Graduation & Commencement

Rev. Donna Simon, the fifth bishop of the Central States Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, will be our Baccalaureate speaker this year on Saturday, May 2 at 10:30 am. Her territory covers all of the states of Missouri and Kansas, including 149 congregations, multiple campus ministries, four synod-authorized ministries, and two outdoor ministries. She also serves on the Governing Board of Bethany College.

Rev. Simon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University, a Masters of Divinity from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, and a Doctor of Ministry from Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. 

 In October of 2000, she was ordained extra ordinem, in violation of church policies preventing LGBTQIA+ leaders from serving as ordained ELCA clergy. When those policies changed in 2009, Simon was received to the ELCA clergy roster. She served St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church in Kansas City, MO from 2000 until being elected bishop in June of 2025.

Bishop Simon is passionate about justice for all people, inclusion of persons pressed to the margins, and her family—wife Colleen, son Dominic, a great old dog named Beasley, and three confounding cats.

Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, '07, is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs. He earned a doctorate from Brown University and a Bachelor of Music degree in nyckelharpa performance from Bethany College. He has previously served as Instructor and Head of Nordic Studies, also at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Visiting Scholar at Karlstad University, Sweden and the Institute for Social Sciences, History and Philosophy at the University of Campinas, Brazil. 

Teitelbaum’s interests include music and politics, reactionary ideology and aesthetics, Western esotericism, political theology, research ethics and Scandinavian traditional music and folklore. His first book, Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism, received the 2020 Provost’s Faculty Achievement Award and an honorable mention from the International Studies Association. His second book, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right, has been translated into multiple languages and was named Financial Times editor’s pick and a book of the year by CapX and Estadão. His forthcoming book, Limitless, explores God, aesthetics, power and expansion in the contemporary tech world.