If anyone has been keeping track, Conrad Grebel University College is going through a generational shift in faculty and staff. This spring saw the retirements of James Pankratz as academic dean and Carol Ann Weaver as associate professor of music, with Pankratz being replaced by Trevor Bechtel and Weaver by Timothy Corlis. The years of experience of staff at Grebel have been cut in half during Pankratz’s eight years as dean, from nearly 20 years per staff member to 10 now.
Familiar faces and names have been replaced with new ones:
- Jim Reimer by Jeremy Bergen (theology)
- Henry Paetkau by Susan Schultz Huxman (president)
- Arnold Snyder by Troy Osborne (history/Anabaptist studies)
- Hildi Froese Tiessen by Reina Neufeldt (peace and conflict studies)
- Len Enns by Mark Vuorinen (music)
- Tom Yoder Neufeld by Alicia Batten (New Testament)
- Sam Steiner by Laureen Harder-Gissing (archivist/librarian)
Add to that new hires in Derek Suderman (Old Testament) and Maisie Sum (global music), and the feel at Grebel is radically different.
Pankratz and Huxman note that hiring both for individual skills and for the fit in the Grebel community is an undertaking to which they devote careful attention. While each staff member is called to fit into the culture and aims of the school as it is now, Pankratz has high hopes that the creativity and integrity of the staff will lead to new opportunities to serve the church.
--Posted Sept. 24, 2014
Carol Ann Weaver, centre, flanked by her daughter Myra and husband Lyle Friesen, laughs in appreciation as she is toasted and roasted at her retirement party on June 9.
Comments
Six men and one woman repleaced by three men and four women - that's a positive sign also, indicating that not only is a generational shift occcuring but so is a balancing of geneders (not a shift, except to a balanced position). Good for Conrad Grebel. Next step might be a shift toward a faculty that tries to represent global Anabaptistism (and by that, I do not mean to assume anything by the last names listed above!)
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