“This may sound like an enormously complicated and deep subject,” remarked President Susan Schultz Huxman in her annual commencement address, “but actually it’s profoundly simple: I maintain that building a healthy Grebel community for the next 50 years means that we pay attention to concrete blocks and quilt blocks. At a most basic level, you can’t build a successful college without bricks and mortar. Facility enhancement projects—like the one we are undertaking now are a visible sign of strength, calculated risk, and investment in the future. But for a building to have character it needs lots of people who are willing to help, willing to come together to raise funds, design the floor plan, build the foundation, equip and furnish its rooms, and support each other along the way. It takes a variety of gifts to build a solid foundation.”
Huxman continued, “this summer Grebel residents and staff made a quilt. Collecting and stitching quilt blocks signals something very important to Grebel’s vitality: community building, creativity, generosity, compassionate service, creation care, and even global engagement. These are our core values. So quilt blocks are important too—especially if we want to imagine and create strength in diversity.”
“What I didn’t know when I started university, was how positive of an impact my decision to come to Grebel would have on molding my life,” shared Jonathan Cullar, Student Council President. “It is the people that make up Grebel and they have been an encouraging, challenging, supportive, and loving community - the catalyst to inspire me to be the best that I can be and to reach for high goals. Residents, students, faculty, and staff come together as vital building blocks to form the beautiful, stimulating, and opportunity filled community that together, we call Grebel.”
Again this year, Conrad Grebel’s residence is filled to capacity. “We’re thrilled with the mix of students we have in residence and are actually pleasantly overwhelmed with the increased number of students who live off campus, but want to connect with our residential program,” says Mary Brubaker-Zehr, Director of Student Services. Grebel has beds for 174 students on campus and currently has an additional 99 students who live off campus but enjoy having a home base at Grebel for their studies at the University of Waterloo.
Last year Grebel’s Peace and Conflict Studies program began offering a Master’s degree. The enrolment target for the second cohort in Fall 2013 was reached, creating a total of 32 students. The Master in Theological Studies also has 32 students enrolled this fall. “With over 60 students, we are creating a strong graduate student culture at Grebel,” observed Jim Pankratz, the college’s Dean. “Having 25 new grad students at orientation activities generated an energizing dynamic. Seeing the students from both graduate programs interacting with each other fulfills our vision of creating inter-disciplinary programs. This will be strengthened even more with our graduate student centre in the new Mennonite Savings and Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement.”
Grebel has course enrolments of over 4,000 in the faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo, including courses in Music, Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS), Religious Studies, History, Sociology, and Theological Studies. About 75% of these are in Music and PACS. This summer, three new faculty members joined the College - Maisie Sum in a new position in Global Music, Mark Vuorinen in the Choral Music role held by Len Enns until his recent retirement, and Alicia Batten in the New Testament position held by Tom Yoder Neufeld until his retirement.