{"id":47701,"date":"2019-02-08T19:43:11","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T19:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/?p=47701"},"modified":"2019-02-22T21:35:05","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T21:35:05","slug":"from-nursing-major-to-fulbright-scholar-in-norway-how-donor-sandra-simpson-phaup-64-was-shaped-by-augsburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/2019\/02\/08\/from-nursing-major-to-fulbright-scholar-in-norway-how-donor-sandra-simpson-phaup-64-was-shaped-by-augsburg\/","title":{"rendered":"From Nursing Major to Fulbright Scholar in Norway: How Donor Sandra Simpson Phaup ’64 was Shaped by Augsburg"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"SANDRA<\/a>
Sandra Simpson Phaup.
Photo by: Duy Tran Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She called herself Sandy Simpson from Spicer back then, and her journey from aspiring Willmar High School student to generous Augsburg University donor was as lively and adventurous as Sandra Simpson Phaup \u201964 is today.<\/p>\n

Her college-educated parents were trained as teachers, so it was no surprise that Phaup planned to go to college. But her first-choice school cost too much, and her enrollment at Lutheran Bible Institute was short-lived. Her goal of becoming a nurse landed her on the Augsburg campus, where she got a small scholarship and found a welcoming home she had not anticipated.<\/p>\n

Imagine her surprise when a professor in the theater department allowed her to keep her bicycle in the old theater. \u201cI found living in the city a little confining after being in the country, so she gave me a key,\u201d recalls Phaup. \u201cAnd I had Professor Philip Thompson for art, which I loved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slowly but surely, she found her way. Though she had made a pact with her parents to earn a nursing degree, her sophomore chemistry class \u201cfelt like they were all speaking Russian\u2014I never grasped it,\u201d she says. So without consulting mom and dad, she transferred out, signing up for a 17th-century\u00a0British literature class instead. English and teaching became her major and art her minor, but she also pursued an interest in Norwegian language and culture sparked by the Norwegian grandparent who moved in with the family while she was growing up. She read Nobel Prize writer Knut Hamsun and Ole Edvard R\u00f6lvaag\u2019s Giants in the Earth<\/em>. She carried a small notebook to record Norwegian words.<\/p>\n

Her teachers picked up on her ongoing fascination. \u201cWhen art topics were assigned, we didn\u2019t get to pick. My friends got Monet and Renoir and I got Edvard Munch. I thought, \u2018what am I going to do with this German expressionist?\u2019 Two days before the paper was due, I hadn\u2019t even started. I rode my bike to the Minneapolis library, checked the card catalogue, and found out he was Norwegian! I was so excited I did nothing but read about him,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was life-changing. Augsburg professors know their students really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a sophomore, Phaup asked a Norwegian family friend in Spicer to help her move to Norway for a year, but her parents insisted that she finish college first. As a senior, she was registering for classes when a friend reported that their English professor had suggested she apply for a Fulbright scholarship. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d was her first response. But she applied, was accepted, and arrived in Norway\u2014\u201cso focused and full of myself\u201d\u2014the following year. There she met relatives she hadn\u2019t known existed as well as her husband-to-be, a Fulbright scholar pursuing an economics Ph.D.<\/p>\n

At home in Arlington, Virginia, since 1976, Phaup earned a master\u2019s degree and taught English and art for 30 years in England, Ohio, and Salem, Virginia, where her lively embrace of all study topics, from Bob Dylan to Allen Ginsberg, made her a favorite among students who still invite her to reunions. As a Kennedy Center teaching artist, she is occasionally invited to lead teacher workshops that integrate visuals arts and writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve really been blessed,\u201d Phaup says, \u201cand I thank Augsburg for making that happen. That\u2019s why I have been donating every year.\u201d She describes her gifts as an \u201coffering of thanksgiving for what my experience was,\u201d although she realizes that today\u2019s students will have quite different experiences. \u201cAugsburg is thriving where it is, serving a unique population, and I very much support the notion of serving that community,\u201d she adds. \u201cAugsburg is doing important work in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She called herself Sandy Simpson from Spicer back then, and her journey from aspiring Willmar High School student to generous Augsburg University donor was as lively and adventurous as Sandra Simpson Phaup \u201964 is today. Her college-educated parents were trained as teachers, so it was no surprise that Phaup planned to go to college. But …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donor-recognition","category-gift-announcements","category-giving","category-giving-to-augsburg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47701","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47703,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47701\/revisions\/47703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}