Re­tire­ment of Dr. Den­nis En­g­brecht

MISHAWAKA–Dr. Den­nis En­g­brecht, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Stu­dents and cur­rent His­tory Pro­fes­sor, will be re­tir­ing af­ter this se­mes­ter. The 70-year-old has served the col­lege for nearly 33 years and feels that “it’s time.”

Dr. En­g­brecht first came to Bethel in 1967 as a fresh­man un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent. Fol­low­ing his grad­u­a­tion in 1972 from McPher­son Col­lege in cen­tral Kansas, he earned a mas­ter’s de­gree in 1976 and be­gan teach­ing High School stu­dents. It was at this time that he felt him­self called to teach col­lege stu­dents; af­ter com­plet­ing his PhD in 1985 he be­gan work­ing at Bethel as what is now called the Vice Pres­i­dent of Stu­dent De­vel­op­ment, then the Dean of stu­dents.

“When I came [to Bethel] in 1986 – Bethel’s a de­nom­i­na­tional school and the de­nom­i­na­tion had pretty much lost con­fi­dence in the school. There was a very laxed en­vi­ron­ment. When I say laxed I mean that the col­lege was not con­sis­tent – and it’s hard to be con­sis­tent and I’m not be­ing crit­i­cal of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion this was just the re­al­ity – it had not been con­sis­tent in liv­ing out the com­mu­nity life covenant. I re­mem­ber on Mon­day morn­ings go­ing over to Oak­wood with the Res­i­dent Di­rec­tor. He’d grab a laun­dry bas­ket and we’d go pick up beer cans out­side of the win­dows of the dorm. And it would be filled. I re­mem­ber dis­miss­ing a Res­i­dent As­sis­tant be­cause he was car­ry­ing a case of beer on his shoul­der as he went down the hall. I re­mem­ber the Spir­i­tual Life Di­rec­tor be­ing dis­missed be­cause he kept com­ing in drunk. I mean, these are the things as a re­sult I thought ‘We’ve got to clean up our act.’”

“I think there were times when polic­ing took place over restora­tion.” 

As En­g­brecht’s time in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ued, the col­lege’s ad­her­ence to the com­mu­nity life covenant im­proved. 

“We were a small school when I came; there was one male Res­i­dent Di­rec­tor, one fe­male Res­i­dent Di­rec­tor, and my­self and a sec­re­tary and that was Stu­dent De­vel­op­ment. And when we grew the staff to maybe twelve Res­i­dent Di­rec­tors and lot of other sup­port staff work­ers, it took me a while to shift from ‘I’ve got to take the reins and run this thing’ to a more com­radery, team­work ap­proach. I had good peo­ple and they helped me with that. They helped to point out ‘we want to be part of the team, Den­nis. We trust you, we’ll fol­low you any­where but we want to be part of the team.’ Once we hit that pro­to­col of func­tion, it was a great ride. I have pic­tures in my desk of lots of re­treats and team build­ing ex­pe­ri­ences, go­ing to con­fer­ences to­gether. Man, I worked with some great peo­ple, re­ally good peo­ple. I mean, Shawn, who is the only one re­main­ing, is em­blem­atic of the kind of peo­ple that I had.”

Some of En­g­brecht’s fa­vorite high­lights in­clude a re­vival that oc­curred on cam­pus dur­ing 1991 which he at­trib­utes to part of Bethel’s growth of stu­dent body from less than 500 to nearly 2,000 dur­ing the 1990’s and the early 2000’s. He was also able to watch his chil­dren at­tend and grad­u­ate from Bethel.

“When we moved here in 1986 my old­est was seven years old, my sec­ond was three years old, and my daugh­ter born right af­ter we moved here. One of the things that I had hoped and prayed for was that the col­lege – which was in pretty dire straits at that par­tic­u­lar time, they were ac­tu­ally think­ing of clos­ing the school – was to see my own kids come here and get a qual­ity ed­u­ca­tion and have a qual­ity ex­pe­ri­ence. All three came to Bethel, all three grad­u­ated, all three of them say to­day ‘Dad, those were some of the best years of our lives.’”

In 2009 Dr. En­g­brecht stepped down as VP of Stu­dent De­vel­op­ment to func­tion as the Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent and in 2013 he re­turned as a pro­fes­sor.

“My in­tent was to end my ca­reer the same way I be­gan. I love the class­room and I’ve been in the class­room even when I was an ad­min­is­tra­tor. I would teach May term classes, oc­ca­sion­ally I would teach grad­u­ate courses just be­cause I liked it so much.”

Dr. En­g­brecht turned 70 years-old on March 16 and had al­ways planned to re­tire at that age.  

“I feel like it’s time. I’ve loved be­ing at Bethel. I was here dur­ing the Golden-era and it makes me feel blessed.”

For more in­for­ma­tion on Dr. En­g­brecht, check out our Fac­ulty Pro­file here – https://​bea­con.bethel­col­lege.edu/​2014/​02/​fac­ulty-pro­file-dr-den­nis-en­g­brecht/