The Bellefontaine High School graduates the Class of 2025 during commencement exercises beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, May 30.
District officials announced Friday afternoon that the ceremony will take place outdoors at AcuSport Stadium. (Previous announcements were weather-dependent for the outdoor ceremony).
This year’s BHS Distinguished Alumni are Dr. Timothy Smith, Ben Stahler, and Christina (Legge) Burt.
Dr. Smith has the additional honor of being this year’s commencement speaker
You can watch Friday night’s ceremony at https://www.youtube.com/live/5fBCitXl_UY
The livestream will start around 6:45 p.m.
The featured speaker graduated as valedictorian from Bellefontaine High School in 2007. He continued his education at Wright State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2011.
Dr. Smith graduated with a PhD in materials science and engineering from The Ohio State University in 2016.
A NASA intern during graduate school, Dr. Smith joined the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland full-time after graduation.
During his time at NASA, he has contributed to 37 peer-reviewed publications, including prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, and Nature Communications Materials. His research has also produced multiple patents.
The BHS graduate is the principal investigator for three separate NASA research projects. In this role, he has led research that directly resulted in over a dozen research licenses, four commercial licenses, and contributed to numerous collaborative agreements with industry.
Dr. Smith leads both high-temperature alloy development and characterization efforts within the High Temperature and Smart Alloys Branch at NASA Glenn Research Center.
Dr. Smith has earned numerous awards throughout his career, both within NASA and by outside organizations. He received the NASA Early Career Achievement Medal in 2020, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2022, and the NASA Group Achievement Award in 2023.
His publications have also been recognized for the Superalloys 2020 Conference Best Paper, the 2020 Materials and Structures Division Best Paper, and the 2023 Glenn Research Center Distinguished Publication Award.
In 2023, he and his colleagues were awarded an R&D 100 Award for the creation of a new high-temperature alloy named GRX-810. Currently, GRX-810 is nominated for invention of the year at NASA.
Tim and his wife, Jen, have been married for 10 years. They reside in Westlake, Ohio, and have three children, Liam, Nora and Aiden.
Stahler is a lifelong resident of Bellefontaine. The Stahler family roots stretch back before the 1840s and they are listed among the first families of Logan County.
A 1978 BHS graduate, he received his degree in pharmacy from Ohio Northern University in 1983. Ben began his pharmacy internship at Mary Rutan Hospital in 1979 and continued at Mary Rutan Hospital as a pharmacist until 2001.
In 2001, he moved to CVS Pharmacy in Bellefontaine and retired from his full-time position with CVS Pharmacy in July of 2014.
Mr. Stahler was appointed to the office of Mayor of Bellefontaine later that same year. He came to this position with a variety of community experiences. Some of those include being elected to Bellefontaine City Council (two terms, 1990-1993), elected to Bellefontaine Board of Education (four terms, 1995-2008), appointed to the Ohio Hi-Point Board of Education (1995-2003), and Logan County Board of Elections (2007–2015).
He also served as president of the Board of Directors for the West Central Ohio Community Corrections Facility in Marysville. After he was appointed, Mayor Stahler was elected twice, serving our community as mayor from 2014 until 2023.
Stahler served as chairman of the Logan County Mayors’ Association from 2014 to 2023 and was honored to serve as the chairman of the Ohio Mayors’ Association in 2023.
Ben has a great deal of community pride, his nominator noted. During his tenure as mayor, Ohio Magazine recognized Bellefontaine as one of Ohio’s Best Hometowns.
Stahler has been a local Rotarian for 41 years, a United Way of Logan County Board member for more than 20 years, and a past United Way Campaign Chair.
He is a member and elder at the First United Presbyterian Church of Bellefontaine, and presently serves on the Board of Directors of the Logan County Children’s Services, LoCo Art and the Logan County Education Foundation. I
In 2013, Stahler was honored with the Elks Lodge “Citizen of the Year.” In 2023, he was recognized by the Ohio Art Educators Association as the 2023 Statewide Distinguished Citizen Award and by the TCN of Logan County (Soteria House) with their Community Hero Award.
Ben and his wife, Sara, enjoy traveling the world together and raising puppies for Canine Companions, giving pups a loving home and helping to prepare them to be service dogs.
They are the proud parents of three adult children, Lauren, Jennifer, and Rob. They enjoy their six grandchildren who live locally and attend Bellefontaine City Schools. Ben’s father was a BHS graduate, Class of 1946. His mother (Wanda) and wife (Sara) both taught their entire careers at BCS. Today, their two daughters also teach at BCS.
Burt graduated from Bellefontaine High School in 1993. She later received her associate’s degree in human services from Edison Community College and her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Ohio Christian University.
Having been raised in a family that experienced cyclical poverty, food insecurity and lack of availability of health care coverage for much of her childhood, Burt has spent her time looking for ways to serve needy families in and around her community and the state of Ohio.
She is a passionate public servant with 25 years of experience in administering public assistance and technological transformations across human service programs in Ohio.
After starting her career assisting families in achieving self-sufficiency at the county level, the BHS graduate joined the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services at the state level in 2012. She has been a driving force to enhance the operation of public assistance programs and the system experience for the 88 counties. Burt played a central role in the state’s system modernization and in bringing the SNAP, TANF, and Child Care programs into the new integrated eligibility system.
Currently, Burt is the assistant deputy director of the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS). In this role, she provides leadership related to the oversight of the state’s cash assistance, food assistance, refugee and adult protective services programs’ visions, policies, administration, and operational execution.
She enjoys volunteering at local food pantries and helped establish a new food pantry, which still serves families today. She also coordinated school supply donation drives and created a Christmas outreach program. As an avid crocheter, she spends time making blankets to donate to Project Linus for foster children and Project Robby for child loss.
Christina and her husband, Gary, reside in Marysville. They have two sons, Zachary (Adrianna) and Bradley (Ashley), and they enjoy spending time with their children and grandchildren whenever the opportunity arises.
The 2025 BHS Valedictorian is Nolan Core. Claire Grandstaff is the class salutatorian.
