Bethel to En­ter Phase Two of GROW Cam­paign

MISHAWAKA—Bethel launched the GROW Cam­paign in Jan­u­ary 2018, de­tail­ing sev­eral pro­jects sched­uled to take place over a five-year pe­riod. Now, two years later, many of those pro­jects are ei­ther com­pleted or well un­der way, and a sec­ond phase of the cam­paign is due to be­gin. 

Matt Lentsch, MPA, came to Bethel and joined the cam­paign in July 2019. His role is pri­mar­ily over­see­ing the fundrais­ing and mar­ket­ing side. 

“When I came, one of the first tasks that I had to fo­cus on was rais­ing, fin­ish­ing gifts for the train­ing cen­ter,” Lentsch said. “We’ve been work­ing hard to raise the ad­di­tional $200,000 to $300,000 to make that hap­pen.” 

Lentsch is pleased Bethel has ac­com­plished many of its goals far ahead of sched­ule. 

“What we hoped to ac­com­plish in three to five years we’ve ac­com­plished in two,” Lentsch said. 

The “G” of GROW stands for “Game On,” rep­re­sent­ing cam­pus ath­let­ics. Since 2018, Bethel has added men’s rugby, wom­en’s lacrosse, men’s and wom­en’s swim­ming, men’s and wom­en’s bowl­ing and es­ports. 

 Bethel part­nered with Elkhart Health & Aquat­ics to give its swim teams ac­cess to a larger-than-Olympic-sized pool. Bethel also part­nered with the Cen­tury Cen­ter to give its Es­ports team ac­cess to the Ben­dix Arena and raised fund­ing to build the Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter, an on-cam­pus fa­cil­ity, giv­ing the track team a much-needed train­ing space and ex­pand­ing work­out spaces for the gen­eral stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. 

“‘Game On’ was an im­por­tant piece, both for en­roll­ment and for our fa­cil­i­ties,” Lentsch said. “[The Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter] is phe­nom­e­nal; it’s just a great as­set for Bethel.” 

The “R” stands for “Ro­bust Re­cruit­ing” and led to de­vel­op­ments such as the con­struc­tion of the Van and Jean Gates Wel­come Cen­ter, a new web­site, a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing re­sources suite and the cre­ation of a vir­tual cam­pus tour for prospec­tive stu­dents. 

“Even in the pan­demic, we’ve done fairly well,” Lentsch said. 

The “O” stands for “On­line Burst”; since 2018, Bethel has added nine on­line pro­grams and cur­rently reaches stu­dents in 15 states. 

“Stu­dents en­rolled in on­line pro­grams has in­creased by 10 per­cent,” Lentsch said. 

Fi­nally, “W” stands for “Where Your Heart Is.” De­vel­op­ments un­der this cat­e­gory have in­cluded the Field Scholar Pro­gram, the ad­di­tion of two com­puter sci­ence labs and the de­vel­op­ment of the BU-X pro­gram. 

“[BU-X] has been amaz­ing,” Lentsch said. “That’s re­ally do­ing ex­tremely well. We have 19 stu­dents cur­rently, and . . . we have 15 ver­bal com­mit­ments for this fall.” 

Now, Bethel is prepar­ing to move to phase two of the GROW cam­paign. One of the pri­mary aca­d­e­mic pro­jects for this phase will in­clude ren­o­va­tions and up­dates for the ki­ne­si­ol­ogy lab. 

“We have two fac­ulty and we have about a hun­dred kids that are in­volved, as a ma­jor or mi­nor, tak­ing classes in ki­ne­si­ol­ogy,” Lentsch said. “We’re get­ting all kinds of econ­omy there, econ­omy of scale, but the fa­cil­i­ties are lack­ing. We need to up­date those fa­cil­i­ties.” 

An­other part of phase two will in­volve re­do­ing parts of Good­man Gym­na­sium and pur­chas­ing new equip­ment for it. 

“Good­man has served Bethel in al­most every area of cam­pus,” Lentsch said. “At one point, it was used for chapel. It’s been used for multi-pur­pose con­certs, the­atre pro­duc­tions; we’ve max­i­mized its use, but to the point where it’s get­ting tired . . . we want to make it more use­able for stu­dents.” 

Phase two will also seek to en­hance stu­dent life by re­mod­el­ing the re­strooms and com­mon ar­eas in Shupe and Oak­wood. 

“We want to have great liv­ing spaces,” Lentsch said. “Peo­ple spend a lot of time in their dorms. And Shupe and Oak­wood have been around for 50 years, and it’s time we put some time and en­ergy . . . into a ma­jor re­mod­el­ing.” 

An­other fo­cus will be ren­o­va­tions of Hu­man Re­sources and the busi­ness of­fices on the first floor of the Huff­man Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing. 

“Just about every­body who is ei­ther a prospec­tive stu­dent or a cur­rent stu­dent has to go down to the busi­ness of­fices at some point,” Lentsch said. “We want that to be more pri­vate; we want it to be more ac­com­mo­dat­ing, more ac­ces­si­ble and we want it to be more friendly.” 

There will also be fur­ther at­ten­tion given to rais­ing fund­ing for stu­dent schol­ar­ships. 

“We want a re­newed fo­cus and a re­newed en­ergy into telling the story about the need for dol­lars com­ing in an­nu­ally for the Bethel fund so that we can meet the in­creas­ing needs of stu­dent fi­nan­cial aid,” Lentsch said. “The need is greater than ever.” 

Lentsch is grate­ful Bethel is con­tin­u­ing to push for­ward de­spite un­cer­tain­ties pre­sented by COVID-19. 

“In a time like this, there are many cam­puses and col­leges that are sort of hun­ker­ing down,” Lentsch said. “We are not. We are pur­pose­fully not just hun­ker­ing down. We’re in the process of fin­ish­ing [GROW phase one], and we’re im­me­di­ately go­ing into GROW phase two . . . I can’t be prouder of an in­sti­tu­tion named Bethel right now.” 

Phase two of the GROW cam­paign is ex­pected to last be­tween 18 months and two years.