Pi­lot Pro­file: Keith Koteskey 

MISHAWAKA-- As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Chris­t­ian Min­istries Keith Koteskey, M.Div., has been a fix­ture in Bethel’s Re­li­gion and Phi­los­o­phy De­part­ment for 7 and a half years. In ad­di­tion to his teach­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, he also serves as the Chair of the Re­li­gion and Phi­los­o­phy De­part­ment. His face is fa­mil­iar to many stu­dents, fac­ulty and staff who rec­og­nize him from his gen­er­ous “Donut Fri­day” tra­di­tion of bring­ing sev­eral donuts to cam­pus every Fri­day to share with in­di­vid­u­als of the Bethel com­mu­nity. 

Ac­cord­ing to Koteskey, he did a lot of trav­el­ing as part of his job dur­ing his early years at Bethel, and found him­self hunt­ing for donut places on the road a lit­tle too of­ten. 

“[Donut Fri­day] started be­cause I was eat­ing too many donuts,” Koteskey said. 

In or­der to limit his donut in­take, Koteskey de­cided to choose one day out of the week as his “donut day,” and ul­ti­mately chose Fri­day so he would have some­thing to look for­ward to at the end of every week. Even­tu­ally, he re­al­ized how much more he en­joyed donuts when shar­ing them with oth­ers, and the Donut Fri­day tra­di­tion was born. 

“[My fa­vorite donut is] ‘The Squealer,’ from a place called Cops & Dough­nuts,” Koteskey said. “It is a long john with maple ic­ing and two strips of ba­con.” 

One of Koteskey’s fa­vorite parts about Bethel is the con­nec­tions he makes in­side and out­side the class­room. 

“I love the friend­ships that I have with stu­dents,” Koteskey said. 

He added that he loves do­ing fun things with his stu­dents, and he is abun­dantly blessed by the en­cour­age­ment he has the op­por­tu­nity to give and the joy to re­ceive. 

He also en­joys wit­ness­ing the jour­neys of stu­dents, es­pe­cially those who sit un­der his teach­ing through­out their col­lege ca­reers. 

“I love see­ing the trans­for­ma­tion and de­vel­op­ment in our Chris­t­ian min­istry ma­jors,” Koteskey said, “from when they come in as fresh­men to when they grad­u­ate.” 

Koteskey in­te­grates him­self into the Bethel com­mu­nity, serv­ing wher­ever he can—in­clud­ing the realm of sports, which is cer­tainly a key as­pect of the Bethel ex­pe­ri­ence for the ma­jor­ity of stu­dents. 

“I do PA an­nounc­ing for wom­en’s vol­ley­ball, wom­en’s bas­ket­ball and some of men’s vol­ley­ball,” Koteskey said. 

Some other fun facts about Koteskey are that his fa­vorite color is blue, his fa­vorite ice cream is “any­thing with choco­late,” and he loves to storm chase when­ever he has the op­por­tu­nity.