President's Message

A Message to President’s Circle and Patron Donors

Posted by CMU Staff  |  Tuesday, November 4, 2014 @ 12:00 AM

Dear Friends of CMU,

In this mid-autumn season I'm pleased to share the first of what will be three updates to CMU's President's Circle and Patron's Circle members this year.

I'll start by sharing some visual images and a link to a short video of our Fall Festival, from September 26-27—a great community building weekend.

My reflections take the form of written glimpses into CMU through the eyes of four groups of people, followed by some comments on a question I hear often.

 
Students

I'm struck by how often I hear longings for closer contact with young adults. Some people say, "You have such a great opportunity to understand how today's young adults think and what they care about most.”

Here's an encouraging story on the nurturing of young adults: One Friday in late summer began as a quiet day on my calendar. That was not to be. At day end I went to pick up my 13-yr-old son from camp, too tired to pay attention to the final program. Suddenly I found my body perking up. The group of young teens was at once calm and in high spirits, declaring this as the "best week ever”—even though flooding had ruined the ropes course limited the horse trails. A CMU student was camp director, another had written and led the bible curriculum. To my question of how they had kept the campers so engaged the director responded, "You just need to be creative and keep the energy flowing.” I walked away in awe of their good work and their friendship with the campers, humbled and blessed by those we're privileged to teach, and with a sense of hope for the future of "service, leadership and reconciliation in church and society” through CMU grads.

Here's another glimpse of what our students are telling us, this time through the results of a recent national university survey. The Canadian University Survey Consortium (CUSC) administers a Canada-only university survey "open to any degree-granting university of the AUCC” (Association of Universities and Colleges), of which CMU is a member. In the spring of 2014, the CUSC survey targeted 2nd and 3rd year ('middle years') students. 28 Canadian universities participated in this survey. Of this number 23 were public universities (both large and smaller) including 5 universities offering undergraduate and graduate degrees (with most having professional schools). In addition, 5 'faith based' universities, including CMU, participated in the survey. A total of 22,537 'middle years' students responded to the survey. Response rates by university ranged between 16% and 59%, with 59% of CMU 'middle years' students choosing to respond. Comparisons below reflect the surveyed differences between CMU students with those from all other participating Canadian universities.

  • CMU students learn within an ecumenically diverse university context
    • 53% of CMU students reflect a rich ecumenical diversity or no church background while 47% come from a Mennonite background.
  • CMU students say that their community and academic experience opens them to others
    • 70% (vs. 55%) say that their CMU experience strengthened their ability to interact with people from backgrounds different than their own
  • CMU students are impacted by living in community on campus
    • 40% of CMU students live on campus and 95% of them say they are highly satisfied with this arrangement
  • CMU students are engaged in the life of the university community
    • 55% (vs. 13%) attend campus social events and athletic games; 26% (vs. 9%) attend public lectures and guest speakers on campus; 19% (vs. 9%) participate in Student Government; and 31% (vs. 7%) attend campus cultural events
  • CMU students say that their learning shapes core life and faith commitments
    • 74% (vs. 43%) say that CMU contributes to their moral and ethical judgment and 75% (vs. 17%) say that CMU contributes to their spirituality
  • CMU students are impacted by their relationships with faculty. They say, my professors...
    • Are accessible outside of class: All 92%; CMU 100%
    • Encourage students to participate in class discussion: All 89%; CMU 100%
    • Are well-organized in their teaching: All 88%; CMU 97%
    • Are fair in their grading: All 87%; CMU 98%
    • Communicate well in their teaching: All 86%; CMU 98%
    • Look out for students' interests: All 84%; CMU 98%
    • Treat students as individuals: All 83%; CMU 100%
    • Are intellectually stimulating in their teaching: All 79%; CMU 98%
    • Provide useful and prompt feedback: All 72%; CMU 95%
    • Take a personal interest in my academic progress: All 68%; CMU 94%
  • CMU students experience strong academic advising
    • Use of academic advising: All 47%; CMU 73%
    • Satisfaction with academic advising: All 83%; CMU 98%
  • CMU students perceive university staff positively
    • University staff is generally helpful: All 86%; CMU 97%
    • Teaching Assistants are generally helpful: All 79%; CMU 90%
  • CMU students perceive their university education positively
    • Most of my courses are interesting (% agree or strongly agree): All 85%; CMU 98%
  • Overall, CMU students are very satisfied with their university experience.
    • My university degree is worth the cost
      • Strongly Agree and Agree: All 65%; CMU 81%
    • My university experience is meeting my expectations
      • Exceeded: All 23%; CMU 51%
      • Met or Exceeded: All 84%; CMU 97%
    • My university shows concern for me as an individual
      • Very Satisfied: All 7%; CMU 52%
      • Satisfied or Very Satisfied: All 68%; CMU 98%
    • I am generally satisfied with the quality of teaching that I have received
      • Strongly Agree: All 19%; CMU 59%
      • Agree or Strongly Agree: All 87%; CMU 94%
    • I am satisfied with my decision to attend this university
      • Very Satisfied: All 24%; CMU 51%
      • Satisfied or Very Satisfied: All 88%; CMU 95%
    • I feel as if I belong at this university
      • Strongly Agree: All 18%; CMU 41%
      • Agree or Strongly Agree: All 81%; CMU 87%
    • I would recommend this university to others
      • Would recommend: All 91%; CMU 97%
 
Faculty

I'm often told that hiring is the most important thing we do, since it's largely through faculty that the vision and the daily work of the university's mission are called out over time. This fall we've initiated four faculty search processes. The openings demonstrate revisioning of programming priorities as well as commitment to ongoing strengths; in sum CMU's faculty complement is a steady state. Advertisements are located on our website if you're interested in learning more.

Music remains an integral part of CMU education as a whole. We're looking for someone with a focus in voice performance and complementary strength in music theory, choral music or music education. This position takes into account a range of changes to the music department with the retirement of Henriette Schellenberg (2012) and Rudy Schellenberg (2015), and my shift in position.

Biology Currently CMU has three full-time science professors: John Brubacher, biology, Candice Viddal, chemistry/physics, and Tim Rogalsky, mathematics. The expansion into science has been a very good thing for the university. Many students are interested in pursuing science-related careers, and both they and others are thirsty for good ways to bring together their understandings of science, arts and faith.

Conflict Resolutions Studies (CRS) Educating for peace-justice remains a key feature of our programming. We're looking for someone with primary responsibilities at Menno Simons College following Richard McCutcheon's transition to a senior administrative post at Algoma University.

Psychology consistently draws many students and has become a signature program of CMU. This teaching need has arisen with Vonda Plett's move to a half-time position with a primary focus in Organizational Administration and Leadership Development.

In July of this year CMU Professor Jarem Sawatsky took early retirement due to the advancement of Huntington's disease, a condition that has begun to alter the quality of his life. Jarem had been teaching Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies since 2002, with a few years away for PhD studies. During his relatively short tenure he contributed significantly to CMU through extraordinary classroom teaching and by creating the internationally acclaimed Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP). Currently we are discerning how best to sustain and further develop CMU's commitment to studies in peace-justice within our curriculum.

 
Alumni

For lots of good reasons we as a society like to see the immediate effectiveness of education in the lives of recent graduates in terms of finding good work and the quality of their commitments and contributions to the workplace, the church, local and global communities, and family life. Still, one of the most trustworthy measures of the success of a school comes through the life stories of its alumni traced over much longer spans of time. CMU would be wrong to claim full credit for all the good its alumni engender in church and society. But it's valid to recognize that post-secondary education inspires and equips many people at a critical point in their lives. This is a time and place where women and men learn to embody the imagination, passion, skill and faithfulness that open doors far beyond what they yet recognize while a student.

The CMU Distinguished Alumni Blazer awards enable the university to share in the stories and life commitments of individuals whose lives give witness to the best of the university's mission and vision. Here's a snapshot of the four 2014 honorees who were recognized at our Fall Festival in September.

Odette Mukole graduated in 2007 with a BA in Social Sciences. Odette, was raised in a Mennonite family in the Congo and came to Canada 15 years ago with 3 daughters seeking the security of a new home in a new land, first to Montreal, then Calgary and then here to CMU and to Winnipeg. Her life experience and her CMU experience deepened her passion and empathy for the challenges that newcomers face in building a new life in a strange country and a foreign culture. Today her work as a case coordinator at Family Dynamics places her in direct relationship with newcomers from all over the world, with people of diverse social and economic circumstances, and with a range of language, educational, health, housing and employment needs. Odette reflected on the power of her CMU experience, including the deep care and support she received from faculty and staff. She spoke of the God moments in her present work in which her own life experience and her deep sense of God's presence opens her daily to the lives of newcomers and refugees trying to find their way in a new land. It is common for these people to say to her, "You know what I'm going through because parts of this have also been your own life journey."

John Neufeld graduated with a Bachelor of Theology from CMBC in 1995. He emigrated from Russia to the Niagara peninsula as a young teenager with his parents. His congregation encouraged him to study at CMBC for one year since he knew he would be a Math teacher. This year became three as he was captivated by the study of the Bible and Theology. Following a pastoral internship in BC, John found his way into Social Work, earning Bachelors and Masters degrees and subsequently a Master of Business Administration. Since 2009 John has served as the Executive Director of the House of Friendship—Kitchener Waterloo's most innovative public good agency where he lives out a heart for people on the margins of power and access, and where he embodies an imaginative commitment to servant leadership. John recently reflected on his CMU experience by noting how CMBC 'wrecked my life' by instilling in him a deep commitment to the Upside-Down Kingdom of Jesus. He speaks of the power of professors engaging him as a person, modeling and empowering an authentic sense of leadership and equipping him to live and lead with hope.

Lorlie Barkman graduated from MBBC in 1990 with a Bachelor of Religious Studies. Through a wide array of vocational pursuits, Lorlie has been an artist, a communicator and connector, a church planter, a TV series producer, a pastor and pastoral care giver, an author, volunteer, humorist, a country gospel singer—and in all of this a person deeply committed to communicating and living the gospel. CMU/MBBS professor Andrew Dyck has noted how powerfully Lorlie had been a mentor to him, teaching him what it meant to pastor amidst life's pain and loss and modeling the capacity to see an expansive horizon. Lorlie draws on the biblical phrase, 'wonderfully complex' to describe the many people with whom he has walked through memory loss. This phrase calls out Lorlie's life-long commitment to painting images—literally and metaphorically—to enliven the gospel and to touch and enrich the lives of others.

Kathy Bergen graduated from CMBC in 1972 with Bachelor of Theology. Afterh this she earned a BA and Bachelor of Education from U Manitoba and a Master of Divinity from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Kathy's life and work have been entwined with a commitment to peace, to reconciliation, to justice in a part of our world that remains deeply torn to this day. For 32 years she has been intimately tied to Palestinian Christian and Muslim communities and to the Israeli peace movement. Her teaching, writing, advocacy and her unwavering commitment to faith-filled relationship building and to inter-faith dialogue have taken her from Winnipeg to Jerusalem, Geneva to Philadelphia and to Ramallah in the West Bank where from 2006—2013, where she served as the Program Coordinator in the ministry of the Friends International Centre. In Kathy's words, "CMBC was the place where I learned most what it meant to be an Anabaptist Christian—and it has framed my life. In 1982 when I first went to Jerusalem I stopped working and tried to live out my life's calling and commitment. I was exactly where God wanted me to be.”

 
Surrounding community

CMU's founding document (Charter of Province of Manitoba) clearly defines the university through the people commonly considered external to the school—the voluntary community comprised of church constituencies and other friends—as much as its internal personnel and programs. When CMU began there was great enthusiasm in the surrounding community about the potential of this new venture, even if some stood by at the margins and wondered if this dream truly would become a reality. The primary caution at the outset was voiced as a hope: that this university would have the courage and conviction to be faithful to its mission over time. I continue to hear that hope, although the tinges of fear have become less pronounced over time. As a whole, CMU has sustained the persuasion that it has no reason to exist except as an instrument of the church, which is different than saying that the university is merely a tool in service of the church. Formally, church and university have different roles to play. The invested presence of "so great a cloud of witnesses” in the community surrounding the university has sustained the mission entrusted to this university into this our 15th year—and needs to continue to do so in the decades to come.

It is in this conviction, and with courage and gratitude that I thank you for your presence with us as President's Circle and Patron's Circle donors in recent years.

  • Last year these circles consisted of a total of 225 individuals or families (21% of annual donor pool), who gave approximately 75% ($564,932 of $751,547) of CMU's Annual Operating Support, with gifts ranging from $1,000 to $25,000.
  • 2/3 of PC donors are from Manitoba with 1/3 from other provinces; this is relatively equivalent to the ratio of students from and outside of Manitoba.

Our hope—and need—is to grow this voluntary community of people with a 'mission imagination for Christian University Education' and who are prepared to invest with ongoing, annual support committed over a period of time. The stability of ongoing President's Circle and Patron's Circle donors is an essential factor in CMU's financial health, even as we respect the fact that individual circumstances change and it's not possible for everyone to maintain their levels of support to particular organizations.

 
Most common question: How's Enrolment?

Early visioning for CMU (in the late 1990s and again in 2007) anticipated that CMU would grow quickly and dramatically in terms of student numbers. For about the first 8 years there was considerable growth in student size in all program sites. Most of that growth at Shaftesbury can be attributed to significant gains in retention—with far more students sticking around until graduation, and thus for 3-4 years rather than 1-2. CMU now graduates twice as many 4yr. BAs as 3yr.; the provincial average for BAs is twice as many 3yr. as 4yr. degrees in the arts and sciences. Once the 3-4 yr. pattern became established our Shaftesbury enrolment became relatively steady. At Menno Simons College our numbers increased significantly for a number of years when there was a mandatory requirement of a CRS course in UW education programs; that requirement no longer holds.

CMU degree programs (Shaftesbury) have grown in terms of the number of program areas since the early CMU years, with expansions into science, communications, music therapy and business being the most significant. Along the way roughly the same number of students have redistributed in different areas and thus the effect of program additions from 2006-2014 has resulted in a broader and evolving spectrum of interest areas being served, not increases in size of student body.

Likely we anticipated and hoped that expanding into new areas would bring more students rather than a redistribution of current levels. However, it's becoming more and more credible to define good enrolment as the maintaining of a steady state. The story of CMU is of a university that remains nimble enough to make program adjustments when necessary and opportune, with appropriate pruning in line with university vision and with changes over time in student interests and societal priorities (including those of the church). Perhaps this approach is even preferable to CMU's long-term resilience, given that the larger the operation the larger the required revenues from non-student sources. By this logic we do well to respect roughly current levels of student enrolment, and to aim for sustainability. Indeed this has been the pattern, so that our faculty to student ratio has remained fairly consistent. Over these 15 years there have been enough moving parts so that efficiencies have been possible as program offerings have diversified in new ways. This is not to say that conversations about slow growth in the long run are off the table, but it is to say that growth in effectiveness is not dependent on growth in size of operations.

A few facts on CMU enrolment:

  • Shaftesbury – To view stats appropriately, we combine incoming undergraduate and Outtatown numbers. The combined total of new students annually in recent years has been 235-275 (variation over the years, and depending also on how Extended Education students are counted). This combined number may well be as high as is reasonable for a school with our particular mission.
    • Outtatown – From 2000-2011 enrolment vacillated between 60-100 students. In 2012 we capped enrolment at 75, which is healthy for program effectiveness and financial model going forward.
    • Shaftesbury Undergraduate – We have just under 500 students currently and we could grow by 20-50 with only marginal growth in infrastructure (faculty, staff, facilities) if more students with interest in our current offerings were found.
    • Shaftesbury Graduate School of Theology and Ministry – The model of connecting to strong undergrad programs renders graduate studies economically viable. This small program could but needn't grow significantly.
  • Menno Simons College – Currently an average of 10% of U Winnipeg students take one or more courses at MSC. We hope to maintain this level of activity.

An important factor in the health of any organization is third-party validation; that is, endorsement from people who are neither faculty nor staff. Thus, I invite you to encourage others to consider CMU, people you know who would thrive in the CMU educational setting, and who would bring something good to this university community. Alternatively, you may be in touch with someone who influences the educational choices of others, perhaps a guidance counselor, teacher or pastor. These people may be family, from your church or neighbourhood, or a son or daughter of a colleague. Feel free to speak with these people yourselves, or pass their names and contact information on to our Enrolment staff.

I trust that this detailed update is of value to you. Indeed, your ongoing support and interest in CMU's mission and program is deeply valued by me and by our students, faculty and staff. Thank you!

Peace and joy,

Cheryl