

What are you learning from life’s curriculum right now?
I am asking myself, in this moment of alarming and rapid change, “what is it that I need to be learning?”
Goshen College President Rebecca Stoltzfus offers regular and intimate reflections on campus, interesting people she’s met, conversations she’s part of and higher education today.
Email her: president@goshen.edu
I am asking myself, in this moment of alarming and rapid change, “what is it that I need to be learning?”
It is no secret and no surprise: Goshen College has been in many ways subverted – turned from below – by our inquiring and passionate students and faculty and the transformational changes they have brought about. John D. Roth, professor emeritus of history and a leading Anabaptist-Mennonite scholar, illuminates and honors that history in: "A Mennonite College for Everyone(?): Goshen College and the quest for identity and inclusion, 1960-2020."
Our campus and our broader community have been dealing with an unusual amount of grief this fall. This blog is adapted from comments I made in the special convocation on campus, “Holding Grief in Community,” on Oct. 26, 2022.
Thankfully, COVID transmission is finally much lower. Oddly, amidst all of the happiness and relief, this transition to the next stage of the pandemic is surprisingly hard. The adrenaline is gone, and I feel exhausted by the past year of events.
In the midst of the heartbreak, tensions and tedium of the pandemic, I am alert to the changes happening within myself and in our society that may form the lasting legacies of this time. Some of these are causes for hope.
We live in the midst of change, and sometimes we feel overwhelmed. And yet, we are made to grow, and growth cannot happen without change.