New fac­ulty hired at Bethel Uni­ver­sity

MISHAWAKA -- Bethel stu­dents will be see­ing a lot of new faces on the fac­ulty team, this year, so here’s a com­pre­hen­sive guide to some of the new mem­bers of the Bethel Uni­ver­sity fam­ily. 

• Katie Weak­land, As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of Bi­ol­ogy, has a Ph.D. in For­est Re­source Sci­ence/​Wildlife Ecol­ogy and Man­age­ment from West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­sity. It was there she taught wildlife ecol­ogy and man­age­ment, as well as gen­eral bi­ol­ogy. From 2004 – 2013, Weak­land joined the Bi­ol­ogy and Chem­istry De­part­ment at Bethel. Af­ter spend­ing four years on the mis­sion field, she re­turned to the United States to teach at Spring Ar­bor, be­fore she was in­vited back to Bethel this year. Dr. Weak­land is “a strong ad­vo­cate for the Bib­li­cal man­date to care for cre­ation,” as well as cam­pus di­ver­sity. She wants to do her best to cre­ate a “’k­ing­dom cul­ture’ on cam­pus where all stu­dents feel wel­come…"

• The new Pro­fes­sor of Com­puter Sci­ence, Cathy Bareiss, is com­ing to Bethel from Olivet Nazarene Uni­ver­sity af­ter teach­ing com­puter sci­ence there for 32 years. Bareiss was born in Hawaii, but later moved to Houghton, NY, where her fa­ther was sta­tioned as a chap­lain at Houghton Col­lege. She at­tended In­di­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity when it was still called Mar­ion Col­lege, and has since spent over half of her life teach­ing at ONU in Kanka­kee County. Bareiss found Bethel through the Coun­cil for Chris­t­ian Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties’ web­site and de­cided she wanted the last third of her ca­reer “to be spend help­ing a Chris­t­ian col­lege start a CS pro­gram.

• Pro­fes­sor Kris­ten Rich­mond will be a new As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of Nurs­ing. Pre­vi­ously, she’d worked as an ad­junct pro­fes­sor in the pro­gram since 2014, and, be­fore that, as a clin­i­cal in­struc­tor for In­di­ana Pur­due Uni­ver­sity in Fort Wayne, not far from where she lives in Co­lum­bia City, Ind. Pro­fes­sor Rich­mond has a nurs­ing in­struc­tor by the name of JoLynn Reimer to thank for bring­ing her to Bethel. “She ap­proached me about maybe be­com­ing a clin­i­cal in­struc­tor and that’s how it all started.” Our new as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor hopes to teach Bethel stu­dents how to bat­tle the ram­pant “me-first agenda” by show­ing them what nurs­ing is about: sac­ri­fic­ing for and serv­ing oth­ers.