Belle­feuille Named In­terim Pres­i­dent

MISHAWAKA—On Jan. 25, Board Chair­man Randy Lehman an­nounced that Vice Pres­i­dent for Aca­d­e­mic Ser­vices Bar­bara Belle­feuille, Ed.D., will be fill­ing the role of in­terim pres­i­dent for Bethel Uni­ver­sity ef­fec­tive June 1.  

Belle­feuille was ap­proached about the in­terim pres­i­dency in early Jan­u­ary, and though she re­ceived no pres­sure to make a hasty de­ci­sion, she quickly was at peace with ac­cept­ing the po­si­tion. 

“Be­ing that it’s an in­terim pres­i­dency, that has a lit­tle dif­fer­ent feel,” Belle­feuille said. “A pres­i­den­tial po­si­tion should ap­pro­pri­ately go through a full search, par­tic­u­larly as­sum­ing it’s some­one com­ing from out­side . . . full searches for a pres­i­dent take at least a year, it’s an ab­solute mir­a­cle if they don’t.” 

Belle­feuille said her de­ci­sion was dri­ven by her love for Bethel. 

“It ba­si­cally came down to my love and care for this in­sti­tu­tion,” Belle­feuille said. “You want this tran­si­tion to go ex­tremely well, and you want, as much as pos­si­ble, to con­tinue with­out in­ter­rup­tion on this cam­pus. I was happy to step into that role.” 

Dur­ing her in­terim pres­i­dency, Belle­feuille will as­sume all the pres­i­den­tial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­til a new pres­i­dent is se­lected, likely in the spring of 2022. As for her cur­rent po­si­tion, Bethel is plan­ning to hire a new vice pres­i­dent for aca­d­e­mic ser­vices be­fore June 1, and Belle­feuille will not be re­turn­ing to that po­si­tion. Her plans fol­low­ing the in­terim pres­i­dency are still to be de­cided, but she said she does hope to re­main at Bethel.