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News
Oct 01 2025
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:
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.
From serving in post-revolutionary Nicaragua to working on gospel nonviolence internationally, Gerald Schlabach has lived to bring people together and build bridges.
After graduating from Goshen College in 1979, Schlabach began his career working with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Central America, where he supported individuals navigating the dangers of public advocacy in Guatemala and Nicaragua. After nearly a decade with MCC, he returned stateside, where he first earned a master’s degree in theological studies from Anabaptist-Mennonite Biblical Seminary before earning a Ph.D. in theology and ethics from the University of Notre Dame in 1996.
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.”
When Raj Biyani first arrived at Goshen College, one of the first things he was told was: “You will learn how to learn.” That ethos has shaped his journey ever since, fueling a career defined by innovation, leadership, mentorship, and a lifelong curiosity.
Originally from Calcutta, Biyani came to Goshen College in 1988 to study computer science and accounting. He credits the faculty, friendships, and caring community at Goshen with helping him thrive as an international student — and equipping him with the foundational skills that supported a 25-year career marked by reinvention and impact.
After graduating in 1992, he went on to earn an MBA from the University of Chicago and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University. Biyani joined Microsoft in 1999, where he quickly established a reputation as a catalyst for innovation. He was awarded multiple U.S. and E.U. patents, and contributed as a thought leader by authoring or co-authoring ten “Think Week” papers for Bill Gates. He also co-authored a book on enterprise cloud adoption published by McGraw-Hill.
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.
How would Kate Friesen and Scott Kempf describe their work on Singletree Farm, a local flower farm that serves the Goshen area? Three simple words from Kempf: “It’s a joy.”
When Kempf graduated with a peace, justice and conflict studies major in 2011, three years before Friesen, he spent time serving with Mennonite Central Committee in Tucson, Arizona, where he worked at a food bank. From there, he spent the next three years in rural Georgia, with an organization called Jubilee Partners that welcomes and orients refugees to the United States.
There, he helped with land management, growing his love of the land. In Friesen’s senior year, they began dating, and she soon moved out to Georgia to join Kempf for a year of service.
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.
Tony Janzen has been a servant leader and a global citizen, with soccer weaving through it all.
Janzen attended and played soccer at Elkhart Central High School before coming to Goshen College and competing for the Maple Leafs men’s soccer team from 2004-2007. The Leafs won 55 games over those four years, and in 2006 the team made the NAIA national tournament for the first time in nearly 30 years. A physical education major, Janzen made the all-conference team three years in a row and was an NAIA All-American Honorable Mention twice. Since the turn of the century, he has scored more goals than any other Goshen men’s soccer player. He was an assistant coach for the Leafs from 2009-2011.
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.
Mary Hartzler was a dominant athlete at Goshen College in the late 1960s and remains dominant in 2025, reflecting a life of passionate learning and sportsmanship.
Originally from West Virginia, Hartzler transferred to Goshen from Eastern Mennonite College. She played on the women’s basketball and field hockey teams and also participated in volleyball and tennis before they were official varsity sports. In Hartzler’s two basketball seasons, the Maple Leafs had a perfect 18-0 record under head coach Ruth Gunden, with victories over future Big Ten schools like Indiana, Purdue and Illinois.
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.
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