The Augsburg Podcast features voices of Augsburg University faculty and staff. We hope this is one way you can get to know the people who educate our students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders.Â
Alumna Lois Hofstad Esselstrom, Ph.D., has recently published “,” available on Amazon for purchase. Before earning her bachelor of arts from Augsburg in 1958, Lois grew up in the home of a pastor and educator and says her family walked and talked with God through Bible reading and prayer. She went on to earn both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Western Reserve University. She has been a church parish worker, a publish school teacher and a professor of English at Indiana University South Bend. She and her husband Michael Esselstrom have two children and are now retired in Florida.
To walk life’s road with the Almighty God, engaged in intimate conversation with Him? Can it be? As astonishing, indeed shocking, as this concept is, it is simple enough for a child to experience. I know because I was that child. When I was very small, Mother found me on a chair talking to Someone she could not see. “Who are you talking to?” she asked. “I’m talking to Jesus. You said He was here.” Ever since that day decades ago I have known that I may talk to Jesus, or more precisely, with Jesus, with God. God chooses to engage with children, men, and women in intimate dialogue. Sometimes He initiates the conversation through words of the Bible as we read or remember them. Sometimes words from morning devotional reading steady me all through the day. Our answer is amazement and gratitude. Or we speak to Him first, through conscious prayer or through longings which He hears in our hearts. He answers according to what is best for His child. Jesus was very specific about God’s intentions. He said that He and His Father would “come and make our home” with those who love Him. It occurred to me that God, Who is Love, may enjoy being welcomed to be at home in our personal lives even more than we limited mortals can rise to being glad He has come. Thus, as the almighty God lives in our lives, we, together with believers of all ages, bear witness to the reality of An Intimate Journey with Our Father: Walking and Talking with God.
Thank you for ringing in the holiday season with us at Velkommen Jul and Vespers. This weekend is always a great time to see friends and celebrate togetherness. And a special thank you to all the volunteers who worked these events, to the Augsburg Associates who raised more than $4,800 for student scholarships at Velkommen Jul and to Trudi Anderson ’77 who lead the pop-up flute choir.
We are deeply saddened to share the news that Jeroy Carlson ’48 passed away yesterday. Jeroy spent more than 60 years at Augsburg. He was a student, parent, grandparent, volunteer, alumni director, and a senior development officer for Augsburg. Known as “Mr. Augsburg,” he spent much of his life inspiring, connecting, and mentoring Auggies.
Jeroy embodied everything about Augsburg and knew its history by heart. His dedication to the University was seen most in the way he connected to its students and alumni. During his long tenure here, he helped countless students get their careers off the ground by picking up the phone and calling someone he knew.
He built relationships with hundreds of people through Augsburg and raised millions of dollars to help build the chapel, library, fitness center, football field, and theater, to name just a few. Carlson’s efforts can be seen all over campus and his legacy along with his wife, Lorraine, was recently honored through the dedication of the new Jeroy ’48 and Lorraine Carlson Religion Department Home in the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion.
Sports were always a passion for Jeroy. He played baseball, basketball, and football as a student at Augsburg and was part of four MIAC championship teams. After graduating, Jeroy spent 15 years teaching and coaching. During this time, he served on the Augsburg Alumni Board before returning to his alma mater as the alumni director.
Our prayers and sympathies go out to Lorraine “Ainy” Carlson and their family. Jeroy was a beloved husband, father, and grandfather.
A visitation will be held at 10 a.m. with the funeral following at 11 a.m. on Dec. 13 at Mount Olivet Church, 5025 Knox Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419.
Sponsored by the McKnight Foundation and the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship, a book launch for the release of “,” by Bruce Shoemaker ’82 will be held on Thursday, Nov. 29, from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Student Art Gallery in the Christensen Center.
The book “offers a new understanding of Laos in a difficult period of nation building and development [and] a vital lesson to policy planners, scholars, and INGOs encountering the illusory success of a globalizing economy,” according to the forward by Yos Santasombat.
Bruce Shoemaker is an independent researcher based in far northern California who focuses on natural resource conflict issues in the Mekong Region. Among his current projects is the preparation of an edited volume on the World Bank’s involvement in the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project in Laos, to be published by University of Wisconsin Press. He has lived in Laos for eight years and Thailand for three while working for a number of NGOs and subsequently was employed, for more than ten years, as the program advisor for the Southeast Asia Grants Program of The McKnight Foundation, helping the foundation focus its grant making around natural resource rights issues as well as support for Indigenous Peoples organizations and other grassroots community organizing. He has a particular interest in the impacts of large hydropower projects on the lives and livelihoods of local communities in the Mekong Region and has authored or co-authored numerous articles and reports in this field.
As we near the holiday season, Co-Chair of the Augsburg Associates Jessica Wahto has a special message to share about an Augsburg favorite tradition:
Remember the days of walking into grandma’s kitchen at the holidays, and the smell of cardamom and sugar wafting through the air. Recall that trip you took to Norway and Sweden. The beauty of the Fjords, the colorful knit sweaters and the delicate embroidery on their bunad’s. Think of your exchange student who visited from Denmark and all the laughs you shared. Enjoy these memories and make new ones at Velkommen Jul!
Please join us and kick off your holiday season at Velkommen Jul on Friday, Nov. 30! Augsburg University’s annual Christmas celebration is open to all. Attend chapel and worship featuring Scandinavian Christmas music at 10:40 a.m. in the Hoversten Chapel. Then head to the Christensen Center at 11 a.m. Here you will find our Velkommen Jul boutique, offering unique Nordic gifts and treats.
After you have claimed your treasured gifts, join us for a festive celebration in Augsburg’s commons with music and traditional costumes and sweaters! Reminisce with friends and make new introductions while enjoying a smorgasbord of Scandinavian treats. Don’t worry; there will be plenty of coffee as well! You can add to the celebration by wearing your Norwegian sweater or Bunad! Velkommen means Welcome, and here at Augsburg you always are! We hope to see you there!
*All proceeds from the boutique as well as donations gathered at the smorgasbord go to help fund student scholarships.
A descriptive audio version of this video is available atÂ
Give to the Max is a giving event where Augsburg athletic teams, academic programs and student groups across campus create fundraising pages and secure Auggie support to make their projects a reality. This year, fundraising begins on Nov. 1 and ends on the big Give to the Max Day: Nov. 15. You can see all 30 projects on our Give Campus page.
Each year, our global community responds generously to support and recognize the breadth of programs and experiences offered by Augsburg.
Over the past five years, Augsburg programs have raised more than $1.5 million through Give to the Max efforts thanks to the commitment of our alumni, faculty, students and friends of the University!
Image text: Give to the Max Day Social Media Toolkit. Here are 5 ways to be an Auggie Advocate:
When I started as the Digital Archivist last summer, I was fortunate to inherit a large number of collections that had already been digitized by my predecessor, Bill Wittenbreer. This included a full set of The Augsburgian, Augsburg’s yearbook published from 1916 to 2010. For nearly a century, these yearbooks documented the buildings, faces, and events that stood out each year on campus.
They also reflect the graphic design aesthetics of their period. I particularly enjoy the and the , but my favorite yearbooks all date from the 1970s. Looking at the , you can almost hear the music transform from folk to disco.
You can also see how the decade ushered dramatic changes in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Beginning with its heady days as the epicenter of the , Cedar-Riverside transformed with the construction of Riverside Plaza and the It is also interesting to see the histories of familiar places, such as the (once Mama Rosa’s).
To view the entire Augsburgian Collection, .
The University Archives preserve Augsburg’s legacy and make its historical information available to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and researchers. The archives include information related to the university’s history and provide limited information about administrators, faculty, staff, and alumni.
In 2013, the Augsburg University Archives received fifteen boxes of “reel-to-reel” audio recordings and promptly began an ongoing project to save them. Created from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, these recordings documented everything from and to and . Lindell Library purchased a refurbished reel-to-reel player and oversaw a student workers’ painstaking inventory of more than 500 tapes in the collection.
“Over the past year, I have supervised a small army of students who have transformed these recordings into a collection of YouTube videos that grows by the day,” said Stewart Van Cleve, digital archives librarian.
Van Cleve shared that some of the most significant and fascinating recordings come from a single day: May 15, 1968. President Oscar Anderson canceled classes on this “One Day in May,” and the Augsburg community listened to leaders of Minneapolis’ black community as they detailed the racism, sexism, economic and geographic segregation, and other problems that continue to affect Minneapolis’ black community.
Of the fifteen original sessions from that day, thirteen recordings have survived. .
About the
The University Archives preserve Augsburg’s legacy and make its historical information available to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and researchers. The archives include information related to the university’s history and provide limited information about administrators, faculty, staff, and alumni.
The Augsburg Podcast features voices of Augsburg University faculty and staff. We hope this is one way you can get to know the people who educate our students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders.Â
