Update: This event is now sold out. If you are interested in being added to the waitlist, please follow the registration link and add your name. We will let you know as soon as possible if we have ticket(s) available!

Join us for a once-in-a-lifetime event. On Friday, September 27, 2019, we kick off Augsburg’s sesquicentennial with a gala in downtown Minneapolis. This gala will acknowledge our history of pursuing the calling to serve the community, and it will rally our energetic support for the next 150 years of Augsburg University.

During this unprecedented evening, we will share stories of gratitude and hope for the future. We will celebrate with friends who have been a part of the community: alumni, parents, faculty, and staff. We’ll enjoy moments to reflect, share, and give while surrounded by the relationships that have always been at the heart of Augsburg.
We look forward to seeing you there.

—Darcey Engen ’88 and Jeff Swenson ’79
Sesquicentennial Committee co-chairs

Event Details

Friday, September 27, 2019

4:30 p.m. Reception, 6 p.m. Program

Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel, The Depot

225 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55401

This event will likely sell out. Order today to reserve your place.

The post Augsburg’s Sesquicentennial Gala – Join the Waitlist appeared first on Alumni, Parents, and Friends.

Before Anne Thompson Heller ’08 began her studies at Augsburg, she hadn’t even visited the College. But she knew Augsburg was where she needed to be, because of the on campus. Honestly, she says, she’s not sure she would have been able to go to college when she did without the support of StepUP, Augsburg’s residential recovery program.

Now, while completing a doctoral program at the University of Connecticut, Thompson Heller helps other young people in recovery to achieve academically and thrive. With two master’s degrees (one in educational leadership, higher education, and student affairs; the other in marriage and family therapy), she works tirelessly to support youth recovery. Though she hadn’t intended to pursue multiple advanced degrees, she did so when she discovered an undeniable passion for helping others facing addiction issues, just as she had been helped in her StepUP experience.

When she moved back to Connecticut, she served CTYF (Connecticut Turning to Youth and Families) as a board member, and eventually as its vice president, advocating for youth services with several state and other influential agencies, and attempting to raise awareness of the problem. Her involvement with CTYF led to her current work on the board of directors for Connecticut Community of Addiction Recovery (CCAR).

In 2010, after speaking at the National Education Recovery Summit, Thompson Heller was invited to join the board of the Association of Recovery Schools (a “phenomenal” organization, she says), where she led the advocacy committee and worked to enhance youth leadership in recovery schools. In that role, she was able to support the development of YPR (Young People in Recovery), a national advocacy organization, as one of the organization’s founding members. YPR now has chapters across the country, which emanated from several national conferences that sought to address addiction recovery and related issues such as leadership training and organizational development.

Perhaps the source of greatest pride in her work, however, is the URC (UConn Recovery Community)—a collegiate recovery program for which she began advocating and researching in 2009, and which was eventually established in 2013. URC supports students in recovery on the UConn, Storrs campus.

In addition to her doctoral work and board involvement, Thompson Heller manages to find time to provide marriage and family therapy, mostly in the evenings—clinical work that she hopes to continue upon completion of her degree. When that time comes, she would love to be director of a collegiate recovery program, serve students in recovery, and conduct research to support collegiate recovery efforts and recovering student development—perhaps combining that with teaching in higher education.

A recipient of an Augsburg College Leadership Award in 2008, Thompson Heller will speak at the October 24 annual StepUP Gala on the theme of gratitude. If you attend this event, you may hear her quote her mentor, Patrice Salmeri, director of the StepUP program, who has said, “Nobody should have to choose between recovery and a college degree.” Thompson Heller also may mention a gift to Salmeri from another student—a plaque on her office wall that says, “Because you believed in me, I believed in me.” Thompson Heller says of Salmeri, that could not be more true. She is also grateful to former advisor Nancy Fischer in the sociology department, who has been particularly influential in her life.

Though Thompson Heller knows that her struggle with addiction and alcoholism strained and hurt her family tremendously, she is overwhelmed with gratitude that she and her family have healed and are incredibly close. She and her husband Chris just celebrated their first anniversary in September—another source of immense gratitude for her.

By Cheryl Crockett ’89

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The couple is leading the drive to raise $10 million in endowment for the program and challenging others to “step up” to the plate to meet the urgent need for effective collegiate recovery programs.

Philanthropy + Advocacy = Change

Jill and Robert envision StepUP emerging as the program of choice for students in recovery and the employer of choice for top professionals in the field. They want to lift up StepUP as a model of excellence and see it replicated on campuses across the nation. They hope to see misconceptions about addiction and recovery shattered by the success of adults with addiction in their past. It all adds up to profound change. “First we have to start talking more openly about addiction and recovery, and then we have to start supporting it financially,” says Robert.

“We believe that our efforts can help organizations make a difference and move the needle in some very important things for people,” explains Robert, who served on the Alzheimer’s Association National Board and received the Maureen Reagan Award for outstanding Alzheimer’s Advocacy in 2010. Both he and Jill are leaders in Alzheimer’s advocacy and involved in several community organizations, including the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma and the Tulsa Area United Way.

They are parents of daughters Allie Thomas ’14 and Olivia Jordan, who currently serves as Miss USA.

Desperation, Love, and Hope

Jill and Robert learned about StepUP the hard way, through daughter Allie’s struggle with chemical dependency and her eventual recovery. “The despair and the fear of all it was all encompassing,” says Robert of that time in their lives.

Allie was living out of state when she hit the proverbial rock bottom.

“My dad swooped in and we came home to Tulsa,” says Allie. I had a series of stints in treatment centers, then stints of relapse. I was really unwell. It’s is so sad to think back on the person that I was.”

A Collegiate Recovery Program that Works

In February 2010, an interventionist brought Allie to Hazelden Treatment Center in Center City, Minnesota. After she completed in-patient treatment, she went on a tour of Augsburg and StepUP that was arranged by her halfway house.  “I had never heard of anything like StepUP. I was amazed that there were so many other college students going through exactly what I had gone through, and that they were getting their degrees. I thought, ‘I can do that.’”

Allie relapsed one more time, but when she returned to Tulsa she finally committed to attending the recovery support groups that she knew would make a difference for her. StepUP requires six months of sobriety before admission, but Allie racked up 14 months before making the move. “All of a sudden, I was back in Minnesota, and it was exactly where I was meant to be,” she remembers.

“The peer accountability and support among the kids Allie was with at Augsburg literally bridged her into sobriety,” explains Robert. Today, Allie says she can’t imagine returning to life pre-recovery.

Investing in Excellence – Now

The largest residential collegiate recovery program in the country, StepUP serves more than 100 students like Allie annually.  It’s helped more than 700 young people since its inception 18 years ago. The average rate of successful abstinence is well above 90 percent from year to year, and students’ mean GPA is over 3.2 on a 4.0 scale. As part of their recovery journey, students frequently share their personal experiences in classrooms, treatment centers, and training centers. Their transformative stories inspire others and slowly lift the stigma connected with addiction and recovery and bring understanding, acceptance, and compassion.

“What a blessing it is to accept the challenge in your life and endure it, and come out with an opportunity to not only be grateful for where you are, but to help others,” says Jill. “That’s what led us to make this contribution to Augsburg and the StepUP program. Hopefully others will recognize that there is hope and opportunity and will join us. There are students who need this, and they need it now.”

Join the Movement

At the October 24 StepUP fundraising gala, Jill and Robert will receive the Toby Piper LaBelle Award for their financial commitment to StepUP, their advocacy for recovery issues, and their leadership of the drive to raise $10 million to permanently endow the program.

“Our gift is in thanks to Augsburg, but it’s a heck of a lot more than that,” explains Robert. “It’s about taking the best program in the country and saying that it can be even better and that it needs to grow.”

To learn more about StepUP and join the movement to erase the stigma of addiction and recovery, visit or contact Keith Stout, Assistant Vice President, Advancement, at 612-330-1616 or stoutk@augsburg.edu.

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Jill and Robert Thomas, residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, will receive the Toby Piper LaBelle Award at the Augsburg College StepUP Program Gala on October 24.

StepUP program alumni and families are invited to a special program, brunch, and open house to begin the Day of Gratitude at 9:30 a.m.

Alumni, parents, and friends are invited to an evening of inspiration, entertainment, and fellowship at the StepUP Program Gala celebration in Si Melby Hall on the Augsburg College campus at 5:30 p.m.

Married more than 30 years, Jill and Robert Thomas are the proud parents of two daughters: Allie, age 28, and a 2014 graduate of Augsburg College and the StepUP program, and Olivia Jordan, age 26, currently serving as Miss USA 2015.

Robert Thomas co-owns Senior Star, a company that owns and operates senior living retirement communities throughout the Midwest. Jill and Robert are both graduates of the University of Tulsa, Robert with a BS degree in 1974, and Jill with a BS degree in 1977 and a JD degree in 1986.

They have both been actively involved in Alzheimer’s advocacy through the Alzheimer’s Association. Robert has served on the National Board and been the recipient of the Maureen Reagan award for outstanding Alzheimer’s advocacy in 2010. They are actively involved in several community organizations including the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma, Alzheimer’s Association, and the Tulsa Area United Way, to name a few.

The Thomas family has given significant time and resources to the College’s program, which is a leader and award-winning model for residential addiction recovery communities at campuses across the nation.

The Toby Piper LaBelle Award is given to a person or family that has consistently supported young people in recovery. It is named in honor of the first recipient, Toby Piper LaBelle ’96, for his insight and ability to advocate for the needs of recovering college students on a college campus. LaBelle was a lead advocate for students in recovery while he was a student at Augsburg College.

To attend the Gala, and to celebrate the contributions of the Thomas family, please register at augsburg.edu/stepup/gala.

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