This spring, Augsburg students have received awards and scholarships from some of the top programs across the country, highlighting different disciplines, experiences, locations, and goals. Meet our award winners and explore their areas of interest. 

Goldwater Scholarship

Luke Omodt ’25 has been named a , one of the top STEM awards in the country. The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation provides scholarships to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Omodt, a physics and chemistry double major, is currently conducting computational materials science research with Assistant Professor of Physics Daniel Hickox-Young, which will continue into the summer thanks to funding from Dean and Amy Sundquist. Previously, Omodt conducted research with Assistant Professor of Physics Moumita Dasgupta, as well as at the University of Minnesota and Cornell University. 

Fulbright Teaching Assistantship

Emma Joswiak-McLaughlin ’24 has been awarded a to Bulgaria. The education major is a member of the National Education Association Aspiring Educators program as well as Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communication Studies Honor Society. She has worked for Augsburg’s Writing Center and is currently student-teaching at Southwest High School in Minneapolis. To prepare for her Fulbright grant, Joswiak-McLaughlin has been volunteering at a number of animal rescue organizations, learning Bulgarian, and attempting to cook Bulgarian cuisine. 

Critical Language Scholarship Spark

Elizabeth Goff ’25 is majoring in psychology and has a double minor in studio art and religion. She won the , a year-long program designed to help undergraduate students learn languages and enhance their global engagement. Over the summer, Goff will be studying Russian virtually. Only 10% of applicants win the award nationwide. She hopes to use this new knowledge to help her with her research in the future. “With CLS Spark, I will have the ability to expand my knowledge in other countries’ methods in research when it comes to social isolation, loneliness, and accessibility for homebound and at-risk populations,” Goff says.

Peace Scholars

On campus, Augsburg’s Norway Hub recently announced the 2024-25 Peace Scholars. Sara Sirag ’25 and Anna Hudak ’25 will be representing Augsburg University while in Norway this summer. The goal of the Peace Scholars program is to develop student leaders inspired to careers or lifelong interests in world peace issues. While attending University of Oslo International Summer School, these students will deepen their understanding of the central issues and theories regarding conflict, war, and peace. 

Sirag is a social work major and first-generation college student. She was born in Eritrea and raised in Minnesota. Her passion for prison reform and studying mass incarceration informs her interest in Norway and peace studies. She has a strong appreciation for Norway’s welfare systems and their prison systems rooted in rehabilitation and restorative justice. Her goal is to work with diverse populations while challenging and pushing herself to understand different systems. She believes in advocating for change and those enduring injustices across the world.

Hudak is an international relations and history double major, with a minor in music. She’s from Prior Lake, Minnesota. During her time studying abroad in Greece, Anna developed a passion for peace studies and promoting intercultural dialogue, recognizing its power as a catalyst for positive change in an increasingly interconnected world. In addition to teaching English in Greece after graduation, Anna hopes to use her affinity for writing and storytelling to illuminate underrepresented narratives and non-violent conflict resolutions as a peace journalist.

Congratulations to these students on their outstanding achievements!

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Augsburg Associate Professor and Physician Assistant Program Director Alicia Quella has received an AAPA-PAEA Inaugural Research Fellowship. This new fellowship program is sponsored by the American Academy of Physician Assistants and the Physician Assistant Education Association. Each fellow’s institution will receive a grant of up to $25,000, which will allow recipients to focus on one of a number of research topics developed by the fellowship’s organizers. Quella also 

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In a conversation with KARE 11 Reporter Adrienne Broaddus, Kirsten Delegard, Augsburg University scholar-in-residence and director of the Mapping Prejudice project, discussed the lasting impact of historically discriminatory housing policies in Minneapolis.

“People think that because we didn’t have segregated water fountains or waiting rooms that we didn’t have segregation in Minneapolis,” she said, “but racial covenants determined who could live where … We are still living with the legacy of these policies. We can point to all kinds of disparities especially in area of home ownership that we are living with today because of these polices enforced over the last century.”

The Mapping Prejudice project, once complete, will be the first comprehensive map of racial covenants for a U.S. city.  about the project.

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Under the Mapping Prejudice Project, scholars from the University of Minnesota and Augsburg University have analyzed over 1.4 million historic Minneapolis housing deeds, finding racist language in more 20,000 documents. These racial covenants forbidding the sale of property to people of color are no longer legally enforceable, but researchers hope documenting this side of the city’s history will influence urban planning in years to come.

This article describes the methods that the Mapping Prejudice researchers use to conduct their work and discusses the motivations for the project with project director and Augsburg scholar-in-residence Kirsten Delegard.

The research group plans to map Minneapolis by the end of 2017 and all of Hennepin County next year.

Read the full story at the Minnesota Daily News site.

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Augsburg President Paul Pribbenow talks with the Star Tribune’s Randy Furst about how the Augsburg House — and much of South Minneapolis — were once governed by discriminatory housing policies. While the historical covenants are no longer legally binding, Augsburg is seeking a method to nullify the prohibition while still preserving the historical record, “so that we never lose sight of the actions that have segregated and repressed many,” Pribbenow said.

The findings about residential properties in South Minneapolis are part of the Mapping Prejudice project, led by a team of researchers from Augsburg and the University of Minnesota. For more information about the project, see . Go to the for information about other South Minneapolis homes, a perspective from a Minneapolis real estate lawyer, and an interactive map showing the growth of racially restrictive deeds across Minneapolis from 1910 to 1955.

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The National Science Foundation awarded Augsburg College a highly competitive $1 million grant for continued support of the AugSTEM Scholars Program. Under the direction of Professor Rebekah Dupont, the program will provide scholarships to as many as 80 academically talented students with financial need who are pursuing studies in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Editor’s Note: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 1565060 and 1154096. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Matthew Beckman

Beckman, Two Bulls, and Myrbo conducted research during summer 2014 that involved taking a core sample of lake sediment and studying its pollen content as a way to examine the ecological record of an early-19th-century Dakota agricultural village on its shore. This geological study of the lake showed a long history of Native American natural resource stewardship that extended centuries before the arrival of surveyors backed by John C. Calhoun, the lake’s namesake.

Visit the Star Tribune website to read, “.”

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Held in Oren Gateway Center, the festival falls at the end of each academic year and is a culmination of achievement featuring work across divisions and departments.

This year, more than 80 students will present their research to the Augsburg community during a poster session. Zyzzogeton is an opportunity to hear about the exciting scholarship happening on campus and refreshments will be served throughout the event.

Zyzzogeton is sponsored by the , (URGO), and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) programs. to read students’ poster session abstracts.

Augsburg’s Zyzzogeton celebration is the oldest festival of its kind in the United States. A “zyzzogeton” is a green leaf-hopper as well as one of the last words in the Webster Collegiate Dictionary, a fitting symbol to mark the end of the academic year.

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Since 2010, political protests and revolts have erupted in more than a dozen Arab nations, and one of the American media’s most significant impacts on the demonstrations came from a medium that is, perhaps, least expected.

Rap, a music genre rooted in the United States, became an outlet for people to express frustration and discontent with their governments during the Arab Spring. This summer, Samantha Cantrall ’14 participated in an undergraduate research opportunity at Augsburg College, and she identified the influence of music on contemporary politics.

“This relatively new and almost exclusively Western genre appeared in some of the most unexpected places of the world,” Cantrall explained. “In the midst of these protests, music was clearly prevalent.”

Cantrall for 10 weeks conducted research through a grant from the Augsburg College (URGO).

URGO researchers are mentored by Augsburg professors who assist students with their proposals, research methods, data analysis, and final reports.

As an Augsburg Concert Band member and a communication studies major from Tomahawk, Wisc., Cantrall coupled knowledge from her degree program with her interest in music. Her research focused on rap music in the uprisings of Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen.

Cantrall’s adviser, Robert Stacke, is the chair of the Augsburg music department and a scholar who has studied revolutionary music in countries that include Haiti, Nicaragua, and Northern Ireland, which makes him the near-perfect adviser for this project. When most countries undergo political upheaval, “the revolutionaries have music that demonstrates or expresses their desire for change,” Stacke said.

As a mentor, Stacke introduced Cantrall to leading scholars in the field of ethnomusicology: the study of music in a sociocultural context. Cantrall’s research chronicles the history of the Arab Spring through the hip-hop art form and succeeds in “capturing a musical idiom in words,” Stacke said. While Cantrall’s summer research is complete, she plans to investigate whether rap can sustain its popularity during peaceful times in Arab nations. She is applying for an additional URGO grant for the upcoming academic year and will work toward publishing her findings in a scholarly journal.

Cantrall has analyzed news reports and has conducted interviews with members of Augsburg’s diverse student body. “Interviews take this research further than just synthesizing other written material. URGO is more than just a term paper; it’s true research and a contribution to the body of knowledge,” Stacke said.

Cantrall asked her peers to recount their first-hand experiences in Arab nations during times of protest. “In a personal interview, a student from Yemen claimed that chanting and drumming gave people something to do in the square while they waited to be heard,” Cantrall said.

Music gave the protesters a sense of unity, a collective voice, and an outlet to express their dissent, Cantrall said. “Although non-violent, there’s a great amount of energy found in the lyrics of these protest songs,” she said. “The energy could have been used [instead] to wield guns and bombs.”

In addition to speaking with fellow students, Cantrall interviewed journalist David Peisner of SPIN magazine. He published the article “Inside Tunisia’s Hip-Hop Revolution” in August 2011. In order to write the article, Peisner visited Tunisia and spoke with the rapper El General, a musician who Cantrall featured during a post-research presentation. Peisner helped Cantrall understand why the Arab rap protest music movement became popular within multiple nations. According to Peisner, music became a reflective element of the uprisings because it expressed exactly what the protesters had been fighting for: freedom of speech.

Cantrall became interested in rap music, in part, after hearing Dessa—a renowned rapper, singer, and writer—speak at the held at Augsburg in March 2012. Dessa discussed some of the social and moral dimensions of hip-hop as a force for peace with the power unite communities in the presentation “.” The Nobel Peace Prize Forum is a learning experience that brings together Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, civic leaders, scholars, students, and other citizens with the mission of inspiring and engaging people to become full participants in peacemaking efforts around the world.

And, as Cantrall discerned through research, “Rap has served as an alternative dissenting voice to oppose the violent fighting…it is the music of struggle, attitude, and simplicity.”

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Learn about the Augsburg College , held July 25-26. On-campus research is an opportunity for Cantrall—and other Augsburg undergraduate students—to develop research, analytic and problem-solving skills that are critical in graduate school, in professional study, and in the workplace.

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Augsburg College’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Graduate Opportunity (URGO) provides summer research grants for students interested in professional study. Students further classroom learning with critical thinking and thoughtful analysis through faculty-led research that complements their degree programs.

This year, students’ topics include how individuals use tattoos to reflect self identity; studies of the motion of Daphnia magna, a water flea; the influence of rap music in the Arab Spring revolutions; and the expression of gender nonconforming identities, among others.

Augsburg’s research program is designed to help students achieve their educational goals, which range from attending graduate school to publishing work in academic journals, and from developing a mentor relationship to gaining extensive knowledge in their discipline.

Most URGO students devote 40 hours per week to the projects for 10 weeks, and half-time URGO students conduct 200 hours of research between May 21 and July 27. Each student works with an Augsburg faculty mentor to complete research that culminates in a final paper and their URGO Summer Research Conference presentation.

“The students have prepared interesting and academically sophisticated 15-minute presentations in which they’ll present their research methods and findings,” said Colin Irvine, URGO summer research coordinator. “The conference is open to the public, and we encourage everyone to support the students by attending a session or, if pressed for time, just one presentation.”

URGO students also participate each spring in Zyzzogeton, the annual celebration of the creativity and scholarship of Augsburg College undergraduate students.

Some students also conduct research through the academic department in which they are majoring. Others conduct summer research through the , a 10-week original research program meant to help prepare students for graduate school.

URGO Summer Research Conference

Wednesday, July 25

Kennedy Center Room 305

9 a.m. to 4:40 p.m.

Thursday, July 26

Sverdrup Hall Room 206

9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.

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