Communications and Marketing Office » Shirley H. Showalter

Showalter presidency and contributions celebrated in day-long farewell events

jessegb — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:53:21 +0000

View more photos from the Farewell Celebration.

GOSHEN, Ind. – As students, faculty, staff, community and church leaders, benefactors and alumni filled Sauder Concert Hall on the morning of Sept. 20 to say thank you and farewell to President Shirley H. Showalter for her service to Goshen College, many wore scarves in all shapes and colors to honor a leader whose trademark accessory connects to her passion for relationships and cross-cultural learning.

Music opened the special convocation, held in the building completed in 2002 for which Showalter led the fundraising campaign to build, as the Chamber Choir, directed by Associate Professor of Music Debra Brubaker, performed the heartfelt “Jesus, I Adore Thee.”

After a welcome by Provost John D. Yordy, who has been named interim president and will begin serving in that post on Oct. 1, surprise speaker and mayor of the City of Goshen Allan Kauffman presented Showalter with a ceremonial key to the city on a maple leaf-shaped plaque. Kauffman, a 1971 Goshen College graduate, began his term as mayor around the same time that Showalter was inaugurated in 1997. He said President Showalter “has been good for Goshen College, and she has also done so much to strengthen town-gown relations.”

Showalter, who resigned her post on Aug. 1, will serve her last day in office on Sept. 30 after teaching and serving as president of Goshen College since 1976. In introducing Showalter at the convocation, Goshen College Board of Directors Chair Virgil Miller, said, “This is a bittersweet day saying goodbye to our 14^th president – a colleague, a friend, a teacher, a mentor. I invite you to listen to President Showalter, as she delivers her farewell speech, with thankfulness for an articulate president who believes in the loftiest goals of Christian higher education, in the ability of a metaphor to communicate complex ideas and who believes in you and that you have a special place here at Goshen College.”

Showalter titled her final address as president of Goshen College “Joy and the Goshen Journey.” She began by sharing a memory from when she and her husband Stuart led a Study-Service Term group to Haiti in 1981, when one student, after arriving at the Port au Prince airport, opened a bus window and greeting the whole country with an excited “Bon Soir!”

“To me, that little gesture signifies a special exuberance for loving, living and learning that I can only call ‘Goshen joy.’ Its ingredients derive from a hunger for beauty, truth and a better world,” Showalter said.

She expressed the sadness she feels at leaving Goshen College, but also the joy of having been part of the life of the 110-year-old institution. “We can experience joy today because we have a treasure here that started at Creation, was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, is a by-product of the suffering of 16^th century Anabaptists, has a long tradition of learning in the academy and has found a home in this place called Goshen College,” she said.

Showalter calculates that she has spent 28 years – or 10,311 days – at Goshen College, teaching in the English department as well as history, women’s studies and through grant programs, for two decades before accepting the God’s call to become the first woman president of Goshen College. In reflecting on her tenure at Goshen, she described the campus as research center, as classroom, as worship center, as cheering section, as playground and as launching pad.

The campus is also home to sacred spots, said Showalter – not only those places where she has experienced some of the most meaningful worship services of her life, but seemingly everyday places. One is at the south end of the Union Building where students departing to and arriving home from Study-Service Term host countries meet family and friends. “It is a place that honors our relationships to each other, our courage to take journeys by faith and our joy in each step,” she said.

Then Showalter offered blessings to all. “I want to thank each person here today,” she said, then offered gratitude specifically for the work of the members of the President’s Council who are carrying on administrative leadership of the college led by Yordy upon her departure, as well as her assistant and her husband and family.

Showalter concluded by saying, “The joy I feel today follows many moments of working, playing, fasting, praying, mourning, rejoicing, disputing and reconciling. It comes from knowing I love you and reveling in that feeling. Thank you for this joy, joy, joy, joy I’ve got down in my heart.”

Bringing ceremonial closure to her presidency, Showalter invited her mother to the stage to give a closing prayer at the convocation; Barbara H. Becker also offered prayer at her daughter’s inauguration seven-and-a-half years earlier. The audience stood to offer a collective gift to Showalter – an 800-voice offering of the hymn “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

Other events of the day included a luncheon at which Miller also spoke, saying that “the next president of Goshen College will step on sturdy foundations laid by the Showalter administration” and that there is a strong interim leadership structure in place, making for a smooth transition. Also speaking were Yordy, alumnae and former Bank One president Karen Thomson and Goshen College Vice President for Institutional Advancement Andrea Cook. Carlos Romero, executive director of Mennonite Education Agency, offered prayer for the college as an educational institution of the Mennonite Church USA.

Later in the afternoon, a campus farewell reception was highlighted by an open mic period during which current and former faculty and staff shared memories and appreciation of Showalter throughout her Goshen career. A special treat – a Showalter favorite, chocolate-covered marshmallows made by Olympia Candy Kitchen in downtown Goshen – was served along with other refreshments. In addition, a unique wall piece created by area fiber artist Patty Watters was presented to Showalter; the tapestry, titled “Interwoven,” was braided with purple, the Goshen College school color, and items reflective of Showalter’s gifts and interests, including lines from a hymn, bird feathers (symbolizing a poem written for her at the time of her inauguration by alumnae poet Julia Kasdorf) and quotes from favorite authors and thinkers quoted by Showalter in public writings.

For more resources about Showalter’s administration, including a career timeline with accomplishments and highlights, and Goshen College’s plans for a strong transition under Yordy’s leadership, go to http://www.goshen.edu/news/For_the_Media/Presidential_transition

Goshen College, established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S.News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit http://www.goshen.edu/.

Editors: For more information, contact News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

Community farewell to Shirley H. Showalter to take place Sept. 20

jessegb — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:41:08 +0000

GOSHEN, Ind. – Goshen College and the community will celebrate Shirley H. Showalter’s service as president during a special convocation at 10 a.m. Sept. 20 in Sauder Concert Hall of the Music Center. This event will cap Showalter’s nearly eight years in office.

The extended 50-minute convocation program will be highlighted by her last official address to the campus and community as president of Goshen College, and will include music and prayer, with expressions of gratitude for her leadership and blessings for her future. There will be several special guests and even a surprise for President Showalter.

An early luncheon for invited community and church leaders will then take place in Rieth Recital Hall following the convocation. In the afternoon, all current and former GC faculty and staff and current students are invited to a celebrative farewell reception from 2 to 5 p.m. in the Church-Chapel Fellowship Hall, where there will be time for reflection and sharing and to wish President Showalter well as she moves on to a new challenge.

For more resources about Showalter’s term as president and about the overall presidential transition, go to: http://www.goshen.edu/news/For_the_Media/Presidential_transition.

Editors: For more information, contact News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

President Showalter encourages students to develop meaningful philosophy of life in opening fall address

jessegb — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 01:28:04 +0000

GOSHEN, Ind. — The first day of classes at Goshen College for 2004-05 academic year on Aug. 25 opened with President Shirley H. Showalter’s welcoming address to campus. Titled “The Meaning of Life,” she called students to develop a meaningful personal philosophy.

The speech marks her final address to a new school year and a new student body as Showalter had earlier in the month announced her resignation. She will be finishing her tenure on Sept. 30. Current GC Provost John D. Yordy will then assume the position of interim president.

Addressing a crowd of more than 800 students, faculty and staff members in the Church-Chapel, Showalter began by noting that Goshen College students are more interested in a meaningful philosophy of life than their peers, and that the interest grows stronger over their four years at GC, based on the Cooperative Institutional Research Program test that all college/university students in the United States take.

Showalter then offered students three suggestions for developing a meaningful philosophy on life, including to study, to write down a personal mission statement and to find a “circle of truth.”

Studying – the reason students are in college – is the first step Showalter pointed to in developing their meaningful philosophy on life. “Every course you take at Goshen College holds potential to contribute to your understanding of the meaning of life. But whether or not you find it is up to you,” she said. “Meaning was, and often is today, supplied by the teachings and rituals of the church and by the tasks of daily living necessary for survival. However, the deepest thinkers of all ages and all cultures sometimes pulled back from daily life long enough to face hidden fears and to doubt whether life has meaning.”

Showalter said her own times of doubting and facing fears have “taught her more than many of the sunnier parts of my journey,” she said. “The way out is to keep searching for meaning, or to let go of the search for awhile until it finds you. It will eventually come, and when it does, it will bring you a special gift meant to be shared with others.”

Showalter noted that writing down a personal mission statement has been helpful for her to focus. “Make your deepest desires conscious desires, or you risk being ruled by your unconscious fears,” she said. “Find words to express your own longing for love, beauty, peace, community and joy.”

Showalter encouraged students to find a “circle of truth,” a term she borrowed from author Parker Palmer. “Find other people who want to search with you for a meaningful philosophy on life. Listen to each other’s mission statement. Read the Bible, poetry, philosophy, pray and laugh together,” she said. “Life does not get any better than this.”

Showalter noted that “all journeys include transitions and change,” and that students would have the opportunity to experience at least three important events in the coming year: the national election, a college presidential leadership change in a community of Christ and the once-a-decade visit by the North Central Accrediting Association (NCA) to Goshen College.

“One of the most profound ways we learn at GC is that we sing. We sing out loud. We sing a song that lasts a whole life long,” Showalter said. Then Associate Professor of Bible, Religion and Philosophy Paul Keim, and campus humorist, who wrote a song “that takes the serious lightly through comedy” about the NCA visit and the college’s core values, performed it with assistance from Lisa Guedea Carreño, head librarian, and Skip Barnett, associate professor of English and international student adviser.

Showalter then invited everyone to join in an “applause avenue” and told the new students, “We have been waiting all of your life to welcome you to your own circle of truth. We love you. Let’s get started on the journey of joy together.”

In what has become an annual tradition, the GC “applause avenue,” initiated by Showalter four years ago, created a joyful noise and energy of new beginnings with hand clapping and welcoming each other to campus. Faculty, staff and students paraded past their peers, then joined and extended the lines and continued the applause until the sanctuary was empty and the lines stretched far into the heart of campus by its conclusion.

Editors: For more information, contact News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

Goshen College Board of Directors and Mennonite Education Agency announce leadership transition for 110-year-old institution

jessegb — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 02:16:49 +0000

From the Goshen College Board of Directors in consultation with Mennonite Education Agency

GOSHEN, Ind. – Chair of Goshen College’s Board of Directors Virgil Miller announced today to college faculty, staff and students that President Shirley H. Showalter is resigning her position in order to join the Fetzer Institute of Kalamazoo, Mich.

Showalter, the first woman appointed to head the 110-year-old institution, will end her service in the fall semester, according to Miller. He said the Executive Committee of the college’s Board of Directors and Mennonite Education Agency (MEA), which represents Mennonite Church USA, are in consultation to define next steps that include a plan for interim leadership and preparation for the search process.

“This is a moment in the college’s history when we have both challenge and opportunity, as in any transition,” said Miller. “The college has had an energetic, creative leader in President Showalter. The Board of Directors extends deepest thanks to her for her service and vision in guiding this Mennonite institution.”

Showalter was named president in 1996, and began her tenure as the college’s 14th president on Jan. 1, 1997. Prior to accepting the post as president, she was a member of the Goshen College English Department, having begun her career as a professor in 1976.

During Showalter’s administration, Goshen College added several new academic programs of study, including American Sign Language Interpreting, Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies, Anabaptist-Mennonite History studies, International Studies and Special Education. The college’s ranking in U.S.News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” rose from the fourth to third tier in the national “liberal arts-bachelor’s degree” category and is cited as a “least debt college” for graduating students with less debt.

In addition to enrolling a high percentage of international students, Study-Service Term (SST) was also recognized by U.S.News as an exceptional program. Continuing to give students a unique international education experience that reinforces global citizenship and compassionate peacemaking, several new SST host countries came into being since 1997, including Ethiopia, Senegal and Cuba.

Physical legacies of Showalter’s nearly eight-year tenure as president include the new Goshen College Music Center, completed in the fall of 2002, as well as upgrades to residence halls and groundbreaking for an apartment-style student housing facility. The college has received grants for projects such as the “Calling Authentic Leaders for Life” project – supporting vocational programs for students that emphasize church leadership and service opportunities and youth ministry program – and the Plowshares Peace Studies Collaborative among three Indiana-based schools rooted in peace church traditions, Goshen, Earlham and Manchester colleges. As Showalter departs, a new program creating an Entrepreneurship Center on campus is starting.

“I have loved this college for nearly 30 years. The students and faculty of this remarkable place will always be in my heart,” said Showalter. “I have witnessed so many ways in which Goshen College provides and guides opportunities for meaningful Christian higher education. My prayer will always be that God will continue to bless Goshen College, its leadership, its church and its community.”

Miller said that a special board meeting is set for Aug. 18 to further coordinate efforts with MEA and its executive director, Carlos Romero, to establish a transitional timeline, approve and activate an interim leadership plan and determine the process for identifying gifts and qualities of a new president. With a strong cabinet of vice presidents appointed by Showalter, Miller said, the educational mission of the college will continue as these plans are initiated.

Romero said, “We are losing an articulate voice for Mennonite education as President Showalter moves on to a new opportunity. We also note that many of the accomplishments of her administration are not ends in and of themselves, but forward-looking foundational work on which exciting things are being built.”

Miller pointed to Goshen College’s work in the past several years to engage faculty, staff, students, alumni, church representatives and community in newly articulating the Christ-centered core values that characterize the institution as a significant undertaking of Showalter’s administration.

“Since affirming the core values, the campus has had a sharpened sense of mission and purpose. This set of distinct Christ-centered values – to create passionate learners, global citizens, compassionate peacemakers and servant-leaders – is the framework of an exciting strategic planning process that will guide Goshen College as it continues to prepare students for service in the world and the church,” said Miller. “And of course, these core values will vitally inform the search for Goshen College’s next president.”

Showalter will become vice president for programs at Fetzer Institute. Fetzer is a private foundation that supports research, education and service programs exploring integral relationships among body, mind and spirit and fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the global community. She said in making the decision to move on, she has appreciated the support of her husband Stuart, who is director of career services at Goshen College, and their adult children, Anthony and Kate.

“Goshen College’s future is bright because so many people of faith have committed their lives to bringing out excellence in Christian liberal arts learning,” Showalter said. “This beloved community of dedicated individuals is nurturing future leaders for the church and world.”

# # #

For more information, contact:
Rachel Lapp, Goshen College Director of Public Relations
Phone: (574) 535-7571; E-mail: racheljl@goshen.edu

President Showalter offers look into “What It’s Like to Be the Boss” during opening address

jessegb — Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:47:56 +0000

GOSHEN, Ind. — “It could very well be that someone in this audience today is going to stand at this podium someday, either as president here or in some other organization,” Goshen College President Shirley H. Showalter said during her Jan. 9 spring semester opening address to campus, “What It’s Like to Be the Boss.”

To illustrate her point, Showalter then held up a class photo dating from the 1950s that was reprinted around 30 years later in a humor issue of the Goshen College Bulletin. Included in the photo was then Professor of Bible and Philosophy J. Lawrence Burkholder. Above his head a cartoon balloon was placed with the words, “Some day this will all be mine!” Burkholder later served as Goshen College’s 11^th president.

Speaking specifically to the students in the audience, Showalter said, “If you think it will not be you, I can find scores of alumni who never imagined that some day they would be the boss, but the boss is what they became.” Showalter herself taught at Goshen College in the English department from 1976 until her inauguration as president in 1997.

“The journey toward becoming the boss of anything begins inside you,” Showalter said. “And because God created all of us to be unique, no single journey will be like another. What it will be is a true odyssey, full of temptations, triumphs and failures.”

Showalter’s advice to students to begin this journey was to not worry about becoming the boss, but instead “concern yourself with becoming a good follower and servant”; to find a mentor; to plunge into the liberal arts and “love learning passionately and purely”; and to gain much practical experience.

She described being the boss with a list of paradoxical pairs that “are often true simultaneously”: exhilarating and exhausting, humbling and harrowing, freeing and fettering.

A tolerance for ambiguity and complexity is essential to be the boss, Showalter said. “If the boss is at all open to learning — and all good bosses must be — that is one of the deepest lessons one learns,” she said. “The experience of leading is ‘nada y todo‘ — nothing and all. It is like being a follower but with higher highs and lower lows. It is like all the things one has ever done in life individually and like all of them happening at once.”

But, Showalter said, the greatest paradox is that “It’s not about the boss at all,” and “It’s all about the boss.”

“The secret, I think, is distinguishing between [what is] a healthy interest in our own lives and [what is] an egocentric, potentially abusive, interest in forcing others to pay attention to us,” she said. “When I keep my eyes and ears on Christ, when I am a compassionate peacemaker, a passionate learner, a global citizen, and a servant leader — when I am living inside the story of our core values — I forget about myself and yet that is when I become most fully unique.”

“What is it like to be the boss? Words are so inadequate, both to the experience as it is and to the great desire that it be more like the model, Christ,” Showalter said. “And so I do not end with more words today. Instead, I ask you to help me to be a better boss and help yourself be a better boss in your own life.”

Showalter closed her address by washing the feet of senior Anna Groff of Lancaster, Pa. “I am going to do what I first learned to do as a teenager growing up in Lititz (Pa.) Mennonite Church,” Showalter said. “I still remember vividly washing the feet of sisters in the congregation. Sometimes I was asked by an older woman — one of the leaders I admired — to be her partner. Neither she nor I were aware of how the simple act of footwashing would influence our future lives. By taking Jesus’ words literally, we took them into our bodies for whatever wisdom the original Boss with a capital B has to teach us. É No one was boss. Everyone was boss. It was a glimpse of truth, a preparation for the time in which people from every tribe and nation will gather around the throne and dance before the Lamb, the Prince of Peace.”

Goshen College, established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values — passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership — prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, Kaplan’s “Most Interesting Colleges” guide and U.S.News & World Report‘s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit http://www.goshen.edu/.

Editors: For more information, contact Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

President Showalter presents core values for a living faith in opening address

jessegb — Fri, 29 Aug 2003 01:01:08 +0000

GOSHEN, Ind. — The first day of Goshen College 2003-04 classes, Aug. 27, opened with President Shirley H. Showalter’s opening address, “Living Our Faith,” to the campus in which she called students to deepen their relationship with God by living out the core values of Goshen College: a Christ-centered community of passionate learners, global citizens, compassionate peacemakers and servant leaders.

Addressing a crowd of more than 800 students, faculty and staff members in the Church-Chapel, Showalter began by summarizing author Anne Lamott’s spiritual conversion, described in Lamott’s book “Traveling Mercies.” Showalter welcomed students to a community of Christians and related that Lamott met people who lived their faith, “You need to find God in order to find your own voice,” Showalter said, “one that implanted within you while your creator knit you together in your mother’s womb.”

Prior to entering the Church-Chapel, students received their first “business cards,” imprinted with the five core values of Goshen College. Showalter said the card is important. “It is a business card because it is about the most important business of your life,” she said. “If we, with God’s help, choose now to make these words live a little more fully every day, this little card could turn the world upside down.”

Showalter called the campus to rally around the mutually upheld beliefs. “We are a diverse group. What we have in common is our focus on these core values. This is where we find unity amidst our diversity,” she said.

As part of her presentation, Showalter described each core value and challenged students to embrace them as their own.

The first value, being Christ-centered, is the fundamental reason “we have a college,” said Showalter. “The purpose of this college is to be an instrument in God’s voice calling you to be your own unique self.”

As an example of the second core value, being a passionate learner, Showalter pointed to the Maple Scholar students who have been doing research side by side with professors all summer as one example of passionate learners. “Sometimes God calls us through the gift of our minds,” she said. “I invite you to stretch your mind as far as it will go — and that is farther than you know now.”

The third core value is that of becoming global citizens Ð “passionate learners who are no longer bound by their own culture and who learn to listen in other languages,” Showalter said. She gave the 10 percent of the student body who are from another country and the 64 percent of the student body who study abroad while at Goshen College as examples of this value.

In describing the fourth value, Showalter said, “Servant leaders think about how to serve others first, as Christ did. Leadership will result, but service is the objective. Because of this order, servant-leaders are the best leaders of all.” She highlighted the voluntary service of student athletes who helped move furniture and people into the dorms and to students who helped clean up fallen trees on campus after a violent storm Tuesday night.

Finally, Showalter said, the value of working to be compassionate peacemakers will be central to the coming school year through the general education theme of “Cultivating a Culture of Peace,” with many opportunities to hear speakers on the topic and engage the issues surrounding peacemaking.

Showalter ended her message by saying, “All our core values boil down to one thing: God has designed us for a purpose. We will keep working to be qualified for that job. We invite you to join us on an exciting journey to the very core of our beings.”

Showalter then invited everyone to join in an “applause avenue” and told the new students, “This whole college has been waiting for your arrival. Go receive the applause of welcome and the embrace of peace.”

The “applause avenue,” created a joyful noise and energy of new beginnings with hand clapping and welcoming each other to campus. Faculty, staff and students — including the 173 first years, 16 new international students and 61 transfers — paraded past their peers, then joined and extended the lines and continued the applause until the sanctuary was empty and the lines stretched more than 50 yards outside along the sidewalk.

Goshen College is a national liberal arts college known for leadership in international education, service-learning and peace and justice issues in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program and exceptional educational value, GC serves about 1,000 students in both traditional and nontraditional programs. The college earned citations of excellence in U.S. News & World Report and Barron’s Best Buys in Higher Education. For more information, visit www.goshen.edu.

Editors: For more information, contact Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.