Six outstanding alumni honored with 2025 Alumni Awards

Six outstanding alumni have been chosen to receive Goshen College’s 2025 alumni awards for their commitment to living out the college’s motto, “Culture for Service,” and who exemplify the core values of the college. They received their awards at a special convocation on Friday, Oct. 3, as part of the school’s Homecoming Weekend festivities.

The 2025 alumni awards were presented to:

• Gerald Schlabach ’79, Grand Marais, Michigan – Culture for Service Awardee
• Raj (Rajesh) Biyani ’92, Seattle, Washington – Culture for Service Awardee
• Kate Friesen ’14 & Scott Kempf ’11, Goshen – Young Alumni Servant Leader Awardees
• Tony Janzen ’08, Goshen – Dr. Roman Gingerich Champion of Character Awardee
• Mary Hartzler ’70, Columbus, Ohio – Dr. Ruth Gunden Champion of Character Awardee

The Culture for Service Awards and Young Alumni Servant Leadership Award were established by the Goshen Alumni Association. Recipients distinguish themselves through commendable accounts of service and achievements at home or in their churches, colleges, communities and the larger world. With the same criteria as the Culture for Service Awards, the Young Alumni Servant Leadership Award is presented annually at or before the recipients’ 15th class reunion year.

The Goshen College Maple Leafs Athletic Club also presents the Dr. Ruth Gunden and the Dr. Roman Gingerich Champion of Character Awards. The two awards, created in 2005, are presented to a male and female alumni athlete who exemplify the college’s core values in their lives, work and community service. Gunden and Gingerich were pioneers in Goshen College’s athletic history. There will be a special reception honoring the Champions of Character awardees.

After his graduate studies, Schlabach taught first at Bluffton College (now University) and then at the University of St. Thomas, where he specialized in theology, Christian social ethics, and peace studies. While at St. Thomas, Schlabach participated in multiple worldwide groups focused on peace and bridge-building, including directing the Bridgefolk grassroots movement for Catholic-Mennonite dialogue, serving in Rome with a Pax Christi International conference on just peace, and moderating and participating in multiple workshops.

“Gerald embodies and integrates life-faith-theology-service-ecumenism in local, national, and global context,” said one nominator for Schlabach, Weldon D. Nisley, former Mennonite pastor in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Seattle and a Benedictine oblate with Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. “Gerald has shaped many lives for learning and formation as a brilliant teacher and passionate mentor of students and young people.”

Schlabach has written many award-winning books, as well as being awarded multiple grants and fellowships. In retirement, he has just finished a memoir by his good friend from Guatemala about Blessed Stanley Rother, the first Catholic martyr from the United States. He also is writing a book on Catholic social teaching and peace through the lens of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Along with his wife Joetta Handrich ’80, Schlabach alternates between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. They are the parents of two adult sons, Gabriel and Jacob ’11. In his spare time, Schlabach enjoys bicycling and other outdoor activities, playing mandolin with a pick-up band, and, in his words, “living as an ordinary Christian.”

From 2011 to 2016, Biyani served as Managing Director of Microsoft IT’s India operations—the company’s largest center outside the United States. Under his leadership, the team tripled quality, significantly boosted productivity, and achieved 100% cloud certification. This transformation became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study.

In 2015, Biyani co-produced the documentary The Story of India and Its IT Industry, which aired on CNBC and reached an estimated 15 million viewers. That same year, he returned to Goshen College to deliver the keynote address at its 117th commencement ceremony.

“He is an outstanding human being, worthy of recognition,” said Salil Dave, a director at Microsoft and one of Biyani’s nominators. “Raj is a man with a heart of gold who truly loves people—he strives to get to know them deeply and cares for their personal and professional well-being.”

In recent years, Biyani has shifted his focus toward mentorship, serving on advisory boards and coaching business leaders across India and the United States. He has also immersed himself in the study of ancient Indian scriptures, with a particular emphasis on the Bhagavad Gita. A few years ago, Biyani, his spouse Aarti and their children Garima and Rohan relocated to India to help their children reconnect with their cultural roots and engage in a Sanskrit language immersion program.

In 2015, they moved back to Goshen, where Friesen took a job at the college Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center. A few years later, fellow GC graduate Phoebe Brubaker ’03 called her, asking if they would grow flowers for Brubaker’s CSA. Before long, Friesen and Kempf had started Singletree Farm, with Brubaker as their main client.

Brubaker moved away in 2019, but Singletree continued to grow into what it is today: a farm that caters local weddings, holidays, and events, while also selling bouquets through their flower CSA program and at the Goshen Farmers Market.

“Their farm is not just a source of flowers but a place where faith meets practice—where they live out values of humility, gratitude, and service,” said Trisha Handrich ’11, gifts officer at Goshen College, who nominated Friesen and Kempf for the award. “By cultivating beauty through flowers and meaningful connections within their community, they demonstrate the power of small acts to create lasting peace and harmony.”

And “meaningful connections” are at the heart of their work. Friesen said that her favorite part of selling flowers isn’t catering weddings or quinceañeras — it’s the small transactions where people express care for others and themselves through buying a few flowers.

Friesen and Kempf live on their farm in Benton, just south of Goshen, with their two-year-old son Alden and their dog, Milo.

In 2013, Tony and his wife, Denise, worked with Mennonite Central Committee in Cambodia for three years. He played professionally for a year while he was there in the top-level Cambodian league, scoring 13 goals.

Janzen came back to Goshen and was the assistant boys soccer coach and head junior varsity coach at Bethany Christian for three seasons before becoming the varsity head coach in 2020. The 2023 Bruins team won the state championship, resulting in the school’s first state title in any sport. Janzen has been a teacher at Goshen Community Schools Alternative High School since 2016.

Tony and Denise currently reside in Goshen with their newborn, Cedric.

After graduating, Hartzler taught junior high physical education and health in Elkhart for six years. She completed a four-year tool and die apprenticeship program in a tool and die shop in Bridgman, Michigan, and then in Columbus, Ohio. For 21 years, she led the Manufacturing Process Lab for the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Ohio State University, teaching engineering students as well as assisting students and professors with research projects.

Hartzler’s athletic journey never slowed. In 1995, she began competing at the USATF Masters-level and with the National Senior Games. Recently, at the World Masters Athletics Indoor Championship in March, Hartzler won the women’s 75-79 discus competition. She has also broken records as a member on 4×200-meter relay teams.

Hartzler has consistently served others and bettered herself throughout her life – in the lab and in athletics.