Those faculty members are:

• Dr. Katherine Evans: Jesse T. Byler Endowed Chair in Education
• Dr. James Leaman: Longacre Endowed Chair in Business and Leadership
• Dr. Peter Dula: Myron S. Augsburger Endowed Chair of Theology
• Dr. James Yoder: Daniel B. Suter Endowed Chair of Science

Dr. Tynisha Willingham, provost and vice president of academic affairs for EMU, said these faculty members were chosen as endowed chairs because of their demonstrated leadership, service, teaching, and research, as well as their capacity to be champions of their programs at EMU. 

“Endowed chairs are a critical component of EMU’s academic vitality,” she said. “Our goal is to elevate the recognition of our faculty who hold this honor and to celebrate the donors whose generosity helps to support academic excellence in this way.”

The endowed chair positions provide funding for each faculty position within a particular discipline, along with scholarships for students in the discipline and funds for program initiatives. Chairs receive professional development funds to support their research and scholarship. An endowed chair appointment is one of the highest honors a faculty member can receive at EMU, supporting their continued excellence in scholarship and teaching, said the Rev. Dr. Sarah Ann Bixler, dean of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

Keep reading for bios of each professor.

Dr. Katherine Evans

Professor of Teacher Education and director of the Undergraduate Teacher Education program
Jesse T. Byler Endowed Chair in Education

Kathy Evans is a professor of Teacher Education at EMU, teaching courses in educational psychology, special education, and restorative justice in education. She earned her PhD from the University of Tennessee in educational psychology and research. Her research, teaching, and scholarship focus on ways in which educators participate in creating more just and equitable educational opportunities for all students, including those with disability labels, those who exhibit challenging behavior, and those who are marginalized for a variety of reasons, including race, ethnicity, language, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. 

During her 15 years at EMU, Evans has helped develop EMU’s graduate program in Restorative Justice in Education (RJE), which supports educators as they create learning environments that promote relational approaches to teaching and learning, justice and equity in schools and classrooms, and transformational approaches to conflict and harm. She is the co-author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education and has published several articles and book chapters related to restorative justice in education, school culture and climate, and school discipline practices, focusing on the ways in which restorative justice is applied to educational contexts. 

How do you feel to be granted this position?

It’s an honor to be appointed as the Jesse T. Byler Endowed Chair in Education. The Byler endowment has historically been such a gift to the Teacher Education Program at EMU, providing support for pre-service teachers in the way of fee waivers for testing and licensure, conference registration for networking with other pre-service teachers, scholarships, and resources that support their success through their EMU program. We are in a season of growth and expansion and I am grateful for the opportunities I will have in this position to support that growth, both in the recruitment of talented and dedicated teachers and in the ongoing professional development for our faculty. At this moment in time, we need teachers who are committed to justice and peacebuilding. Embedding restorative justice within our teacher education program at both the undergraduate and graduate levels opens up spaces to support educators who want to not only excel as educators, but to be educators who nurture the well-being of each student. The Byler endowment helps us to do that work better.

What do you love about EMU?

This is my 15th year at EMU and I am more hopeful about EMU’s future today than I have been since I arrived. The commitment to peacebuilding and justice—even when we don’t fully live into that commitment—means that there is a unifying set of values that guide our collective work. I see our students, staff, and faculty working to honor those values and that mission. Our students are amazing and they remind me every day that the work of justice is ongoing, intergenerational, and worth it.

What is a fun fact about you?

When I’m not working, I might be fishing—bass fishing at Silver Lake or fly-fishing at Dry River. I find the water so peaceful.

Dr. James M. Leaman

Associate Professor of Business and director of the Business and Leadership program
Longacre Endowed Chair in Business and Leadership

Jim Leaman chairs the Business and Leadership Program, where he teaches undergraduate courses in management, finance, and economics, and graduate courses in organizational and leadership studies. His industry experience spans both private business and nonprofit administration, including 12 years of service with an international non-governmental organization (INGO) in Kenya. The EMU alumnus has a PhD in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.

The perspective Leaman adds to his field is analyzing and teaching about the role and impact of business and organizations within ecological limits and dynamic social systems, resulting in an integrated lens of sustainability, stewardship and justice. Leaman researches and publishes in the areas of sustainable housing and energy, and his most recent scholarly work is a management textbook, with which he collaborated with an international team of authors to publish in the creative commons, resulting in lower resource costs for students. 

How do you feel to be granted this position?

It is an honor to hold the endowed chair position in business and to steward the gifts and vision of the Longacre family as the program serves and prepares the next generation of business leaders.

What do you love about EMU?

The EMU mission to prepare students to serve and lead in a global context becomes more relevant with each new innovation and global integration.

What is a fun fact about you?

In awe of the vastness and complexity of the universe, I’ve gained an avocational interest in learning as much as I can about the cosmos.

Dr. Peter Dula

Professor of Religion and Culture
Myron S. Augsburger Endowed Chair of Theology

Peter Dula is the professor of Religion and Culture at EMU. The EMU alumnus received a PhD from Duke University in theology and ethics in 2004. He is the author of Cavell, Companionship, and Christian Theology (Oxford, 2011). Before coming to EMU in 2006, he was the Mennonite Central Committee Iraq Program Coordinator. He has taught at Lancaster Mennonite High School and at the Meserete Kristos College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was a Fulbright scholar in 2001-02.

This is his 20th year at EMU. He teaches primarily in the undergraduate program, as well as one class each year at the seminary and the Bioethics course in the MA in Biomedicine program. He is married to Ilse Ackerman and they have two children, Simon (17) and Nina (15). 

What do you love about EMU?

Two things I love about EMU are its smart and interesting faculty colleagues and its location in the Shenandoah Valley.

What is a fun fact about you? 

I planted 500 trees over the last couple of years. The latest Weather Vane issue has . Along with Trina Trotter Nussbaum at the Center for Interfaith Engagement, I organized last month’s consultation on Judaism, the Bible, and Anabaptism. The Weather Vane also has . 

Dr. James Yoder

Professor of Biology and director of the Natural Sciences programs
Daniel B. Suter Endowed Chair of Science

Jim Yoder is the chair of EMU’s Department of Natural Sciences, advising environmental science and biology majors and teaching evolution, ecology, and conservation biology. A 1994 alumnus of EMU, he earned his PhD from The Ohio State University, where he studied the effects of habitat fragmentation on ruffed grouse movements at large spatial scales. His research interests include conservation, landscape and behavioral ecology, animal movement, invasive species, stream restoration, nitrogen and carbon footprint tracking, and insect movement using harmonic radar. He has also led multiple intercultural programs to New Zealand, the Navajo Nation, and Washington D.C. (upcoming), as well as three research trips with undergraduates to Australia. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, traveling, and hiking with his wife Kathy. 

How do you feel to be granted this position?

I’m honored to be named the Suter Endowed Chair of Science and work to continue the level of scholarship and teaching Daniel Suter established in the natural sciences at EMU. Coordinating the long-running Suter Science Seminar Series with a diverse array of speakers and increasing collaborative research among our science faculty and undergraduate students are two aspects of being Suter Chair that I’m most excited to focus on. 

What do you love about EMU?

Wonderful colleagues, a diverse student body, and the beautiful Shenandoah Valley—it’s a great place to be a field biologist!

What is a fun fact about you?

My wife and I recently moved into a loft apartment in the heart of downtown Harrisonburg above . It keeps us young at heart!  And we are soon to be grandparents for the first time!

Showalter was a medical director of an inpatient facility in the 1980s that detoxed and educated more than 1,000 people addicted to alcohol and drugs. People who went through that program and aftercare for one year had a 90% chance of long-term recovery, he said.

Showalter discussed addictions to alcohol, nicotine, work, and pornography, among others. He also referenced Gerald May, author of , and an anonymous article in Leadership Journal, called “An Anatomy of Lust,” in which the author discusses his addiction in a blunt and personal way.

Showalter dedicated much of his lecture to alcoholism. “If alcoholism is not a disease, than neither is sugar/diabetes, because they are almost exactly the same disease. They work the same way,” said Showalter.

An alcoholic or diabetic liver will treat the substance, either sugar or alcohol, differently than a healthy liver, he said. A normal liver will turn alcohol into a substance similar to vinegar. Explaining the disease in simple terms really benefits the patient, Showalter emphasized. For example, an alcoholic might be told that his or her brain makes increased amounts of dopamine, a chemical similar to morphine. “I think helping them to understand the physiological process… has really been one of the best motivating things that I’ve found.”

Many challenges interrupt the ability of doctors to treat addictions. Most insurance companies won’t pay for 28-day inpatient programs. Sometimes, the withdraw symptoms can make cold-turkey quitting dangerous without medical supervision – and gradual withdrawal may initially require a case of beer daily for a patient. This is not an easy population to treat: people with addictions tend to be less than honest to themselves and others. Despite these hardships, Showalter enjoyed a considerable degree of success in his practice at the Arlington (Va.) Treatment Center in the 1980s.

The repercussions of addiction affect people more than mentally and physically. Addiction has spiritual implications as well. Showalter cited May in saying, “To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to be in need of God’s grace.”

Showalter recited 62 addictions from May’s list of about 100 behavioral addictions. Many of these addictions were commonly understood addictions, like tobacco and nail biting, while others were emotions or not usually thought of as addictions, like feeling anger and owning furniture. According to May and Showalter, all humans need grace to cope with addiction.

Showalter, who is now a family physician at the Green Valley Clinic in Bergton, Virginia, has deep roots in EMU. Janice, his wife, is the daughter of his pre-med mentor, , the man for whom both the lecture series and EMU’s are named.

The Suter Science Seminar series consists of 17 expert presentations – averaging two per month – during the fall and spring semesters. Visit emu.edu/science-seminars for information about future talks.

And when, a decade later, that cornfield on the east side of campus sprouted a science building, capped with a prominent white dome to accommodate a then-state-of-the-art planetarium, those chemicals were carted down to the new laboratory supply closets, in the characteristic spirit of Mennonite thrift.

And when, many years later, Spicher returned to EMU to work as the chemical hygiene officer, he began a process of general inventory and cleanup of the no-longer-new laboratory supply closets, cluttered over the years by Mennonite thrift and other forces of entropy. And it was then with a sense of nostalgia that Spicher discovered some of those very bottles procured 50 years earlier when Spicher was an undergrad, and the Suter Science Center (where the bottles had sat just-in-case, like twist-ties in the kitchen drawer) was still a cornfield.

But it was alarm, not nostalgia, that arose when Spicher came across an old bottle of picric acid – a chemical useful for staining tissue when diluted with sufficient water concentration. When insufficiently diluted, however, picric acid forms explosive crystals. (A close chemical relative to TNT, picric acid played a major role in artillery science through World War I.) Spicher backed away, well aware that uncorking a crystallized bottle of old picric acid could cost him his fingers, or more. Mennonite thrift in the Suter Science Center had taken a potentially treacherous turn.

A Northern Virginia bomb squad was called in. The fire department sent personnel for some explosives training. A hole was dug behind the science center, a fuse was lit, and the picric acid bomb, unwittingly improvised in the chemical closet, was disarmed. In the end, says Spicher, the bang was small, but it pays to be careful with the stuff.

UNDERCOVER POET
Daniel B. Suter ’40, for whom the science center was named, joined the science faculty at what was then Eastern Mennonite College (EMC) in 1948. By the time the new building opened 20 years later, his students in the program enjoyed medical school acceptance rates far above the national average. So valuable was Suter’s recommendation that, according to faculty legend, a medical school candidate who had never even attended EMU tried to finagle a letter from Suter.

Suter’s office was in the science center basement, adjacent to the secretary’s office and the lunchroom, where the faculty regularly ate together while skimming the newspapers, telling jokes, chattering and generally enjoying one another’s company. For years, on their birthdays, personalized poems would appear on the lunch table, written by a mysterious poet who published under Salvelinus fontinalis (“Brook trout” in the jargon of scientists).

From a poem on the 64th birthday of Wilmer Lehman ’57, who joined the mathematics faculty in 1959:

Forty years teaching
Is that what he said
How many functions
Are left in his head?

A teacher of Math
And The Liberal Arts
With much dedication
Gave his students some smarts.

Eventually, it came out that Salvelinus fontinalis was the pen name of Bob Yoder ’57, an enthusiastic fisher of S. fontinalis. Yoder, who taught in the biology department for more than 30 years, was the resident jokester of the science center lunch bunch; upon his death in 2005, a volume of his collected poems was distributed to his colleagues.

WOMEN NEED RESTROOMS TOO!
The Suter Science Center reflected its day and age when it opened in 1968. Science was mostly a man’s world then. There were no women on the permanent science faculty, and the college didn’t bother to put in a women’s restroom on the downstairs level; the secretary (always a woman, in those days) and female students had to go upstairs. Before long, agitation against the basic unfairness of this situation began and EMU kept pace with the changing world around it by establishing restroom equality throughout the building.

Because energy was cheap back when the building was built, insulation wasn’t much of a priority. When Lehman began to notice light streaming in large gaps that had opened up between the window frames and the block walls in his math classroom, physical plant staff came over to work at some retroactive solution. Still, the classrooms were a nice improvement over the “E Building,” a former egg processing plant on the south side of Mount Clinton Pike that housed the math department before the science center was built.

Over his four decades of teaching, Lehman taught just about every class that was offered by EMU. One of the memories that stands out was the time a student answered a test question with an unexplained Bible reference. Lehman was tickled when he looked up Psalm 139:6 – Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Another long-time mathematics professor, Millard Showalter ’62 loved to encourage creative approaches to problem solving, and thus, routinely offered his Math in the Liberal Arts students an alternative and deceptively simple-sounding way to earn an A in the class: fold an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper in half eight times. The challenge was a fun illustration of exponents; making that eighth crease was like trying to fold 256 sheets of paper at once.

RESOURCEFUL GALEN LEHMAN
For years, Showalter’s students tried and failed, until Galen Lehman ’73 marched triumphantly into class one morning, with a look in his eyes that told Showalter his game was up. It had been easy, really. Lehman was supporting his college habit with a job at the Kreider Machine Shop over the hill from campus, where he had access to a 200-ton hydraulic machine press entirely capable of folding 256 sheets of paper.

Lehman also earned an A honestly in the class and went on to become Dr. Galen Lehman, chair of the EMU department and the longest-serving member of today’s faculty. When Lehman joined the faculty, the department was inconveniently housed on the fringes of campus in the same E building that the mathematics folks had previously escaped. Looking for a more respectable location, Lehman settled on an unfinished, dirt-floored crawl space beneath the science center’s planetarium that had been presciently excavated to someday accommodate this very sort of future growth.

Around 1980, Lehman spearheaded the renovation of the space into what still serves as the psychology department. He personally poured the concrete floor, built a large table still in use in the seminar room, and, while breaking through a block wall to run some plumbing, discovered an empty whisky bottle in the wall cavity, likely hidden by a worker during the building’s original construction.

EARRING STUNTS & MORE WITH DEAD ANIMALS

But let’s return to Showalter’s paper-folding assignment. Outmaneuvered by Lehman and his machine press, Showalter learned a lesson that science center faculty have been learning over and over since the building opened: never underestimate the dedication and creativity undergraduates will apply to various capers, tricks and other antics. The famous “Head Room” – SC 104, its walls lined with the mounted heads of various mammals – has been the scene of repeated pranks, often involving the dandying-up of these animal heads with different eyewear, headwear, jewelry and other fashion accessories.

Some of the faculty found this amusing. D. Ralph Hostetter, a professor of biology from the very earliest days of the Eastern Mennonite School until his retirement in 1966, did not. After retiring from teaching, Hostetter curated the natural history museum, now housing more than 6,000 artifacts and specimens (and now bearing his name). With hardly any acquisitions budget to speak of, he paid for most of the stuffed heads out of his own pocket. A highly meticulous man, he simply didn’t find it funny to discover the dik-dik (a tiny African antelope) wearing glasses and earrings.

For years, the sheer size and weight of the 300-lb. American bison specimen on display at the Hostetter Museum of Natural History seemed sufficient to keep it in place in the science center, though this too was an underestimation of the undergraduate determination to prank. In 2007, a posse from Oakwood made off with the stuffed bison and attempted to hoist it up to the three-story residence hall’s roof. When things went awry mid-hoist, however, both the bison and a 19-year-old freshman fell from the roof. The student was airlifted to the University of Virginia medical center with a concussion and fractured hip.

The freshman healed and the bison was none the worse for the experience. Now he stands in his old position at the entrance to the science center on a thick concrete platform, anchored with tamper-resistant bolts.

MASKED PRANKSTERS
On another occasion, while lecturing in the Head Room, physics and mathematics professor John Horst ’60 raised one of the sliding blackboards to discover the one behind it had been covered by a high-resolution enlargement of a Playboy centerfold. After the class regained its composure, Horst made a mental note to check for sliding blackboard surprises thenceforth.

That was not the most memorable sliding blackboard surprise of his career, however. For years, Horst and several colleagues team-taught a general humanities class covering art, music and literature in history. The large classes were held in SC 106, the biggest classroom on campus; it also saw frequent use as a recital hall, theater and general performance space before other buildings specifically designed for those purposes were built.

Hidden all the way behind several layers of sliding blackboards in SC 106 was a chemical hood, a relatively large space where professors could safely demonstrate various experiments and reactions. For some time, Todd Weaver ’87 had been aware that the chemical hood could also be accessed from behind, through a storage room, and early in the second semester of his senior-year humanities class, he and a classmate “hatched a brilliant plan,” as he remembers it.

Wearing nothing but boxer shorts and monster masks, and armed with loaded super-soakers, Weaver and his accomplice climbed into the chemical hood from the storage room and waited for class to begin, hidden behind the blackboard. Horst was lecturing in front of the class when the two sprang into action. One by one, the sections of blackboard begin sliding up, eventually revealing the water gun bandits crammed in the chemical hood.

“We caused total chaos,” says Weaver, now a dentist active in EMU’s alumni association. They sprayed at least two of the professors in the room, and unloaded their super-soakers on their classmates as they fled up the auditorium’s two aisles. “The goal was to empty the water by the time we reached the back of SC 106 and sprint out the doors and run for the dorm,” says Weaver, who lived in Oakwood and therefore stands proudly in a long and distinguished tradition of campus mischief.

In what turned out to be a serious lapse of judgment, however, Weaver had let a few other friends in on the plan. And when Weaver and his accomplice reached the back of the room, their prank complete except for the get-away, they found the doors barred with two-by-fours.

“I will never forget Doug Geib ’87 with a big smile on his face unwilling to unbar the door. I was screaming [at him] to give in and let us out, but he only laughed,” Weaver remembers.

Language and literature professor Carroll D. Yoder ’62, one of Horst’s co-teachers in the room that morning, marched slowly up the steps and unmasked the pranksters, who could do nothing but stand with heads hanging, trapped with empty squirt guns at the back the room in their underwear. Ashamed, they walked back to Oakwood, changed clothes, and returned to catch the end of the humanities class. (Horst got one last hurrah. When Weaver approached Horst and asked humbly for one extra point to make a much-coveted “A” for the term, which was needed to maximize his chance of dental school admission, Horst made him squirm in his office for some long moments and then declared he would receive one more point in recognition of his “energetic class participation.”)

EXPERIMENTING, LIVING, BANKING IN THE CENTER
One damp Saturday morning an undergraduate chemistry major named Terry Jantzi ’87 was running an experiment that sent a bunch of sulfur dioxide through the lab hood. Normally it would have drifted off into the blue Virginia sky. But the cool, humid weather caused the sulfur dioxide to condense into a heavy fog that spread across the intramural soccer field – think “acid rain” recalls professor emeritus Glenn M. Kauffman, class of ’60, Janzti’s chemistry prof at the time. Folks at an auction near the dormitories thought the science center was on fire.

That same Terry Jantzi is now Dr. Jantzi, professor of practice associated with EMU’s peacebuilding and development program.

There was the time in 1976 that Millard Showalter’s Modern Geometry students got so jazzed about the non-Euclidian material he was teaching that they showed up to the final day of class wearing T-shirts that read “Millard’s Magnificent Mathematicians.” They arranged for a photo, and after class, went up to chapel and set together at the front, as proud as a bunch of athletes after winning a tournament.

Kauffman recalls his department colleague Gary L. Stucky putting money into a satellite dish on the science center roof in the early 1990s. This enabled him to watch concurrently three different TV channels late into the night in a prep room near SC-106, where he liked to pass his time outside of regular work hours. In the early 1990s, too, a dietetics program headed by Janet Harder ’73 moved into the science center and she also spent long hours at the workplace. By the late 1990s, Stucky and Harder were married, re-settling in his home state of Kansas.

The Park View Federal Credit Union began in 1969, in the Suter Science Center offices of professors Robert Lehman ’50 (physical sciences) and Joe Mast ‘64 (math and computer science), offering financial services to members in the days before easy access to credit. Many of their science center colleagues were the very earliest members. John Horst still has a single-digit account number at the credit union, and says that the credit union’s assets were said to be approaching $1 million by 1980, when it moved off of campus. (Kauffman remains the proud holder of an account number in the low double digits.)

Kenton Brubaker’s two-digit account number – between Kauffman’s and Horst’s – at the credit union gives him away as another early denizen of the science center. A 1954 grad of EMU, Brubaker returned as a horticulture and botany professor well before the science center was built. Up in the old science department, in the Ad Building basement, Brubaker secured grant funding to buy a gas flow analyzer capable of detecting Carbon-14 beta particles. With Brubaker’s help, another colleague, Merle Jacobs, used the tool to examine the low reproductive fitness of homozygous ebony Drosophila fruit flies. The resulting paper – “Beta-Alanine Utilization of Ebony and Non-ebony Drosophila melanogaster” [Science 139 (1963): 1282-1283] – was likely the first science research published in a major journal by EMU faculty.

Jacobs soon left for a job at Goshen College, and Brubaker was in the first wave of professors to work and teach in the new science center. The greenhouse had an automatic ventilation system – a big deal at the time. The planetarium was another big-ticket item. The whole building was exciting and new and fantastic. No sooner had the science department moved in then did Kauffman begin writing grants for other exciting gadgetry. A gas chromatograph and a UV-visible spectrophotometer were among the early acquisitions, allowing for undergraduate chemistry research that has continued ever since. (Students now enjoy research opportunities in a variety of science fields, usually collaborating with faculty.)

AHHH, THE MEMORIES, THE LEGACIES!

By the time Todd Weaver, of SC 106 chemical hood ambush fame, arrived on campus to pursue pre-medical studies, Daniel Suter was approaching the very end of his years on the EMU faculty. On his first visit to Suter’s office for an advising appointment, Weaver learned that Suter had also been Weaver’s father’s pre-med adviser years earlier, and they had corresponded for years while Weaver’s father was in medical school.

Between his graduation and the start of dental school, Weaver got married to Anne Kaufman ’88. Suter – then recently retired – and his wife, Grace were in attendance, and presented the Weavers with an end table.

Suter passed in away in 2006. The next year, Weaver was elected president of the Mennonite Medical Association; joining him in the leadership of the organization was Janice Showalter, the daughter of Daniel and Grace Suter.

“Life feels like it circles sometimes, especially in a community like EMU,” says Weaver.

The end table that the Suters gave him has moved with the Weavers from house to house since dental school. It remains a treasured possession that has been relocated every time in the family car rather than the moving truck, and it largely owes its prominence to the many people and memories that have and continue to inhabit the Suter Science Center.

— Andrew Jenner ’04

Referring to the $7 million fundraising target to implement the renovations, “we can get our arms around these plans,” said Gerry Horst of New Holland, Pa., a construction-company owner who chairs the steering committee and who is an EMU trustee. “The plan is doable, environmentally and fiscally responsible,” he added. “It will give our top-notch faculty and students the facilities they need to continue to be successful.”

The plans were announced at a half-day event for some 50 guests, who viewed schematics prepared by , in consultation with , which specializes in laboratory construction.

, vice president for advancement, said $5,136,741 has already been raised in cash and commitments toward the $7 million goal. He said the remaining amount necessary to undertake the renovations is expected to be raised in the next 12 to 19 months.

“We are eager to complete fundraising so improvements can be made as soon as possible,” said President Loren Swartzendruber. Referring to the successful conclusion of the “quiet phase” of fundraising for the renovation, “we’re experiencing strong momentum for the project – the time is right.”

The renovations will poise EMU for the future and allow EMU science programs to keep pace with technology, research, and trends in fields such as health care for an aging population and environmental science, as well as enable new programs in and to grow.

“Here at EMU is where the research opportunities are at,” said junior Autumn Berry in a brief presentation to the donors and community members who gathered to see the renovation plans. Berry is a pre-professional health student who transferred to EMU from a large public university. She is researching neurotransmitters alongside , PhD, associate professor of .

Hundreds of science alumni “who serve and lead with distinction are proof that the quality of EMU’s program is unsurpassed,” said Shisler. “Now is the time to upgrade facilities to match the quality of our program.” Since opening in 1968, the Suter Science Center has been the springboard for 3,528 alumni who majored in a scientific discipline, including 890 employed in the Shenandoah Valley, largely as nurses, educators and physicians.

“In renovating and upgrading our labs and learning spaces, we will be enabling our future graduates to continue to be in strong demand in graduate schools and in the job market,” said Shisler. “At the same time, we will be ensuring their safety as a result of installing the best-possible air-exchange systems for working with chemicals and the best-possible conditions for their studies using cadavers and animals.”

EMU’s anatomy and physiology students are among a select group of undergraduates nationwide who have the opportunity to work with human cadavers, rather than with simulations or models of cadavers.

“Our cadaver program is just one example of the unique hands-on opportunities that EMU provides,” explained biology professor , PhD. All EMU biology and students are required to do original research, he told those gathered to see the fresh building plans. Each year up to 22 students are involved in research, he added, and eight to 10 publish their findings in journals, making them stand-outs when seeking further education.

More information about the , or by contacting Kirk Shisler, vice president for advancement, at kirk.shisler@emu.edu or 540-432-4499.

Dr. Louise Temple, associate professor of biology at James Madison University

Dr. Louise Temple, associate professor of biology at James Madison University, will speak on the topic 3:45 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14, in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU.

The bacterium Bordetella avium is found widely in wild bird populations, but interest is generated largely from the disease it causes in commercially grown turkeys. For nearly 15 years, the Temple lab, with collaborators at Drew University, NC State Veterinary School and Cambridge University, have studied how this bacterium causes the disease, which occurs in the respiratory tract and resembles whooping cough in humans.

“We have learned a lot about how the bacterium attaches to ciliated cells of the trachea, and we are starting to explore its toxic effects. Most of the work has been accomplished by undergraduate researchers,” Temple noted.

The program is being held in Martin Chapel instead of the Suter Science Center in order that Dr. Temple, an accomplished musician, can play a brief recital on the seminary organ prior to her 4 p.m. talk.

The public is invited; admission is free.

For more information, contact Dr. Roman J. Miller, Daniel B. Suter endowed professor of biology, at 540-432-4412.

Daniel B. Suter, professor emeritus of and developer of the at ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř, died Dec. 24, 2006, at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community where he was a resident. He was 86.

Dr. Suter joined the science department at EMU in 1948 and eventually became head of the biology department and pre-med advisor. He retired in 1985.

, completed in 1967, was named after Suter “in recognition of his leadership in the development of the school’s science/pre-medical program and his influence among students during his teaching years.”

Doctor of the Year

During his tenure, EMU students had an acceptance rate of more than 85 percent into medical, dental and veterinary schools, well above the national average of 40-50 percent. He was named “Doctor of the Year” in 1985 by the Mennonite Medical Association and the Mennonite Nurses’ Association.

The board of trustees of EMU established the Dr. Daniel B. Suter Endowed Biology Chair on Sept. 19, 1986 in honor of his distinguished teaching career and “contributions to academic excellence and the highest standards of personal and spiritual maturity in the .”

Dr. Roman J. Miller, who joined the EMU faculty in 1985, was named first appointee to the Suter Chair.

“When I arrived at EMU as an associate professor of biology, Dr. Suter was gracious and helpful as I began teaching some courses that he had taught and assumed premedical advising responsibilities in a program that he had largely developed,” Dr. Miller said. “Through his excellence in teaching and carefulness in advising students, Dr. Suter created a legacy of influential premedical training.”

Dr. Daniel B. Suter and wife Grace at Daniel’s 80th birthday party, April 2000, in the Suter Science Center.

Servant of the Church

Suter was ordained a minister in Virginia Mennonite Conference in 1951 and served as pastor of Gospel Hill Mennonite Church and later Weavers Mennonite Church in Rockingham County. He also served the broader church as a visiting minister and teacher. He spoke in many settings on the harmful effects of alcohol use and abuse on the body and on “the biology of aging.”

He served as secretary of Virginia Mennonite Board of Missions and as a board member of both Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc. (now Mennonite Media) and VMRC.

Suter was a skilled woodworker and strong advocate of church music, promoting singing from the “Harmonia Sacra,” a songbook edited and first published by Joseph Funk of Singers Glen, Va., in 1832.

Suter was a graduate of Eastern Mennonite High School, Eastern Mennonite College, Bridgewater College, Vanderbilt University and the Medical College of Virginia, where he received a Ph.D. in neuroanatomy in 1963.

Divine Placement

EMU President Loren Swartzendruber noted that Suter was offered a faculty position at UVa. at three times the salary that EMU had paid him. Suter felt compelled to return to EMU because “I believed that’s where the Lord wanted me to be.”

Asked if he had any regrets, his response was “No, not really, although it was difficult at times. I’m grateful when I think about the more than 300 physicians, dentists, and other health care workers who are serving all over the world that I helped to train.”

He married the former Grace Fisher on June 23, 1941, who preceded him in death on Dec. 8, 2003. He is survived by two daughters, two sons, one sister, six grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.

A memorial service was held Dec. 29, 2006 at Strite Auditorium of VMRC, with internment at Weavers Mennonite Church cemetery.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Daniel B. Suter Endowed Chair at EMU, 1200 Park Rd., Harrisonburg, VA 22802 or online at or by phoning (800) 368-3383.

Cascadia Publishing House, Telford, Pa., has released a new book growing out of a major held Nov. 13-15, 2003, at ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř.

The 310-page paperback, “Viewing New Creations With Anabaptist Eyes,” investigates the promise and perils of current genetic biotechnology. The authors describe the factual bases of biotechnology in a popular format, bring up the ethical problems that emerge and provide ethical reasoning to meet those challenges.

The book was edited by , Daniel B. Suter professor of at EMU; , EMU ; and James C. Peterson, the R. A. Hope professor of theology and ethics at McMaster University Divinity College and a member of the University’s Research Ethics Board.

Authors include (in order of appearance): John D. Gearhart, James C. Peterson, Leslie G. Biesecker, Carole L. Cramer, Roman J. Miller, Conrad G. Brunk, LeRoy Walters, Beryl H. Brubaker, Ruth Swartz Cowan, Kabiru Kinyanjui, Carl D. Bowman, , Laura E. Powers, , Mike E. Baker, Lawrence E. Ressler, Randall L. Longenecker, Emerson D. Nafziger, Timothy S. Jost, Graydon F. Snyder, Joseph J. Kotva Jr. and Stanley M. Hauerwas.

“This work on bioethics comes with a passion for integrity,” notes Myron S. Augsburger, EMU president emeritus. “It does not claim to have all of the answers but does call us to a faith that seeks to think with God through ‘the truth as it is in Jesus.'”

The book is co-published with Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa., in association with EMU.

More information on the book is available at .

Robert D. Yoder, 76, professor emeritus of biology at ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř, died Aug. 27, 2005 at his home. He had been ill for the past year.

Yoder taught human biology, microbiology and immunology courses at EMU from 1963 to 1995 and was advisor to EMU’s medical technology students. He started long tenure as a lab assistant to Dr. Daniel B. Suter in 1962. In retirement, he did volunteer work as a laboratory technician in the Suter Science Center until his health declined.

A 1957 EMU graduate, Yoder went on to earn a master’s degree from James Madison University.

During a 1977 sabbatical, Yoder completed the medical technology program at Rockingham Memorial Hospital and went on to work in the laboratory there part time during the week and full time during summers doing blood chemistry analysis until his retirement. He also volunteered many hours at the Harrisonburg Free Clinic.

Yoder was known by many for the poems and tributes he wrote for and about his family, co-workers and friends. He was an avid angler, birdwatcher and environmentalist. He was licensed to do water analysis and was a former president of the Massanutten chapter of Trout Unlimited, a national organization concerned with the preservation of cold freshwater habitats and fisheries.

He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Lois Peachey Yoder, four children, a brother and five grandchildren.

Funeral services were held Aug. 30 at Park View Mennonite Church where he was a member.