{"id":49071,"date":"2023-08-04T19:01:45","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T19:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/?p=49071"},"modified":"2023-08-04T19:02:10","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T19:02:10","slug":"leaving-a-legacy-of-a-lifetime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/2023\/08\/04\/leaving-a-legacy-of-a-lifetime\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving a Legacy of a Lifetime"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rick<\/a><\/span>Fresh into retirement, Cyndi (Cynthia) Jones, Ph.D. \u201981 is as full of spirited youth as she must have been in her cheerleader days, when she launched a career of defying expectations and mastering challenges. Together with husband, Rick Jones, who matches her brainy enthusiasm and generosity, the pair are \u201call in,\u201d pledging their entire estate to Augsburg as part of its Great Returns<\/em> campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought it would really make a difference to someone in their lives, as it did for me,\u201d says Cyndi, a nuclear engineer and Augsburg Regent. She earned other degrees from other schools\u2014a Master\u2019s in health physics from Georgia Tech and a Master\u2019s and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Maryland\u2014but those schools are already well-endowed, she points out, and it\u2019s doubtful their students get the personal support and affirmation that Cyndi treasured at Augsburg. Besides, for many Augsburg students then and now, \u201cevery cent counts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a high school student from Foley, Minnesota, Cyndi had no plans to become a nuclear physicist and eventual senior technical advisor for nuclear security at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If she imagined she would someday monitor Japan\u2019s nuclear crisis, travel the world to teach radiation safety, or enjoy four years living in Vienna, Austria, as the US nuclear safety attach\u00e9 to the U.S. Ambassador, she didn\u2019t let on. She was busy excelling on the clarinet, editing the school newspaper, and participating in band and theater. She also took physics and chemistry.<\/span><\/p>\n

When she walked into the physics room that first day, the high school teacher thought she was lost. \u201cTyping is down the hall,\u201d he said, pointing. Cyndi\u2014whose Polish dad was a machinist and English mom sold men\u2019s clothing and spent nine years managing a household without running water\u2014did not flinch. Despite her instructor\u2019s initial vociferous doubts, she flourished. Again and again. The first in her family to attend college, she rejected a full scholarship at St. Cloud State University to attend Augsburg, where she was personally welcomed by its \u201cbrilliant band director\u201d and planned to major in music, working three jobs to supplement a partial scholarship.<\/span><\/p>\n

This time fate would throw down the gauntlet. Climbing into the window of a renovated old house during a toga party, the vivacious Augsburg freshman collided with a bag of cement, breaking her left hand, which needed 13 weeks in an L-shaped cast to heal. Unable to play her clarinet, she spent J-term studying Physics for the Life Sciences with Professor Mark Engebretson, who recognized that she \u201chad a knack.\u201d Physics, Chemistry, and Calculus followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMath and music are closely related,\u201d Cyndi notes. \u201cI had fabulous professors.\u201d Dr. Ken Erickson encouraged her to forego some side jobs to focus on her grades; she became only the third woman to graduate in physics from Augsburg. \u201cHe had a profound effect at a turning point in her career,\u201d Rick says. \u201cHe gave her sound advice: to follow her passion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Career rewards lagged, but Augsburg did offer her a $100\/month stipend to teach the weekly Physics lab. And about a year after graduating, Cyndi, in her bathing suit, at her second job at the Fairview-St. Mary\u2019s swimming pool, took a phone call: an offer to fly down to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for an interview as a health physicist (Augsburg Professor Kermit Paulson had introduced Cyndi to health physics). She accepted and was offered the job on-site. \u201cI taught the instrumentation lab for 5- and 10-week health physics courses, and memorized the students\u2019 names by the end of the first week,\u201d she recalls. One of them\u2014Rick\u2014\u201cwas really cute.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rick remembers thinking the same of her. \u201cShe was something else\u2014one very smart lady, very motivated. I told her she was the one I wanted to marry, however long it took.\u201d (One year.) A California native, USC graduate and erstwhile dental hygienist, Rick served eight years in the Navy before transitioning to civil service in Washington, D.C., where he earned a Master\u2019s in radiation biology at Georgetown and retired in 2005 as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Energy. He has been instrumental in advocating for Augsburg, recognizing how much her experience there meant to his wife.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cyndi also cites the stewardship of President Paul Pribbenow as key to their gifting decisions. \u201cHe was genuinely interested in what Augsburg had done for me and has a vision for what he can do for students. He has a personal passion, a real understanding of what alumni have gone through and what kind of future Augsburg can provide for its students.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cyndi and Rick have supported Augsburg in several ways, including funding the Professor Kenneth N. Erickson Physics Scholarship and, in 2017, commemorating the new physics lab, nicknamed Landow\u2019s Photon Shop in honor of Cyndi\u2019s dad (her maiden name was Landowski) and aptly subtitled Physics: The Maestro of Science!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAugsburg was such a unique experience, and I think it\u2019s still that way,\u201d says Cyndi, the white Minnesota girl who got to interact with people from all over the world, study religions unlike her own, and benefit from the small-town, personal-touch vibe in the big-city center. \u201cThey make sure they help you finish. They\u2019re not just there to take your money. They know you\u2019re there to learn,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s been a real honor and pleasure to be on the Board two different times.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And what about that high-school naysayer? Cyndi and Rick invited him to their wedding, where he owned up to his mistake and confessed how proud he was of her, a sentiment the Augsburg faculty and administration undoubtedly share.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fresh into retirement, Cyndi (Cynthia) Jones, Ph.D. \u201981 is as full of spirited youth as she must have been in her cheerleader days, when she launched a career of defying expectations and mastering challenges. Together with husband, Rick Jones, who matches her brainy enthusiasm and generosity, the pair are \u201call in,\u201d pledging their entire estate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,214],"tags":[148,30,228,139,100],"class_list":["post-49071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-announcements","category-great-returns-campaign","tag-augsburg-university","tag-board-of-regents","tag-class-of-1981","tag-donor","tag-estate-gift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49071","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\/470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49074,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49071\/revisions\/49074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}