Augsburg College is honored to announce that it has received an unrestricted $10 million philanthropic gift from a 1965 alumnus.

The donor’s generous contribution will support a new academic building that will house a number of the College’s academic programs including biology, business, chemistry, computer science, math, physics, psychology, and religion.

“This tremendous gift will make possible our continued commitment to academic excellence, to the hands-on learning that is one of the hallmarks of the College, and to the continued best-use of our 23-acre campus,” said Augsburg College President Paul C. Pribbenow. “Augsburg is a 143-year-old anchor institution in the heart of Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. This gift puts Augsburg on the path of being a college for the 21st century, and one that continues to deliver academic excellence in the liberal arts and professional studies.”

“Augsburg College has found many ways to innovate and evolve since I was a student—while at the same time maintaining the core values that were so appealing to me,” said Augsburg College Regent Steve Wehrenberg ’78, chief executive officer of Campbell Mithun. “This gift will ensure the College remains a caring, inspiring, and delightful place for students of all kinds to learn and grow.”

New building fund exceeds $23 million

The $10 million gift brings to more than $23 million the total funds for the new building. The Augsburg College Board of Regents will continue to monitor progress on the campaign and the College’s cash position and debt capacity to determine when to set a date for groundbreaking on the first stage of the building. The total cost of the building is estimated at more than $60 million.

“In May 2012, the Regents set calendar year 2014 as a target for beginning construction, a goal they believe is feasible, especially given the excitement this lead gift will engender with other prospective donors,” Pribbenow said.

The donor, who asked to remain anonymous, is a long-time supporter of the College and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and business administration.

Augsburg College is set in a vibrant neighborhood at the heart of the Twin Cities, and offers more than 50 undergraduate majors and nine graduate degrees to nearly 4,000 students of diverse backgrounds. Augsburg College educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. The Augsburg experience is supported by an engaged community that is committed to intentional diversity in its life and work. An Augsburg education is defined by excellence in the liberal arts and professional studies, guided by the faith and values of the Lutheran church, and shaped by its urban and global settings.

The post $10 million gift to Augsburg College will launch new academic building appeared first on News and Media.

But is that really the best way to help restock a food shelf? Maybe not.

Instead of cleaning out your kitchen cupboards, give the $20 you’d spend in a week on coffee and bagels to the FoodLess FoodDrive. The Augsburg College Thrivent Fellows are sponsoring the food drive in the month of March to provide three months worth of food for the Brian Coyle Community Center food shelf.

Masha Shatanova ’13, an economics and business major, is one of the Thrivent Fellows working with the FoodLess FoodDrive. She first became interested in the Brian Coyle food shelf through her work with Augsburg’s interfaith scholars program. She hopes the FoodLess drive will be successful because of its impact on the community. “Usually you bring food to a food shelf and it might be something they don’t really need,” she said. “It’s better to give them money because they can buy healthy food that people in their area want to eat.”

Using commodity programs and bulk buying power, money in the food shelf’s hand is worth four times as our money spent in the grocery store. Not only do cash donations allow for the purchase of more food, they also enable the staff to purchase food that is used by residents of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. In addition, the Thrivent Fellows will match each dollar raised with one dollar, turning a donated dollar into $8 worth of food.

Donations can be made in envelopes which were previously distributed through campus mail (checks made to the Brian Coyle Food Shelf) or by dropping off at the Sabo Center (CB 108). Call 612-330-1624 with questions.

The post $1 = $4 = $8 for the FoodLess FoodDrive appeared first on News and Media.

Augsburg was one of the founding members of the Cedar-Riverside Partnership, a group made of the institutions in the neighborhood that are attempting to leverage their resources to make improvements to the area.

In taking a long-term look at the neighborhood, one of the biggest challenges is to determine how the youth of Cedar-Riverside can they be put in position to make a positive impact and have personal success as they become adults. Combine that with Fairview’s predicted need for more healthcare professionals moving forward, and the idea of hosting a Scrubs Camp with HealthForce Minnesota became reality.

On Sunday, more than 70 high school students—the overwhelming majority from Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools and many from within blocks of Augsburg—moved onto campus for the week.

Over the next several days, the students will learn about possible careers in the healthcare field, experience college for a few days, and hopefully become excited about their futures. The model is based on the Scrubs Camp held each summer at Winona State University.

The programming for the camp is varied. There are sessions on preparing for college and presentations on various health career options. Students will spend a morning touring the U of M, there is a day at Snelling State Park, and MnSCU’s mobile simulation lab will be on campus on Tuesday.

Many from the Augsburg community will play a role in the programming for the camp as students will learn about recovering and addiction counseling from Patrice Salmeri, being a physician assistant from faculty member Brenda Talarico, about nutrition from Brian Noy, and about water quality testing from chemistry faculty member Joan Kunz. A number of Augsburg students will also be involved with the camp.

The students will stay and eat at Augsburg though the end of the day on Thursday. The camp is also sponsored by HealthForce Minnesota, Fairview Health Systems, and the University of Minnesota.

Read the StarTribune article.

The post Urban Scrubs camp comes to Augsburg appeared first on News and Media.

That total is the equivalent of 2,791 24-hour days or 8,375 eight-hour work days, a staggering total for a college with 2,000 Day College undergraduates and 4,000 total students.

That commitment to the community and the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is part of the reason why Augsburg was named to the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction. While Augsburg is listed by U.S. News and & World Report as one of the top 25 schools in the country for service learning and has received the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement, the President’s Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition an institution can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service-learning and civic engagement.

Augsburg is the only college or university in Minnesota and one of only four ELCA institutions named to the Distinction list. Institutions were chosen based on a number of factors including the scope and innovation of service projects, the percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service, and the extent to which the school offers academic service learning courses.

“We are very proud and honored to be included in the Presidential Honor Roll,” Augsburg College President Paul C. Pribbenow said. “Civic work and serving our neighbor are at the core of Augsburg’s efforts to educate students for democracy.”

Last school year, 900 Augsburg students participated in service learning and 1,200 students participated in more than 20 hours of community service per semester. Much of Augsburg’s community service takes place in course-embedded service learning. In addition, Bonner Leaders, who are paired with non-profit community organizations, contributed nearly 5,000 hours of service while students involved in Campus Kitchen volunteered more than 3,000 hours of their time.

Nationally, college students make a significant contribution to the volunteer sector. In 2009, 3.16 million students performed more than 300 million hours of service, according to a study done by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Other ELCA institutions named to the Distinction list were Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.; Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, and Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Fourteen other Minnesota institutions were listed on the broader Honor Roll.

The post Augsburg College receives national recognition for community service appeared first on News and Media.

For his URGO research project, titled Augsburg College Maps and Papers, Meza-Rodriguez is exploring the relationship of the College to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, examining the history, growth, and present relationships. His goal is to identify best practices for colleges and universities that seek to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with their surrounding communities.

Meza-Rodriguez initially sought to determine whether Augsburg really was serving its neighbors, particularly the immigrant communities in the Cedar-Riverside area. “I have been a critic of Augsburg in this area,” he said.

He chose to work with Augsburg’s president, Paul Pribbenow, because of Pribbenow’s expressed commitments to and understanding of the neighborhoods. “If I am being critical of what he says,” Meza-Rodriguez says, “then why wouldn’t I work with him so we can learn together?”

With Pribbenow, Meza-Rodriguez began by looking at Augsburg’s growth over the last 140 years and how it has affected the community. He found that from the 1920s to the 60s, Augsburg was very isolated from the neighborhood, particularly when the College considered relocation. “They trained seminarians to go into the community, but not into the neighborhood,” he said.

Pribbenow has drawn on his research on Jane Addams and her work with Hull House on the west side of Chicago to assist Meza-Rodriguez in his project. He’s helped Meza-Rodriguez understand that knowing our neighbors helps us serve them, or work with them, in the most appropriate and beneficial ways. “We are trying to define where we haven’t known our neighbor well and to see where we haven’t been as effective or where we said, ‘We know best,'” Pribbenow said.

In early July, Meza-Rodriguez traveled to New York to visit Wagner College on Staten Island. There he met with people who have developed Wagner’s reputation of playing an active role in the community.

“The most impressive, or most evident, is the way departments partner with organizations in the community through courses and community-identified projects. This benefits both the students and the community,” he says.

He also spent time at University of Pennsylvania where he says, much of the university’s outreach work is being done in area schools. The schools are used as community centers where students and members of the broader community can benefit from the various programs in place.

At Wagner and U Penn, Meza-Rodriguez says the community helps identify where resources from the schools can be applied. He also noted that the most committed faculty and staff at both schools had the strongest connections to the community and were committed to continuing their work.

“At Augsburg, I have noticed that pattern, too,” he says.

“The underlying goal of all institutions is education, and a better and healthier community,” Meza-Rodriguez says. “There is also the theme of mutual benefit—where I don’t go into a community and say, ‘This is what you need.’ Rather, I have the privilege of offering some of my resources for the benefit of the community, and in the case of institutions, for the benefit of students as well.”

The post Knowing and serving our neighbors appeared first on News and Media.