{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Ask A Kansan","title":"Finding Your Next Home Town with Bethany College President Laura Crawley | Rockar! Stockar! Kansas","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3917,"description":"How far can curiosity take you, and how does a person find their next hometown? \nMeet Laura Crawley, the 16th president of Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas — and a reminder that big things happen in small places.\nLaura's path to the presidency winds through Austin, Atlanta, Athens, and Hickory before landing in the middle of the Kansas prairie. Along the way she trained as a journalist, earned a PhD in women's studies from Emory, discovered that administration — not teaching — was her true calling, and fell in love with a poet named Charles. Together they picked Lindsborg as their next hometown, and when Charles passed away just months after their arrival, Laura chose to stay and lead.\nWe talk about the founding couple of Bethany — Carl and Alma Swenson — and how their immigrant resilience still shapes the college 145 years later. We get into why creativity thrives on limitation, what it means to build an \"accelerator institution\" instead of an anchor institution, and how a couple of high school percussionists ended up playing in the pep band the same day they showed up for a campus visit. Laura opens up about vocation, about grief, and about why there's nowhere in the world she can go where Charles is waiting — so she's staying right where the work matters.\n\nHighlights\n\nA children's book about Alzheimer's that completely wrecked our hosts before the interview even started\nLaura's journey from aspiring journalist to higher ed administrator — and why \"removing barriers\" is the heart of the job\nGrowing up calling the reference librarian with random questions because there was no internet\nHow a Victorian literature professor at UT Austin named Jane Marcus sent Laura to Emory to study women's studies — a field so new she didn't even know what it was\nThe intertwined story of Lindsborg and Bethany College, founded by Swedish immigrants in 1881 — and why 20% of Lindsborg businesses are still owned by Bethany grads\nCarl and Alma Swenson: the couple who built a...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/31uDhQmE-73zaqpWjXtwnyYffNMsUnDPiL6GtjTddEQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mNzBm/YzFkNDBkODVjNGM2/MzMwMGViYjhmZTY4/Nzc0Mi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}