Celebrating Our Legacy

Caleb Wiedenheft

Vice President & Chief Estimator at Mack Iron Works

Caleb Wiedenheft is a graduate of BGSU Firelands who began his college journey through the College Credit Plus program while attending Margaretta High School. He later earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and graduated debt free.

Today, Caleb serves as Vice President & Chief Estimator at Mack Iron Works, a custom metal fabrication company specializing in industrial strainers. In his role, he leads technical sales, pricing analysis, purchasing, and project management. Caleb credits his Firelands education with helping him build practical business skills, gain early career momentum, and step confidently into leadership within a growing regional company.

Briana Kurdinat

Briana Kurdinat is a first-year student at BGSU Firelands, majoring in Visual Communications Technology, also known as Digital Content Creation. A graduate of Western Reserve and Townsend Community School, Briana chose Firelands after encouragement from a close friend and quickly found a welcoming, supportive community.

She is passionate about graphic design and hopes to build a career that blends design, film, and creative storytelling. Briana is the founder of the campus Improv Club, launching the organization to help rebuild student engagement and inspire others to get involved. She recruited 27 members in its first interest push, including students and faculty.

In addition to her academic work, Briana is a musician who plays guitar, bass, and keyboard. She enjoys sushi, pasta, and double dark chocolate Milanos, and finds inspiration in music that motivates creativity and self-expression.

Dr. Larry Smith 

Professor emeritus, English and Humanities 

Larry Smith is a native Midwesterner, born and raised in the industrial Ohio River Valley. In 1965 he graduated from Muskingum College in Ohio and at 21 married a hometown girl, Ann Zaben. He taught high school English while Ann began working as a nurse. He earned degrees at Kent State University (M.A. and Ph.D), and was there when the riots and shootings of students occurred. 

In 1970-1971 he began teaching at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. In 1980-1981 he was a Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Sicily.

He is the author of eight books of poetry, two books of memoirs, five books of fiction, two literary biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese.

As a professor of English and Humanities at Firelands (1970-2010) he taught writing and literature courses and served as director of the Firelands Writing Center, a cooperative of writers. As director of the literary publisher, Bottom Dog Press, Inc. he has edited over 70 books.

Dr. Joel Rudinger

Professor emeritus of English and Popular Culture

Joel Rudinger graduated from high school in 1956 in Toledo, Ohio. In 1960, after earning a bachelor’s degree in biology at Bowling Green State University, he traveled to the one-year-old state of Alaska to work on a Master of Arts degree in English at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. While there, he wrote and directed a three-act melodrama, “Purity in Distress or Better Dead Than Wed” and finished his MA degree with a creative thesis of poetry.

Living in primitive Alaska for four years, in addition to his graduate teaching assistantship at the university: he worked as a gandy dancer on the Alaska Railroad; a big-game hunting guide in the Alaska Range; a dishwasher on a fishing boat; a teletype operator on Clear Air Force military base; a bookstore clerk, and other odd jobs documented in his adventure-memoir Lost and Found in Alaska published in 2020.

After earning his Master of Arts (MA) degree at University of Alaska in 1964, Joel was accepted into the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop and, in 1966, finished a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in poetry. That fall, he entered the doctoral program in English back at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

In 1967, Joel was hired to teach literature and composition at the BGSU Firelands branch, although the Huron-based campus was still under construction. The next year, in 1968, the Huron campus officially opened, and local classes began. 

Joel Rudinger finished his Ph.D. in 1971 with a 600-page dissertation in American folklore, entitled, Folklore of Erie County, Ohio.

The courses he taught during his tenure at Firelands included Freshman composition, creative writing, World and American Literature, poetry, Introduction to Folklore, Shakespeare, drama, film studies, storytelling, and, for 8 years (1998-2005) the Alaskan Experience, a 2-week summer field course.

From 1972 to 1982, Joel created and edited the Firelands Arts Review, giving his brightest students a chance to help edit and promote the annual publications. He also started the Cambric Press, helping other writers publish their work.

In 1972, Joel established The Rudinger Foundation to promote literary programs of a creative nature and to administer an annual scholarship to one or more students of talent in some field of the creative arts or humanities. To date, Rudinger Foundation Creative Arts Scholarships have been awarded to 52 Firelands students.

His publications include First Edition: 40 Poems (1975); How to Bingo 75 Ways, (1976); Lovers and Celebrations (1984); his self-illustrated book Sedna: Goddess of the Sea (2006); Symphonia Judaica and Other Poems (2015); his memoir Lost and Found in Alaska (2020), and the 50th anniversary historical collection BGSU Firelands: The Story of Our College: 1965-2015.

In 2012, after 45 years of teaching, Joel retired with the rank of Professor Emeritus. He was Huron’s Poet Laureate for three years and is currently an active member of the Huron Rotary Club, the Friends of the Huron Ohio Library, and the Firelands Writing Center.