Each year McPherson College recognizes the accomplishments of young alumni during the Honors Convocation at Homecoming. This year three alumni – Jason Pendleton ‘92, Jessica Everton ‘96, and Rana Salman ‘01 –received Young Alumni Awards on October 11.

The purpose of the Young Alumni Award is to recognize the achievement and potential for accomplishment of the college’s young alumni. The award is given to alumni who are meeting significant challenges in pursuit of professional goals as well as involved in service to others and church, and who participate in alumni activities.

Jason Pendleton, Overland Park, Kansas, graduated in 1992 with a degree in history. His career as a teacher began after he received his degree at McPherson College. He later received a master’s degree in history at Emporia State. He is currently a teacher at Blue Valley Southwest High School where he has been a teacher of U.S. history, sociology, AP U.S. history, and U.S. government since 2010. He’s taken on leadership roles as a co-chair for the history department and led professional development on blended learning and diversity. In 2008, he received the Dayton Rothrock Alumni Fellow from McPherson College.

Along with his teaching responsibilities, he has also coached 50 high school seasons–mostly soccer, but also football and track. At Blue Valley Southwest, his teams have won state championships in soccer two times for girls and once for boys. In 2017-18, both teams were undefeated and finished the season ranked fourth in the U.S. for boys and sixth for the girls. That season earned him the Girls United Soccer Coaches National Coach of the Year award along with the National Federation of High School Boys National Coach of the Year award. He has been named Kansas Coach of the Year for girls soccer five times and twice for boys.

Jessica (Boothe) Everton, Phoenix, Arizona, graduated in 1996 with a degree in English and later received a master’s degree in communication from Wichita State University. Everton is a senior director of product development at the NROC Project, a California-based technology firm that works with educators to build technologies and content that improve student success. She creates courses and tools that prepare secondary, post-secondary and adult learners for college and career success. Prior to her work at NROC, she worked in content and technology development for several ed-tech companies from start-ups to larger publishers.

Everton served on the McPherson College Board of Trustees from 2006-2011. She currently serves as the volunteer director of the Archway Scottsdale Parent Services Organization and is a Girl Scout leader.

Rana (El-Halabi) Salman, Austin, Texas, graduated in 2001 with a degree in public relations. Salman established Salman Consulting in 2016 collaborating with sales leaders, marketing, and enablement to improve sales effectiveness. She started her career with an interest in research and earned an MBA and Ph.D., along with several certificates. Salman has more than 18 years of experience in marketing and sales, spending a significant amount of her career as a sales consultant, working with top-tier organizations, conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis, developing sales strategies aligned to outcomes, and working closely on sales training programs.

She is the co-founder of WiSE, Women in Sales Enablement, an organization that brings women in sales enablement together to network and learn from another. She is also the previous board president of TMF Foundation, a charitable giving foundation that supports health care providers in multiple settings. She is a speaker at national conferences including Texas Conference for Women, Sales Enablement Society, and Competitive Marketing Summit, as well as a guest lecturer at Texas A&M Reynolds & Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute.

Each year McPherson College recognizes the accomplishments of young alumni during the Honors Convocation at Homecoming. This year three alumni – Joseph-Vincent V. Blas ’05, Myron Stine ’94, and Rahila Weed ’95 – were presented Young Alumni Awards on October 19.

The purpose of the Young Alumni Award is to recognize the achievement and potential for accomplishment of the college’s young alumni. The award is given to alumni who are meeting significant challenges in pursuit of professional goals as well as involved in service to others and church, and who participate in alumni activities.

Joseph-Vincent V. Blas, Greenville, South Carolina, graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2005 with a degree in biochemistry. As a member of the vascular surgery faculty at Greenville Health System of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, Dr. Blas is an assistant clinical professor of surgery. He received his medical degree from Creighton University in Omaha and completed his general surgery residency at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix.

As an undergraduate at McPherson College, he received the Burkholder Research Award and awarded for outstanding undergraduate research. He remains active in research and publications as author of several chapters in vascular surgery textbooks and as a presenter at vascular surgery conferences. He is one of the co-directors of the Aortic Center at the Greenville Health System and serves on several quality assurance committees for the health system as well as the diversity committee for the Southern Association for Vascular Surgery. Dr. Blas is also assistant fellowship program director for the Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery.

Myron Stine, Adel, Iowa, graduated in 1994 with a degree in crop science. Stine proudly supports the family business by providing direction in marketing strategies and sales force infrastructure for Stine Seed Company. He understands the importance of working hard and developing relationships. With a background in crop science, sales, and marketing, Stine has worked his way up through the organization, starting his career on the family farm, serving as a district sales manager, regional sales manager, national sales director, vice president of sales and marketing, and now as president of Stine Seed Company.

He has served McPherson College as a member of the board of trustees for four years and is currently serving as a member of the Auto Restoration National Advisory Board. He also serves on the Iowa State University executive MBA advisory board. Stine shares his agriculture expertise as a committee member of the FFA Stine Seed Enrichment Center at Des Moines Area Community College and served as a director on the Cultivation Corridor Board. He pursues his interest in cars as a trustee on the Iowa Automotive Heritage Foundation Board and has served as committee chair of the Des Moines Concours d’Elegance.

Rahlia Weed, Warrensburg, Missouri, graduated in 1995 with a degree in art and psychology. Dr. Weed is a professor of art education and serves as the assistant chair of the school of visual and performing arts and division head of art and design at the University of Central Missouri. She received her teaching certificate, master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. She has been honored as the Missouri Art Education Association Higher Education Art Educator of the Year and was nominated for the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education. She shares her passion for art education through involvement and collaborations such as presenting at the statewide Girl’s STEAM event.

Dr. Weed lends her expertise to the Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art on its education editorial review board. She has served on the Missouri Art Education Association as a council member, district representative, and web editor and a member of several international, national, and state professional and academic associations. She is a frequent presenter at the National Art Education Association and has been published in several scholarly journals.

Homecoming 2018 is Oct. 19-21, 2018 featuring all your favorites activities, plus new exciting events:

• 100th Anniversary for Theatre & Celebration of Rick Tyler’s career
• Teacher Education Reunion & Scholastic Book Fair
• Pancake feed brunch
• Food truck lunch
• Photo booth for family, friends, or classmates
• Inflatables
• Dog walk
• Bulldog Visit Day for prospective MC students
• Choir concert
• Athletic events an more!

Class reunion years: 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013. If it is your reunion year and you’d like to plan a get-together, please contact the Alumni Office at [email protected] or (620) 242-0432.

Click here for Schedule and Registration.

McPherson College plays a prominent role in a newly opened exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The exhibit features the story of how students raised money to help an 18-year-old refugee escape Nazi persecution and attend McPherson College.

The exhibit, “Americans and the Holocaust,” is a panoramic portrait of American society in the 1930’s and 40s, which examines all influences that shaped the American response to Nazism and the Holocaust.

Rebecca Erbeling, a researcher for the exhibit recently wrote about the McPherson College story in an article for the Kansas City Star:

“Undergraduates from at least 200 colleges and universities raised money to aid refugee students, many of who were Jewish and in need of student visas to enter the United States. The 200-person student body at McPherson College, a small Christian school in McPherson, Kansas, raised $250 (about $4,500 today) to support a refugee student,” she wrote. In her research, she also found a statement made by an aid worker stating: “The student body of the college has raised this money at some sacrifice, since it is not a wealthy school, and they are looking forward to the arrival of a German student.”

The 18-year-old student, Tom Doeppner, was German-born and targeted by the Nazis for his Jewish heritage. According to research compiled by Sarah Snow, Doeppner’s granddaughter, the students at McPherson College were moved to take action after learning about the events in November 1938, known as Kristallnacht – violent anti-Jewish protests throughout Germany and Austria.

“This was an action out of compassion, but also sacrifice and amazing coordination on the part of the students,” Snow said. “Opa (what she called her grandfather) was in a very precarious position, so this scholarship and acceptance to a school in the United States was literally a life-saving invitation.”

Doeppner had escaped Germany and joined his father in Holland when he asked the Quakers for help to immigrate to the United States. He worked through the American Friends Service Committee, an organization formed by the Quakers to assist refugees escaping Nazi persecution. According to the museum’s exhibit, the AFSC worked to get Doeppner admitted to McPherson College. He struggled to obtain a student visa, since he technically did not have a country to return to after graduation.

“The acceptance and financial assistance to McPherson is what enabled him to get a visa, which is how he left Europe,” Snow said. “Immigration was all about obtaining the ever-difficult visa. He was part of a small percent of refugees able to get the visa he needed and left Holland mere months before it was overtaken by Nazi forces.”

Doeppner did not talk much about his past until later in his life, according to his granddaughter. He did share more about his past in an autobiography, where he remembers McPherson fondly. From his first simple greeting of “welcome to McPherson, Tom,” by Phil Myers, president of the McPherson College Student Council, to adapting to a co-educational learning experience, he writes about initial memories of coming to the United States and attending McPherson College.

“The student body, as well as the faculty, welcomed me with open arms,” he wrote. “And whenever the immigration officials gave me a hard time – which occurred frequently – the college President went out of his way to assist me with recommendations and letters.”

Snow said she also experienced how welcomed her grandfather must have felt when she also visited the college a few years ago. It was shortly after she had been to Berlin to see where her grandfather grew up.

Tom Doeppner (seated, second from left), at U.S. Army training camp, ca. 1944-45. Courtesy of Ron Doeppner and Sarah Doeppner Snow.

“I was able to appreciate how different McPherson must have been for Opa,” she said. “And yet, how welcoming and kind the people were to make him feel at home. There are three generations of my family that would not exist if McPherson did not offer Opa this chance to come to the United States. I have become endeared to the hard-working kindness of a group of students in the middle of Kansas and say thank you for embodying the spirit of what it means to treat others how you would want to be treated. They have done that for me and my family beyond expectation.”

Doeppner attended McPherson College for two years then transferred to Kansas State University where he completed a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. After graduating, he joined the U.S. Army, fought in World War II, and spent his career in the military.

“This is an incredible piece of McPherson College history to uncover and share on a national stage,” McPherson College President Michael Schneider, said. “It’s an example of the college’s long-tradition of service to others that continues today through efforts like supporting students studying at the college from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

Research for the exhibit began two years ago when the museum launched a crowd-sourcing project called “History Unfolded.” Museum staff asked students, teachers, librarians and history buffs across the country to research their local newspapers and determine what kind of information their community could have found about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

In addition to its national search for information, extensive documentation by Doeppner’s granddaughter, which included articles from the McPherson College student newspaper led museum researchers to Mary Hester, director of library services at the college who oversees the college’s archives. Hester helped the museum track down information from the school’s archives and supplied one original copy of the student newspaper “The Spectator” that is on loan for the exhibit.

This exhibition comes at a critical time, according to a statement made by the museum. A recent study found that two-thirds of American millennials could not identify what Auschwitz was. Doeppner’s personal story is also featured in the museum’s accompanying online exhibition: ushmm.org/americans.