Bethel is celebrating 50 years of social work with a theme of “Dignity, Hope and Justice.”
The main event will take place during Fall Festival, Saturday, Oct. 5, starting at 2 p.m. in Kidron Hall at Kidron Bethel Village in North Newton.
As social work faculty and other planners were considering who they might get as a speaker, one name quickly rose to the top, said Jennifer Chappell Deckert, associate professor and chair of the department.
“We wanted someone who would challenge us,” she said, and Sarah Augustine, an author and activist of Tewa (Pueblo) heritage now living in Washington’s Yakima Valley, seemed to be that person.
“She was recommended by several alumni,” Chappell Deckert noted, and quickly affirmed by the program’s advisory council.
In addition, the department was “thrilled to collaborate” with the Department of Bible and Religion, she said. One of the texts for the senior capstone course Basic Issues of Faith and Life (BIFL) is the book Augustine co-authored with Sheri Hostetler, So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis (Herald Press, 2023).
Another confluence of events: this year’s theme for the annual conference of the social work program’s accrediting body, the Council on Social Work Education, is indigenous justice.
Augustine’s visit to campus is being supported by the Ada Schmidt-Tieszen Lectureship in the social work department and the Bethel College Women’s Association’s Carolyn Schultz Lectureship.
Augustine’s Oct. 5 presentation is open to the public, as are two other speaking events, on Oct. 6 and Oct. 7 on campus.
Saturday’s lecture, “So we and our children may live,” will deal with “colonization and child removal – rethinking child welfare, mutual dependence and solidarity, vs. ‘helping’,” Chappell Deckert said.
Augustine will preach in the Fall Fest worship service, Oct. 6 at 10 a.m. at Bethel College Mennonite Church, on “Bread of life,” using texts from the biblical books of Ephesians 4 and John 6.
On Oct. 7, she will be the convocation speaker at 11 a.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium in Luyken Fine Arts Center, with a BIFL lecture entitled “Climate justice and following Jesus’ radical call.”
Augustine is the founder and co-chair of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She also wrote The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery (Herald Press, 2021).
The year 1974 was a pivotal one for social work in the state of Kansas, Chappell Deckert pointed out.
It was the first year for the state to institute social work licenses through the Behavioral Science Regulatory Board, the first year of the state chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and the year Bethel’s program became accredited and graduated its first social workers, six in all.
One of those was Ada Schmidt-Tieszen, who went on to earn a doctoral degree in social work from the University of Kansas, and who returned in 1985 to teach in Bethel’s social work program, staying for 35 years until her retirement in 2020.
The program has graduated more than 500 social workers since 1974, and many will be on campus for the 50th-anniversary celebration.
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel was the only Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see www.bethelks.edu
