Fac­ulty Pro­file: Dr. Reg Klopfen­stein

MISHAWAKA-- Reg Klopfen­stein, D.M., started off his ed­u­ca­tion jour­ney at the Wheaton Col­lege Con­ser­va­tory of Mu­sic, grad­u­at­ing in 1980. He went on to fin­ish his grad­u­ate de­gree two years later. He had many pieces of ad­vice for stu­dents pur­su­ing grad­u­ate school which can be found in the ar­ti­cle, “Grad­u­ate School Tips: The Mu­sic De­part­ment," pub­lished ear­lier this year. Klopfen­stein was care­ful to bal­ance the stresses and op­por­tu­ni­ties in­volved in pur­su­ing grad­u­ate school. 

“You have goals, but you also are will­ing to let God kind of bump you this way or that way…which is ex­cit­ing!” Klopfen­stein said. “I would­n’t trade it for the world, but it’s not like there was­n’t stress along the way.” 

He grad­u­ated from In­di­ana Uni­ver­sity School of Mu­sic with his M.M. in 1982. He de­scribes the next part of his jour­ney to be God bump­ing him in di­rec­tion af­ter di­rec­tion. Klopfen­stein was friends with many pro­fes­sors from his grad­u­ate stud­ies. He be­lieves in the op­por­tu­ni­ties you can re­ceive by know­ing oth­ers and them know­ing you to be re­li­able be­cause he goes by this one mantra: “One phone call can change your life.” 

One phone did in­deed change Klopfen­stein’s life. He was in­vited to join the Hon­olulu Sym­phony as a Per­cus­sion­ist and Tim­panist. It was a big move, but it led to the op­por­tu­ni­ties to have on-the-job ex­pe­ri­ence for his pro­fes­sion.  

In this time in be­tween his mas­ter’s and his doc­tor­ate, he was re­united with the woman des­tined to be­come his wife. They had known each other their whole lives but had been on their own jour­neys when God brought them back to­gether. She had just moved back to Gra­bill, Ind., and he was vis­it­ing on break from his Hon­olulu Sym­phony work.  

“I al­ways joke around with this, ‘We waited un­til we were as far apart as pos­si­ble, she’s in New York and I’m in Hawaii, to re­con­nect,’” Klopfen­stein said. “God has a sense of hu­mor.” 

He said there were chal­lenges along the way, but when he went back to get his doc­tor­ate, it was a very dif­fer­ent time in his life. He had left his or­ches­tra job of the last nine years and he had a wife and two chil­dren. He is very thank­ful for his wife and her pa­tience while he was deal­ing with ex­treme busy­ness. To Klopfen­stein, it was tough, but ul­ti­mately worth it.  

Klopfen­stein is a per­cus­sion­ist by trade and ful­fills those du­ties at Bethel Uni­ver­sity. When de­scrib­ing what he does here, he listed the Per­cus­sion En­sem­ble first, then per­cus­sion lessons. He also teaches the first two mu­sic the­ory courses, and two years ago he started teach­ing the world mu­sic course, which ex­plores many cul­tures around the world. He now teaches all four mu­sic his­tory courses—he used to teach only the first and last of those courses. 

He says his fa­vorite thing about be­ing at Bethel Uni­ver­sity is work­ing with the stu­dents. He en­joys get­ting to know them and hopes he has a pos­i­tive im­pact on their lives in what­ever they do with their fu­tures.