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But though the location is far from where the college was planted a century ago, and its programs are new and different, the Sarasota Extension is an obvious arm attached to the body that is Goshen College.

The Sarasota Extension is part of GC’s efforts at furthering its Strategic Plan, part of which states that GC will broaden its mission to be of service to communities other than its own and to individuals interested in learning beyond the traditional college age.

GC offers this broader southwest Florida community of more than 600,000 one of the few resources it doesn’t yet have: the presence of a Christian college, one which has a 100 year history and ties to a visible community population, Mennonites.

In announcing the college’s intentions to launch a Sarasota Extension last March, GC President Shirley H. Showalter said the Sarasota area offered not only a strong Mennonite church presence but also support from the broader Christian community in the area. Sarasota’s cultural opportunities, other higher education resources, nearby wildlife habitat and multi-ethnic communities make the city an ideal place to set down new roots for GC.

Some of the area’s attractions include the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, Ringling Florida State Art Museum, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, Sarasota Opera House, Asolo Conservatory Theatre Company, Sarasota Poetry Theatre, Mote Marine Laboratory, Pelican Man’s Bird Sanctuary, Towles Court Artists’ Colony, Sarasota Film Society, Myakka River State Park, Selby Public Library, the South Florida Museum and more.

There are at least 10 Mennonite and related churches in the Sarasota area. Along Bahia Vista Street lie several Mennonite-owned restaurants and businesses, including 10,000 Villages, Der Dutchman Restaurant and, now, the GC Sarasota Extension.

During the Sarasota Extension’s grand opening weekend, more than 70 Sarasota-area residents, including GC alumni and former faculty members, attended a celebration banquet Nov. 6 at Sunnyside Village. At the Nov. 7 open house, 150 visitors toured the Extension office at 3737 Bahia Vista Street and saw 14 new state-of-the-art computers; a dozen new students — ranging in age from the middle-30s to over 80 years of age — signed up for Fall Term courses. According to GC Sarasota Extension Director Jim Miller, total enrollment for the first series of computer courses is 50.

At the banquet, John D. Yordy, GC provost and executive vice president, placed the Extension’s grand opening in the context of the larger mission of the college. "Every community and every institution, every college will have distinctives that nurture its spirit and life," said Yordy, outlining the values that GC brings to the Sarasota area.

"Though we can’t express a single vision for Anabaptist-Mennonites, we can define the core values we bring: a commitment to discipleship; voluntary membership in the church; a model for Christian discipleship based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount; a commitment to service, peace and justice; and understanding that Christian faith finds its expression in community."

Sarasota Mayor Rev. Jerome Dupree attended the Extension’s grand opening banquet, and welcomed GC to Sarasota. He prefaced his remarks by noting that he used to listen to a Mennonite-produced radio program when he was a young Sunday school teacher.

As someone who has been in the pastorate for nearly 20 years, and in education for 30, Dupree said he appreciates what Mennonite education can bring to Sarasota.

"One thing this city needs is to continue to improve its education and extend the education available to us into lifelong learning," said Dupree. "GC will add to the quality of life here in Sarasota, and will bring a refreshing approach to learning and to loving to learn, and an approach that will embrace all of Sarasota’s multi-ethnic communities."

Sarasota resident Dawn Yoder Graber, a 1982 GC graduate and a member of the Extension’s advisory board, said the college’s decision to open an extension in Florida allows not only area Mennonites but also their friends and neighbors to have access to Christian higher education.

Right now, the Extension is at "the sky is the limit" stage in terms of how GC can relate to the Sarasota community, Graber said.

Miller said potential opportunities for traditional students, in conjunction with the Sarasota Extension, could include practicum and internship experiences, service projects, connections to the rich cultural and ecological offerings of the Sarasota area and forming relationships with diverse communities and churches.

Miller said the 1998-99 priorities for the Extension "reflect the strength of Goshen College while delivering them in new and creative ways. We are reaching beyond the 18- to 22-year-old, degree-seeking students who live in Goshen, and delivering the quality Christian education GC has to offer in a format inviting to the nontraditional student," he continued, adding that this is only the beginning of a program which can have many possibilities for traditional students as well.

Extension classes started Nov. 5 with Art Smucker, GC professor emeritus of chemistry and former computing services director. This first term, Fall 1998, is filled with non-credit, four- to six-week computer courses taught by several different instructors. These courses are being taught at the Extension office.

Starting in January, the Extension’s Winter Term will offer non-credit courses in biblical study, theology, the arts, spirituality and other topics of interest to church communities. One for-credit course will be offered, an on-line distance learning course open to anyone regardless of geographic location; titled Contemporary Themes in Anabaptist History, the innovative course will be taught by GC Professor of History John D. Roth.

One of the priorities for this year picks up where the local church-sponsored Southeast Bible Institute left off providing academic classes in a congregational setting on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. In order to appeal to both Mennonites and the broader Christian community in Sarasota, the Extension will offer classes at two locations: Bahia Vista Mennonite Church and St. James United Methodist Church.

Said Miller, "This priority takes full advantage of GC’s unique identity as a religiously affiliated (Christian) college in Sarasota, a largely religious community with limited options for Christian higher education. This is an opportunity for GC to reach a diverse audience, and for the college to benefit from the diversity this area has to offer."

Lorraine Sheeler, a 1964 GC graduate and director of retirement at Sunnyside Village, strongly supports the multiple programming at the Extension. "We need to look for opportunities for diversity and inclusiveness while we continue to tell the Goshen College story, and I think that can happen here," she said.

Though the Extension will serve students of all ages, Sheeler is especially excited about the opportunities for older Sarasota-area residents.

Sheeler said that several Sunnyside residents have met with Miller for brainstorming sessions concerning another priority for the GC Sarasota Extension, an Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR). Miller said ILRs offer intellectual stimulation, tied to an academic institution, for older adults. "It’s been suggested that ILRs are a fad, but that opinion underestimates the desire of older adults to keep learning throughout their lives," said Miller, "and there is a demand in Sarasota for more opportunities like this."

Said Sheeler, "We have been offered the chance to continue our learning in retirement, and residents feel good about affiliation with another Mennonite institution that offers similar values and allows them to plug into a strong academic program guided by these principles."

Others on the Sarasota Extension Advisory Board are Lester Glick, Lloyd Miller, Alma Ovalle, Hazel Shirk, Marion Sortore, Fred Swartzendruber and Evie Yoder.

-- Rachel Lapp

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SARASOTA, Fla. — Goshen native Art Smucker couldn’t attend every event at the grand opening of the Goshen College Sarasota Extension Nov. 6-8. He had a tennis games to play.

That commitment to lifelong learning is why the former GC computing services director and GC professor emeritus of chemistry is teaching the first course of the Fall 1998 term offered by the Sarasota Extension at its office on Bahia Vista Street, right in the heart of the Mennonite community in a city of more than 300,000 residents and 35 miles of white beaches.

Smucker’s two Introduction to Computers classes are nearly full, due in part to the visitors who stopped by the Extension’s open house Nov. 7 and came away GC students. Smucker was glad to welcome them as both a professor — with a 35-year history at GC — and a GC alumnus.

"There’s a lot of potential for the nontraditional at the Sarasota Extension, for a diverse cross-section of people," said Smucker, who has spent several months of the year in the southwest Florida coastal city since he retired from GC in 1987. "If we at GC believe what we preach about life-long learning, this is a major opportunity to reach a previously untapped source. GC offers a Christian setting, background and commitment."

A Goshen resident since he was a teenager, Smucker graduated from Goshen High School and went on to GC. But before he could finish his studies in chemistry, however, he spent three years with Civilian Public Service, working in psychiatric hospitals and training for relief efforts in war-torn Europe.

Following the end of World War II, he worked with Mennonite Central Committee’s European rebuilding projects, stationed in the Alsace region of France. During that time, he married Oma Hershberger; when they returned to Goshen, both finished their undergraduate degrees.

Smucker then went on to do post-graduate work at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.; he found he excelled as a teaching assistant, and signed on with the GC teaching faculty in 1953. He found himself a colleague to his former professors, a role which would be reversed when he himself would find himself working with one of his former chemistry students, John D. Yordy, now GC’s provost and executive vice president, who attended the GC Sarasota Extension grand opening.

Though Smucker had specialized in bio-chemistry in graduate school, while teaching at GC he found himself "drifting into analytical chemistry" and designed and taught a pre-chemistry course for the nursing department.

During a sabbatical at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va., Smucker observed the work of mating chemists’ instruments with computers; when he returned to Indiana, he worked part-time with an Elkhart bank that had a computer-based data processing center. "You didn’t have software applications in the old days — you had to write your own," Smucker said.

This experience — in addition to other skills in computer programming learned not from courses, but on his own — led to an assignment as GC’s director of computing services. Smucker helped bring GC "into the computer age."

Now, he is introducing others, many of them near his own age, to new technology. "Most students in these classes at the Sarasota Extension are trying to get their feet into the technology," said Smucker. "They have children or grandchildren who are involved with computers, and some already have computers of their own. They want to get acquainted with the new technology — learn about e-mail, word processing and the Internet."

GC offers Sarasota Extension students the same personal attention that students at the Goshen campus experience. "We have a concern not just with technology, but with people. There is an openness to personal interaction, and a giving of one’s self," said Smucker, adding, for example, that he can spend extra time with students who might have trouble with the fine motor skills needed to maneuver a mouse. "We’ll have a broad range of viewpoints here as well."

In addition to his love of tennis, Smucker spends time reading and enjoys the game of bridge because, he says, "it’s a card game that’s less dependent on chance." He has also earned a reputation in the Goshen community for giving volunteer help to neighbors with computer questions. Two of his children — Cynthia Marcus and Bob Smucker — and three grandchildren live in Goshen. Smucker lives with a son while in Florida; prior to his wife’s death three years ago, the couple had a fifth-wheel trailer there.

Smucker also shares his knowledge with Mennonite Disaster Service; as its on-call, volunteer computer resource person, he helped MDS work to get laptops for field offices for accounting, e-mail and word-processing. He connection with MDS came through post-disaster work in South Carolina after Hurricane Hugo; in Florida after Hurricane Andrew; and in Hannibal, Mo., after the Mississippi River flooding.

Another computer-related project of Smucker’s is genealogical in nature; he is collecting the names of Smucker-Schmucker-Smoker relatives and inputting these. The list currently numbers around 25,500 names.

Smucker enjoys these activities, and looks forward to his classes. "Some of the students have hobbies, but some don’t have things to do in a meaningful way. I see the GC Extension as developing something that can serve many people by providing these kinds of opportunities."

Smucker’s Fall 1998 classes will end in December; he will teach Faith on the Internet during the the GC Extension’s Winter 1999 term.

-- Rachel Lapp

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With the introduction of Goshen College’s first distance learning course, academic instruction in Anabaptist-Mennonite history will be more accessible than ever before. Open to anyone with a computer and a modem, Contemporary Themes in Anabaptist History, taught by Professor of History John D. Roth, will begin the first week of January 1998.

The class is unique in that it will be offered by the Goshen College Sarasota Extension, taught from Goshen, Ind., and accessible to people all over the world. While the class is designed for college credit, students may opt to audit the class instead, and GC offers guest registration to simplify the process.

The structure of the course utilizes both e-mail and the Internet; in addition, a textbook will be required reading. A special-interest project will be planned individually, and students will be required to participate in on-line discussions.

"At its best, the Anabaptist tradition has always emphasized the importance of the community, gathered to discuss and discern the will of God in the midst of a changing context," said Roth. "This class offers students the opportunity to continue in that rich tradition, with a series of focused study and conversations about issues that matter."

According to Roth, the course will introduce students to the most recent scholarship on Anabaptist and Mennonite history.

The course will be divided into 12 units, including:

• Do Denominations Matter? The Catholic Church and the Reformation of the 16^th century
• Missions and Martyrdom: The Paradox of Life and Death in the Anabaptist Movement
• The Emergence of Tradition: From "Anabaptists" to "Mennonites"
• Anabaptist Renewal I: Ordnung and the Amish split of 1693
• Where are We Now? The Mennonite Mosaic and the Global Mennonite Church

The heart of the course will be the electronic conversation, said Roth, who will monitor the on-line class discussion "in which each class member shares insights and understandings" about a particular study topic.

Roth said the class will examine questions such as: What do Mennonites believe about baptism? Should Mennonites be more involved in politics? What has been our historical understanding of church polity? How have culture and faith intersected in the Anabaptist-Mennonite story?

Roth, director of the Mennonite Historical Library and editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review — both housed at GC — has preached, lectured and published extensively in the area of Anabaptist-Mennonite history. He is also one of the organizers of an interdisciplinary conference to be held at GC Oct. 14-16, 1999, titled, "Mennonites and the Family: Vision and Reality."

GC offers special tuition rates for those taking five credit hours or less; the cost for Roth’s three credit hour Contemporary Themes in Anabaptist History course is $570. Rates for audited courses are $75 per hour. Anyone interested in enrolling in a class must be accepted as a GC student; however, students not intending to complete degree requirements at GC may register as "guest" students, using a simplified enrollment process. For more information, call the Goshen College Admissions office at (574) 535-7535 or (800) 348-7422.

-- Rachel Lapp