerich met his wife, Barbara.

While at Assembly, Gingerich and four other young adults from the congregation created a household together, where they lived in intentional community, sharing a common pot and a vision for their North Goshen neighborhood and the broader city. These young men worked in Goshen with Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers Big Sisters programs and homes for the indigent, and they started the first bilingual education programs for public schools in Indiana.

In this context, Gingerich says they were developing a vision for the Assembly congregation “which was that as people think about moving, they think about moving into low-income neighborhoods, and that we deliberately think about what it means as a congregation to build bridges that are cross-cultural.”

In a history on their website, Assembly Mennonite Church describes the church’s first 15 years, with a section describing the tension between Gingerich and his housemates’ vision for the church and the direction the church was going. Gingerich was a strong voice in encouraging the church not to purchase and move the congregation into a new building on south 11^th Street in Goshen. The church had been meeting in various places in Goshen and at Goshen College, with no set meeting place to call their own. Many in the church wanted this type of home for the congregation, but Gingerich spoke out about his conviction that moving the congregation into the new building would allow it to become “comfortable,” rather than continuing to intentionally work at being a presence in lower-income communities.

Though the church didn’t take to this idea as enthusiastically as Gingerich’s household had, Gingerich cites this as a formative goal in arriving where he is today. While living in Goshen and majoring in history, biology and German at the college, Gingerich discovered an outlet for the radical Christianity he had been exploring since he was a boy in Luxembourg and Tennessee—he began to notice that there were people in his household’s North Goshen neighborhood who had inadequate access to healthcare.

Gingerich started to think about how healthcare could be done differently—not only to bring access to healthcare to people, but also to foster community development. He asked himself, “How do you foster healthy community, how do you foster inclusive community, how do you foster cross-cultural community and have a connecting point in healthcare?”

With these questions in mind, Gingerich headed to University of Chicago, where Barbara, whom he married in 1980, was studying theology.  His intention was to create an affordable health care center in Goshen when he graduated. The university’s medical school focused on “sub-specialty care and research,” Gingerich remembers, and it produced more deans and faculty members of medical schools than any other school in the country. Gingerich was one of only four students in his graduating class of 103 who intended to use their medical degrees to work in family practices.

Gingerich laughs as he recalls the four of them being called into the dean’s office and “chastised for wasting a University of Chicago education on primary care.”

“It was not a place that fostered primary care, let alone cross-cultural poverty care,” Gingerich says, though he is quick to give the school credit: “I got a great education. It was a fine place in many ways.”

When he finished his residency in 1988, Gingerich returned to Goshen with Barbara and their first son, Jonathan, who was born while Gingerich was completing his residency at St. Francis Hospital in Indianapolis. He began actively seeking ways in which he could fulfill his goal of opening a health care center in North Goshen.

Fortuitously, a fire station in that neighborhood had recently become redundant, as the fire station in downtown Goshen could access the neighborhood more quickly than the neighborhood station, so the mayor at the time, Michael Puro, decided to shut it down.

One day, Gingerich says, “the mayor called me and said, ‘I have a building looking for a project. I hear you have a project looking for a building.’” They negotiated a 20-year lease for $1 a year, and the city donated some funds to the project.

>> Read the rest of this article on the Goshen Commons website.

Marcia Yost, whose Goshen High School choirs have won three state championships and six state runner-up titles, will become the executive director of the Music Center at Goshen College on Oct. 1.

Yost will continue her work as choral director and chair of the music department  at Goshen High even as she assumes leadership of the Music Center, a quarter-time position.

“Since the first time I walked into the Music Center I have been in awe of the facility,” Yost said. “The possibilities are wonderful and to be involved in continuing to bring those possibilities to the community and Goshen College is invigorating and exciting.”

Yost said she remembered on that first encounter sitting in the back of the hall as the college choirs and orchestra rehearsed a piece by Lee Dengler, a  Goshen composer, for the upcoming dedication.

“I was literally moved to tears,” she said. “I was so overcome by the facility and the music and the fact that we had something like this in our little burg.”

>> Read the rest of this article on the Goshen Commons website.