Bethany Lutheran College (BLC) is a

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

liberal arts college in

Mankato, Minnesota Mankato ( ) is a city in Blue Earth, Nicollet, and Le Sueur counties in the state of Minnesota. The population was 44,488 according to the 2020 census, making it the 21st-largest city in Minnesota, and the 5th-largest outside of the Minnea ...

. Founded in 1927, BLC is operated by the

Evangelical Lutheran Synod The Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) is a US-based Protestant Christian denomination based in Mankato, Minnesota. It describes itself as a conservative, Confessional Lutheran body. The ELS has 130 congregations and has missions in Peru, Chile ...

. The campus overlooks the Minnesota River valley in a community of 53,000.

History

Bethany Ladies College opened in 1911 with 44 students and a faculty of four. In 1927, the Norwegian Synod of the American Evangelical Lutheran Church (now known as the Evangelical Lutheran Synod) purchased the campus for dual use as both a

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

(Bethany Lutheran High School; closed in 1969) and junior college (Bethany Lutheran College). In 1946,

Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary (BLTS) is the training school for pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. History Founded in 1946, BLTS was essentially a department of Bethany Lutheran College (BLC), before the two institutions were offic ...

(BLTS) began as a department of the college, becoming a separate institution in 1975. In 2001, Bethany awarded its first

baccalaureate Baccalaureate may refer to: * ''Baccalauréat'', a French national academic qualification * Bachelor's degree, or baccalaureate, an undergraduate academic degree * English Baccalaureate, a performance measure to assess secondary schools in England ...

degrees, completing a five-year transition from its 74-year history as a junior college.

Timeline

*1911: Bethany Ladies College opens *1927: Norwegian Synod purchases college *1946: Seminary opens *1969: High school closes *1999: Baccalaureate programs begin *2001: First BA degrees granted *2019: First BSN degrees granted

Presidents

* Rev. Holden Olsen (1927-1929) * Rev. Walter E. Buszin (Interim) (1929-1930) * Rev. Dr. Sigurd Christian Ylvisaker (1930-1950) * Rev. Dr. Bjarne Wollan Teigen (1950-1970) * Rev. Raymond Branstad (1970-1977) * Rev. Theodore A. Aaberg (1977-1978) * Norman Holte (1978-1982) * Marvin G. Meyer (1982-2002) * Dan R. Bruss (2003-2015) * Dr. Gene Pfeifer (2015–present)

Leadership

Bethany Lutheran College is governed by a 12-member Board of Regents. The college's president serves as an advisory member on that board. 2009-0805-BLC-OldMain

Academics

The college offers 35 majors, 28 minors, a paralegal certification, and 7 pre-professional programs. All of its undergraduate programs culminate in a Bachelor of Arts degree, except for the nursing program, which leads to a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. In 2021, BLC begin offering a graduate program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. According to the college, graduates of this 60 credit program "are eligible to become National Certified Counselors, Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC), and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselors (LPCC)". While this program is based on the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, it is not accredited.

Accreditation

Bethany Lutheran College has been accredited by the

Higher Learning Commission The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) is an institutional accreditor in the United States. It has historically accredited post-secondary education institutions in the central United States: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa ...

since 1974. Its nursing program has been accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education since 2018. BLC's education licensure programs are approved by the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB). While the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program is based on standards from the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, it is not accredited.

Campus

Bethany Lutheran College is made up of 15 buildings. Classes are held in five buildings: Meyer Hall, Honsey Hall, Tweit Hall, the Sports and Fitness Center, and the Ylvisaker Fine Arts Center. Many student services are housed in Old Main, including the cafeteria. There are four stand-alone residence halls, and the top three floors of Old Main house an additional residence hall (Anderson Hall). In addition, the campus houses a library, a chapel, and an advancement building.

Residential life

Residency requirement

Full-time students are required to live on-campus for their first two years, unless they are living with parents nearby, are married or have children, or are over 20-years old. Sixty-five percent of all students live on campus.

Residence halls

Bethany Lutheran College's

residence halls A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university ...

are separated by gender, with two halls for women and three for men. Visitors are only allowed to visit halls housing opposite-gender students during specific visitation hours. All residence halls include student lounges (including kitchens in non-apartment halls) and free laundry facilities. All residence halls are staffed by Residence Hall Coordinators who live in the residence halls, oversee student resident assistants, and provide student support.

Women's residence halls

Anderson Hall houses freshman through seniors and consists of a variety of dorm room layouts housing one to four students. Edgewood Place houses primarily upper-classmen women and consists of 16 two- and three-bedroom apartments, housing three to six students each. These apartments include full kitchens.

Men's residence halls

Teigan Hall and Gullixson Hall house freshmen through senior men and consist primarily of single and double rooms. Gullixson Hall also includes six one-bedroom apartments which house two upper-classmen students each. Larson Hall consists of five three-bedroom apartments which house up to six upper-classmen men. Larson Hall apartments have full kitchens that include microwaves.

Student life

Fine arts

BLC has three choirs, including a lyric-theatre performance group. In addition, the school has a chamber orchestra, two bands, a

handbell A handbell is a bell designed to be rung by hand. To ring a handbell, a ringer grasps the bell by its slightly flexible handle – traditionally made of leather, but often now made of plastic – and moves the arm to make the hinged cla ...

group, and a student-led drumming group. The Ylvisaker Fine Arts Center contains an art gallery that frequently features student art, and there are painting, drawing, ceramic, and photo-development studios on the campus. The fine arts center is also the location of the college's theater, which holds four productions every year, including a recurring vaudeville-style show titled "Theatre Physics" and a musical.

Publications

Bethany Lutheran College has a student newspaper titled ''The Scroll,'' a student-produced yearbook titled ''Fidelis'', and a yearly literary magazine titled ''Inkwell''. ''The Scroll'' and ''Inkwell'' are also published online. Bethany also produces an alumni magazine titled ''Bethany Magazine'' which is published three times a year.

Clubs and organizations

BLC has twenty-four student clubs and organizations, not including their fine-arts activities, athletics, or speech team. Bethany's speech team is designated as part of the Communication Department, not a student-led organization.

LGBT prohibition

Bethany prohibits same-sex relationships and "public promotion" of homosexuality in its standards of conduct for students.

Athletics

The Vikings are members of the

Upper Midwest Athletic Conference The Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC) is a college-level athletic conference. The UMAC is a conference of NCAA Division III since the 2008–09 season. Prior to that, it was a non scholarship conference affiliated with National Associatio ...

in the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...

. The school offers the following sports: baseball, men's and women's basketball, men and women's cross country, men and women's golf, men's and women's soccer, softball, men's and women's tennis, volleyball, and men's and women's track & field. In 2020, the men's and woman's basketball teams both won the UMAC Conference Championships. In the 2020 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament, the men's team was knocked out by

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

, 102-68. The woman's team entered the first round against Bethel University, a university five times the size of Bethany Lutheran. At that point, no

UMAC In cryptography, a message authentication code based on universal hashing, or UMAC, is a type of message authentication code (MAC) calculated choosing a hash function from a class of hash functions according to some secret (random) process and ap ...

basketball team had defeated a larger MIAC school in the playoffs, but the Vikings beat Bethel 62-58. They continued on to play

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

, losing 67-60.

Esports

The Bethany Vikings Esports Team was founded in 2019 with support by BLC alumnus and esports broadcaster

Erik "Doa" Lonnquist Erik Lonnquist, better known by DoA, is an American esports commentator. He began his career casting ''StarCraft II'' for companies such as GomTV in South Korea and IGN in California. He worked for OnGameNet from 2013 to 2017, casting ''League ...

, who also serves as the college's Director of Esports Broadcasting. Players compete in

League of Legends ''League of Legends'' (''LoL''), commonly referred to as ''League'', is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by '' Defense of the Ancients'', a custom map for ''Warcraft III'', ...

Overwatch ''Overwatch'' is a multimedia franchise centered on a series of online multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment: '' Overwatch'' released in 2016, and ''Overwatch 2'' released in 2022. Both games f ...

, and

Rocket League ''Rocket League'' is a vehicular soccer video game developed and published by Psyonix. The game was first released for Windows and PlayStation 4 in July 2015, with ports for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch being released later on. In June ...

. In 2021, the Vikings held the number one spot on the Collegiate Star League (CSL) League of Legends Power Rankings in the Midwest 3 Division with a 9-0 record.

Rankings

In 2022, BLC was ranked 10th nationally (1st in Minnesota) for graduates' social mobility by U.S. News College Rankings in the National Liberal Arts Category. As of 2022, the school ranks last in general rankings for Minnesota Liberal Arts colleges and universities.

Notable graduates

*1949 –

Marvin Schwan Schwan's Company, formerly known as The Schwan Food Company, is a food company with approximately 7,500 employees. Having originated in the United States as a family-owned business, since 2019 the company has been a subsidiary of CJ CheilJedang o ...

, founder of the

Schwan Food Company Schwan's Company, formerly known as The Schwan Food Company, is a food company with approximately 7,500 employees. Having originated in the United States as a family-owned business, since 2019 the company has been a subsidiary of CJ CheilJedang o ...

. *1949 –

Darold Treffert Darold A. Treffert (March 12, 1933 – December 14, 2020) was a psychiatrist and research director who specialized in the epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders and savant syndrome. He lived in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He was on the staff at A ...

, Psychiatrist and Researcher *1983 –

Jeff Rohrman Jeff Rohrman is a retired U.S. soccer midfielder who spent two seasons in the American Indoor Soccer Association and one in the Western Soccer League. He has also coached for nearly twenty years at the collegiate level. Player Rohrman began his ...

, US Soccer Midfielder *1997 –

Brad Stromdahl Brad Stromdahl (born April 12, 1977) is an American college baseball coach and former catcher. He is the head baseball coach at Georgia State University. Stromdahl played college baseball at Bethany Lutheran College from 1996 to 1997 before transf ...

, College Baseball Coach *2006 -

Erik "DoA" Lonnquist Erik Lonnquist, better known by DoA, is an American esports commentator. He began his career casting ''StarCraft II'' for companies such as GomTV in South Korea and IGN in California. He worked for OnGameNet from 2013 to 2017, casting ''League ...

, esports commentator.Schwartz, Lance (July 2019). "Vikings esports team set to compete in fall". ''Bethany Magazine''. Mankato, MN: Bethany Lutheran College. Retrieved April 12, 2022.

References

External links

Official websiteOfficial Athletics website
{{authority control Liberal arts colleges in Minnesota Lutheran universities and colleges in the United States Educational institutions established in 1927 Education in Blue Earth County, Minnesota Education in Nicollet County, Minnesota Education in Le Sueur County, Minnesota Mankato, Minnesota 1927 establishments in Minnesota Private universities and colleges in Minnesota Upper Midwest Athletic Conference schools