Meet the Indonesia SST leaders

We are Luke Kreider, Ph.D., and Janie Beck Kreider (M.Div., R.N.), and we are excited to lead the spring 2026 Indonesia SST unit. I teach religion, ethics and sustainability at Goshen College, and Janie is a nurse at Goshen Hospital and a former communications director.

We love learning about other cultures and global relations, and are eager to engage students in one of the most culturally, religiously, and biologically diverse countries in the world. Since I (Luke) teach in the field of religious ethics and study how religions and cultures engage with environmental problems, I am eager to learn all I can about how a country with large Muslim, Buddhist and Christian populations in a tropical context wrestles with environmental issues. Janie and I enjoy soccer and tennis, mountains and beaches, music, and spending time with our two energetic boys (ages 4 and 6).

Our eleven students come from both Goshen College and Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). I have had the chance to meet both groups in person, and we are both looking forward to getting to know them better. We hear that our students completed their Bahasa language classes by sharing a meal with their local language partners. Since our students are in two locations, the course was taught online, but each location had a local instructor who provided in-person practice. We want to thank Pak Salmon Pandarangga (online language instructor, Sumba, Indonesia), Pak Ditrich Rumboirusi (language partner for EMU students), and Chialis T (Goshen language partner) for their help in preparing our students.