Paul and LaVonne (both \u201963) Batalden\u2019s commitment to endow Augsburg University faculty with future opportunities has deep roots\u2014three generations deep, in fact\u2014and a spiritual foundation grounded in lives well-lived.<\/p>\n
Paul\u2019s grandfather, a fisherman who grew up just off the west coast of Norway and lost a brother at sea, decided in 1871 to move to Minnesota and take up farming. His name was Christian Olson, a name so common that his mail often wound up in the wrong hands, prompting him to change it to Batalden, after the island where he grew up. That first Batalden, an active supporter of education and child development, took special note of Augsburg Seminarium, which Norwegian Lutherans had founded in Marshall, Wisconsin, in 1869 and moved to Minneapolis in 1872. His youngest son, Abner Batalden, enrolled there and, despite some interruptions, earned a history degree in 1935.<\/p>\n
Abner, Paul\u2019s father, was also committed to education and understood the struggle it involved. \u201cHe was going to school during the Depression, when Augsburg was having trouble staying open. The students, many of whom were the first generation to attend college, were living hand-to-mouth, working and paying tuition. Augsburg was living on those tuitions,\u201d says Paul.<\/p>\n
Abner started the student employment service at Augsburg, worked at the publishing house, managed the bookstore, and, after a few years away, returned to take a position in the development office. He helped raise funds for the first science building, now being replaced by the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion; Paul remembers going to the dedication as a child. It was Abner\u2019s idea to establish, in 1980, a convocation and lecture series known as the Batalden Symposium on Applied Ethics.<\/p>\n
\u201cApplied ethics covers every discipline, every walk of life. It was the way he lived his life,\u201d says Paul. \u201cEthics scholars say that ethics is the application of morals to everyday life. In his mind, the life he lived was grounded in moral values, which for him were Christian. It was so fundamental, and he saw it in many lines of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEthics were looked upon as a philosophical endeavor, but he saw it as much broader,\u201d adds LaVonne, who married Paul three weeks after graduation. The two had met in a freshman English class and shared a love for science. After a globe-spanning career in pediatrics and public health that expanded their knowledge of other cultures, Paul remains active as professor emeritus at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine, and LaVonne retired recently as associate professor of natural sciences at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire. They still travel widely but now live in St. Paul, close to their family.<\/p>\n
Although they had initially wanted to endow an ethics chair, they realized that building upon Abner\u2019s foundation would serve more people. Along with Paul\u2019s brother, Stephan Batalden \u201967 and his wife Sandra, they have endowed what is now the Batalden Faculty Scholar Program in Applied Ethics, which covers the seminar series and also offers two years of release time to faculty members, who often pass along stipends to students involved in their projects. Recipients come from various fields, so far including nursing, sociology, religion, and environmental studies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s perfect. Paul\u2019s father had a vision for the future, and we have brought it into the 21st<\/sup> century,\u201d says LaVonne. \u201cWhat pleases us is that it maintains the idea of service grounded in theology and ethics, and we have broadened that.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul, who served on Augsburg\u2019s Board of Regents from 1979 to 1990, cites his concern for education\u2019s future in our culture, which depends heavily on the voluntary sector, unlike government supported health and welfare in Europe. Colleges cannot rely on tuitions alone, and religious institutions can no longer bridge the gap.<\/p>\n \u201cWe realized that Augsburg had basically no endowment, and it\u2019s clear that that pattern of financial support would not lead to more creative and flexible programming. We want to make sure that this program is secure,\u201d Paul says. \u201cCollege offered us a liberal arts education, and we are deep lovers of the liberal arts. We see their relevance to everyday life the same way my father saw ethics in everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n The couple also believes in doing what you can. They cite a favorite poem by David Whyte, quoted here in part:<\/p>\n Start close in,<\/p>\n don\u2019t take the second step<\/p>\n or the third,<\/p>\n start with the first<\/p>\n thing<\/p>\n close in,<\/p>\n the step<\/p>\n you don\u2019t want to take. . .<\/p>\n . . .<\/p>\n Start right now<\/p>\n take a small step<\/p>\n you can call your own<\/p>\n don\u2019t follow<\/p>\n someone else\u2019s<\/p>\n heroics, be humble<\/p>\n and focused,<\/p>\n start close in . . .<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul and LaVonne (both \u201963) Batalden\u2019s commitment to endow Augsburg University faculty with future opportunities has deep roots\u2014three generations deep, in fact\u2014and a spiritual foundation grounded in lives well-lived. Paul\u2019s grandfather, a fisherman who grew up just off the west coast of Norway and lost a brother at sea, decided in 1871 to move to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,7,6,3],"tags":[122,58,9,118,8,42,19],"class_list":["post-47423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-augsburg-fund","category-donor-recognition","category-gift-announcements","category-giving","category-giving-to-augsburg","tag-advancement","tag-gift-announcement","tag-gift-announcements","tag-giving","tag-giving-blog","tag-planned-giving","tag-scholarship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47423"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47548,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47423\/revisions\/47548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}