Bethel Pre­pares for Belle­feuille’s In­au­gu­ra­tion

MISHAWAKA--The in­au­gu­ra­tion of Bar­bara Belle­feuille, Ed.D, will take place in the Ever­est-Rohrer au­di­to­rium on Sat­ur­day, Sept. 10, at 10 a.m. 

“All of cam­pus is in­vited, and the stu­dents es­pe­cially, will be re­ceiv­ing re­minders in chapel and email that will hap­pen next week,” Brent LaV­i­gne, vice pres­i­dent of in­sti­tu­tional ad­vance­ment, said.  

LaV­i­gne said there will also be lo­cal gov­ern­ment and col­le­giate of­fi­cials pre­sent, in­clud­ing the mayor of South Bend and the pres­i­dent of Notre Dame.  

For stu­dents and fac­ulty who are not able to at­tend the event, there will be a live stream avail­able via the chapel link that stu­dents would nor­mally use for live-streamed chapel.  

“I think it’s a great time to cel­e­brate our pres­i­dent,” LaV­i­gne said. 

There will also be a dessert re­cep­tion for stu­dents, fac­ulty and staff on Mon­day, Sept. 12, from 3:30-5 p.m. 

Belle­feuille has been with Bethel for 10 years, start­ing out as the vice pres­i­dent for aca­d­e­mics. When she started here, she loved the mes­sage and the con­nec­tion that Bethel had, and she said that re­mains true as she pre­pares for the up­com­ing cer­e­mony. 

“In­au­gu­ra­tions are pomp and cir­cum­stance, it’s kind of like a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony,” Belle­feuille said. “You grad­u­ate whether or not you go to the cer­e­mony, that’s not the of­fi­cial­ness, the of­fi­cial is you fin­ished. Aca­d­e­mics has al­ways been about a lit­tle bit of pomp and cir­cum­stance, maybe it mim­ics more of a U.S. pres­i­den­tial in­au­gu­ra­tion. What it does, it brings the com­mu­nity of Bethel to­gether.” 

Belle­feuille said one thing it has been im­por­tant for her to fo­cus on what the in­au­gu­ra­tion means for Bethel as a com­mu­nity as she pre­pares for the cer­e­mony. 

“Per­son­ally, I’m kind of un­com­fort­able with an in­au­gu­ra­tion, it seems self-fo­cused,” Belle­feuille said. “But it's not. It’s about Bethel. An in­au­gu­ra­tion is an op­por­tu­nity for an in­sti­tu­tion to bring com­mu­nity lead­ers, gov­ern­ment lead­ers, other del­e­gates from other in­sti­tu­tions and re­ally fo­cus on the in­sti­tu­tion and these peo­ple are en­cour­ag­ing the in­sti­tu­tion. For that rea­son, it is im­por­tant to me.” 

Belle­feuille said that her vi­sion for Bethel cen­ters around a care­fully cho­sen word. 

“We have a struc­ture of what we are go­ing to do, and that is go­ing to be struc­tured around the word faith­ful­ness,” Belle­feuille said. “Faith­ful to our pur­pose, faith­ful to our peo­ple--which in­cludes stu­dents--faith­ful to this place, this place that we call Bethel.”