During the winter of her junior year at Augsburg University, Aaliyah Abdi ’23 received shocking and unimaginable news.

Her body was starting to reject a kidney transplant from when she was 14 years old.

There hadn’t been any problems in the seven years since Abdi had received the kidney, donated by her mother. But suddenly, Abdi’s doctor was telling her that she’d have to either go on dialysis—an ongoing medical treatment to clean a person’s blood amid kidney failure—or get another kidney transplant soon.

“It was just a sporadic rejection,” Abdi said. Her first kidney transplant was needed because of an autoimmune disease. But this time, “there wasn’t any underlying issue with my health that would have warranted the rejection of my kidney. It just happened. The doctor said that’s just what happens to some people.”

Abdi hoped to find a kidney donor quickly. Doing so would mean she could skip the exhausting and time-consuming dialysis treatment. However, she didn’t have any immediate options. Abdi’s mother had already donated for her first kidney transplant—she couldn’t donate again. And the rest of Abdi’s family members and close friends were unable to donate for other reasons.

“A handful of people were willing to,” she said. But when these prospective kidney donors did a Mayo Clinic online assessment to see if they were eligible, each one was rejected.

“I was like, ‘Oh wow, that kind of sucks. But it is what it is,’” Abdi said.

With her family and friends unable to donate, Abdi was unsure of who to ask next.

What she didn’t know at the time was that one of her teachers at Augsburg also had kidney donation on her mind. For years, French instructor Sharon Gerlach had felt called to donate a kidney, but she didn’t know anybody who needed one. Although Abdi was in her second semester of Gerlach’s class, she had not shared her health struggles with her teacher. Neither of them knew what the other was thinking.

‘It was on my heart’

Gerlach had thought about kidney donation since 2009, when she read a newspaper article about the need for these life-saving procedures. “It just kind of struck me as something I’d like to do someday, if I knew somebody and if I was a match,” she said.

Then, Gerlach’s mother was diagnosed with kidney disease. “I thought, ‘Well, if my mom needed a kidney someday, I’m totally on board with that.’ But her kidney disease was not progressive, so she never had a need for dialysis, and she never needed a kidney donor at any time,” Gerlach said.

Still, reflecting on her mother’s diagnosis got Gerlach thinking more and more about kidney donation. She contemplated it for years, saving articles on the topic whenever she’d come across them. In 2021, Gerlach even considered donating a kidney anonymously.

“It was still really on my radar and on my heart,” she said. “I was just thinking, ‘I’m healthy now, so now might be a good time to donate a kidney.’”

She asked her husband about whether she should donate anonymously, but he was concerned the procedure might affect her ability to care for their youngest son. He suggested she hold off for a few years, and since she didn’t personally know anyone who needed a kidney donor, Gerlach set the idea aside for a while.

Being a student on dialysis

In March 2022, a few months after Abdi’s body began to reject her kidney, her health got worse, and she could no longer put off dialysis treatment. She began to go to a dialysis facility three times a week, for three to four hours at a time. After each appointment, she’d feel completely drained.

“It was hard,” Abdi said. “Dialysis is so taxing on your body. Even though you’re sitting in a chair for three or four hours, it feels like you ran a mile. You’re out of breath; you’re so exhausted because your blood is being pulled out and drained and cleaned.”

As a psychology major approaching her senior year, Abdi worked hard to keep up with her schoolwork amid dealing with her health issues. She scheduled classes around her dialysis appointments, and she worked to finish her homework during the first hours of dialysis, before she became too tired to do it.

“It took a lot of time management,” she said. “Oh my gosh, it was so much time management.”

The exhaustion also affected Abdi’s life outside of class. “I felt like I missed out on a lot of things like just going out to a movie at night or going out to dinner because I would be so tired,” she said.

For the most part, Abdi kept her struggles to herself. Most people at school didn’t know she was on dialysis, she said. If she had to miss class because of an appointment, she’d usually just tell the professor she had “a medical issue” without getting into details.

“I would almost try to create two different versions of myself. There was my ‘dialysis and sick me,’ which a lot of my family and closest friends were involved with. But my ‘school self’ was completely normal,” Abdi said.

Then, one day in late April, she was so drained from dialysis that she wasn’t going to make it to French class. She emailed Gerlach.

“I just told her flat out, because I was tired of holding it. I was kind of at my last point,” Abdi said. “I told her, ‘I’m not coming to class because I’m exhausted from dialysis’—and that’s what kind of sparked the whole conversation.”

Making the connection

The weekend before she received Abdi’s email, Gerlach had decided to pray about kidney donation.

“I really felt like I should donate a kidney soon because I knew I was in good health and I’ve got the support network, and you never know what’s going to happen,” Gerlach said. “I remember, I just decided to pray about it. I’m a person of faith, and I kind of thought, ‘God, if you’re going to place this on my heart, open that door for me, or just make it clear if this is something I should pursue.’”

When Gerlach got to campus on Monday, she saw Abdi’s email about dialysis. “I thought, ‘Dialysis? I know what that means,’” Gerlach said. “And I’d had no clue. Aaliyah had never given any indication that she had any serious health problems or any kidney issues at all.”

Gerlach responded with sympathy for what Abdi was going through and asked if this meant she needed a kidney donor. Gerlach wasn’t offering, but she wanted to know more about Abdi’s situation.

“When I saw her ask that,” Abdi said, “I was like, ‘Stop! Do you know somebody?’ It was such a weird email thread because I just kind of woke up. I was like, ‘No, she can’t be talking like this.’”

The email connection moved Gerlach, too. “It really hit me,” she said. “I honestly wanted to say ‘yes’ right away, but I had to check with my family first.”

Gerlach took time to research the process of kidney donation and to discuss the implications with her husband.

In the meantime, Abdi had her final exam for Gerlach’s class. As Abdi was leaving the classroom, Gerlach stopped her to say she’d been thinking about her ever since their email exchange.

Gerlach recalled, “She kind of looked at me and asked, ‘Have you thought about it? Would you be willing to donate?’”

But Gerlach was still in the process of discussing it with her family. “That was really hard to have her ask me directly and not be able to say ‘yes’ right away because I really wanted to,” Gerlach said.

After that conversation, Abdi assumed Gerlach would not donate her kidney. She was disappointed, but she understood. “I was like, ‘Okay, no worries,’” Abdi said, “and I left that school year, my junior year, thinking, ‘It’s okay. I’m just going to have to keep doing dialysis.’”

Saying ‘yes’

Several weeks later, while Abdi was on campus doing research with the McNair Scholars Program, she got an email from Gerlach.

It said Gerlach wanted to donate her kidney.

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, no way,’” Abdi said. She didn’t want to get her hopes up because her other potential donors had turned out to be ineligible.

“But then,” Abdi said, “I hopped on a Zoom call with Sharon. She was telling me the story of how she understood and how kidney disease had affected her life.”

Abdi could barely believe what she was hearing. “It felt like she needed to do it. And I was like, ‘You’re joking with me right now. You’re joking!’”

During that Zoom call, Gerlach and Abdi shared their blood types and discovered they wouldn’t be a match for a direct donation, Gerlach said.

However, they decided to proceed because, if eligible, Gerlach could donate on Abdi’s behalf, putting Abdi in line to receive a kidney from another living donor. The benefit of connecting with a living donor, , is that the recipient can have their transplant sooner than if they were on a waitlist for a kidney from a deceased donor.

Abdi sent Gerlach the link to the Mayo Clinic online questionnaire to see if she was eligible—and Gerlach passed. Then, Gerlach had to participate in a couple of phone interviews followed by two days of in-person testing at the clinic in Rochester to confirm her eligibility to donate.

On June 29, Gerlach was officially approved to donate her kidney on Abdi’s behalf.

When Abdi heard this news, the donation finally felt real. “When Sharon told me again—after she did all the Mayo Clinic things—that she was accepted, I cried,” Abdi said. “I think I was walking somewhere when I got the email, and I just stopped. I sat down, and I cried.”

Abdi’s family and friends were relieved and overjoyed, too. “They saw me struggle for a long time,” she said.

“I was so happy and thankful,” Abdi continued. “How could I not be thankful? It’s somebody who’s not related to me, who had just met me over the course of a year and, out of the kindness of her heart, was able to do something so selfless and give me another chance of just living a normal life.”

The donation process

Gerlach’s kidney would be given to someone on the National Kidney Registry waitlist, and, in exchange for this donation, Abdi would be placed on the waitlist to be matched with a living kidney donor.

Gerlach’s donation surgery was scheduled for August 11 at Mayo Clinic. She wanted to be able to recover in time to teach the Fall 2022 semester.

“I figured that would give me at least three weeks to recover before classes started. That was kind of my criteria,” she said.

The surgery went smoothly. When Gerlach woke up in her hospital room, she had an email from the son of the person who received her kidney.

“When you’re donating like that, you may not ever know who you donated to because they keep each person’s confidentiality,” Gerlach said. “I had signed a release saying it’s fine to share my contact information with my recipient, and I didn’t necessarily expect to hear back from them.”

But the email meant a lot to her. “It said, ‘Thank you for saving my father’s life,’” Gerlach said.

Gerlach stayed in Rochester for a few nights after her surgery, then continued her recovery at home. The process went quicker than she expected. “I felt up to driving after 10 days, and the first place I came to, actually, was a faculty workshop at Augsburg,” she said.

“Two weeks to the day after my surgery, I was feeling so good I decided to go to the State Fair,” she added. “I did get tired more quickly and had to sit down to take a little nap, but I had a great day.”

Eventually, Gerlach fully recovered without any problems. “Some people wonder, are there lasting effects of donating a kidney? For me, none at all,” she said. “They did all kinds of follow-up tests on me. You can live perfectly healthy with good kidney function with one kidney.”

A long wait

Meanwhile, Gerlach stayed in touch with Abdi, who was waiting for a donor match from the kidney exchange.

The wait was longer than anticipated. Abdi had tried to work with her medical team to get a kidney transplant around the same time as Gerlach’s donation surgery, but another unrelated health problem came up. Abdi had to be pulled off the kidney waitlist until she was healthy enough for surgery.

“This other health issue affected my eye,” Abdi said, “and it just kind of happened randomly. So, my kidney team was like, ‘We’re going to pump the brakes on you.’”

In November 2022, her doctor gave her the green light for transplant surgery and she got back on the waitlist. But it would still be months before she’d get matched with a donor.

“I had waited for so long already,” Abdi recalled. “I was trying to get that kidney so that I could finish off the rest of my senior year feeling OK.”

In March 2023, she finally got the call. She’d been matched with a donor. Her transplant was scheduled for April 19 at Mayo Clinic.

Abdi would have to stay in Rochester for two to three weeks after surgery for recovery and follow-up tests. Determined to graduate on time, she emailed her professors so they could help her plan to finish her schoolwork before the surgery or remotely.

In those emails, Abdi finally told her professors that she’d be having a kidney transplant. They offered a lot of support, she said. “They were like, ‘Congratulations! We didn’t even know you were dealing with that.’”

On April 19, Abdi headed to Mayo Clinic for her surgery—but she was feeling sick.

After preoperative testing, Abdi’s doctor told her she had a high fever and could not go through with the transplant.

“I was fighting,” Abdi said, “and I was so sad that day when they said I couldn’t get the kidney.”

‘Such a sweet gift’

When Abdi got back to Minneapolis, she felt deeply disappointed. “It was like the wind was kicked out of me,” she said. She’d have to wait to get matched with another donor, and she didn’t know how long that would take.

“It was so sad,” Abdi said. “I had already said goodbye to all my friends and family and my teachers. So, when I came back, everyone was super sad. But I was like, ‘It is what it is. I’ll get a call eventually, when it’s my time.’”

With most of her schoolwork done, Abdi mostly just rested and spent time with her family until she could graduate. She also continued dialysis.

On May 3, Abdi proudly walked in Augsburg’s commencement ceremony with her family and Gerlach supporting her.

Then, the next day, Abdi got a call from her medical team. They told her she’d been matched with another donor.

“They got me a kidney. It was such a sweet gift,” she said. “Yes, I graduated on dialysis and with all my health issues, but to be done with it during the same year was such a gift for me. I was so thankful for that.”

Abdi’s transplant surgery was scheduled for May 30, and in the week leading up to it, she essentially quarantined herself. She didn’t want to get sick again.

“I was like, ‘Nobody come see me, and I’m not going out. I’m not trying to get sick this time.’ I was not playing,” she said.

On May 30, Abdi returned to Mayo Clinic and her surgery went well. She recalled, “I woke up and asked, ‘They gave me the kidney, right?’ and the nurse told me, ‘Yeah, you got a kidney. You’re all good; you’re all fine.’ And then I just started crying. I was so happy.”

Abdi’s recovery went smoothly, and she stayed in touch with Gerlach throughout the process.

She also contacted her donor to express her gratitude. “I loved having my Zoom conversation with him,” Abdi said. “Much like Sharon, he felt like it was something he needed to do. He was not donating on anybody’s behalf. He just did it. … Nobody technically had any ties where they had to do it for somebody else. They just did it, and then I ended up with a new kidney. That’s just very sweet.”

Moving forward

To Gerlach, the donation experience felt impactful for several reasons.

“I can’t think of anyone I would rather donate my kidney for than Aaliyah. She’s got so much potential and so much life ahead of her. I was just really, really glad that I could help someone like her,” Gerlach said. “And the other part of the story is knowing that I helped two people kind of get their normal lives back, because we did the exchange. That was really meaningful to me.”

Gerlach encourages anyone interested in donating a kidney to seriously look into it. “If someone feels like they might be willing to do it, I would say definitely consider it. Definitely be open to it if you’re in good health and if you have the support. It’s something you can do to save somebody’s life, and there’s so many people on the waitlist,” she said.

“Not everybody’s called to do everything,” Gerlach said, “but I’ve been blessed with really good health, and so this is something that I could do. It’s not often that you can do something that will save someone’s life. That’s pretty rare.”

Abdi has been in good health since the transplant. She said she’s working at two mental health clinics in the Twin Cities and has just been enjoying life.

“My kidney is working great,” she said. “My energy levels have increased, my appetite has increased, and I feel like my outlook has changed, too.”

Abdi added that she hopes students who hear her story will be inspired to be more open about their own struggles. She made the personal decision to keep her health issues to herself for a long time, she said, “but everybody at school was really sweet and supportive of me once I was able to tell them.”

“It can be very difficult to share the things that are affecting you with other people aside from your immediate family and friends,” Abdi said. “But the more I spoke about it, I realized, the better I felt. Just be more open to any relationship you have and to your own personal story. Because if you need something, the person that might be able to give it to you might just be teaching you.”

Top image: French instructor Sharon Gerlach�����Ի� Aaliyah Abdi ’23 in the quad on Augsburg’s campus (Courtesy photo)

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For most of her life, Madelyne Yang ’26 thought she’d never go to college.

“During my senior year of high school, I was like, ‘I don’t want to go. I’m not going to be able to afford it. My situation is horrible.’ Going to college was honestly not a thought in my head,” she said.

Then, a teacher told her about Minnesota’s new Fostering Independence Grant. As a student with a foster care background in Minnesota, Yang would qualify for a grant to cover the full cost of her college attendance.

“At first, I was like, ‘That must be fake. No way,’” Yang said.

But once she learned more about the program, she decided to go for it.

Yang applied to Augsburg University and two other Minnesota colleges—but because she’d grown up in the Twin Cities, Augsburg was her first choice.

When Yang arrived at Augsburg in Fall 2022, she found a full support system waiting for her. It was the first semester the university offered Augsburg Family Scholars, a new program that aims to narrow the opportunity gap for students with foster care backgrounds.

“Augsburg Family Scholars has been awesome. I haven’t heard of another university doing this,” Yang said. “I didn’t expect it, honestly, but it’s been a big help.”

According to Augsburg Family Scholars Executive Director Tim Pippert, Augsburg is the only university in Minnesota and one of only a few in the Midwest with a program specifically designed to support students who’ve experienced foster care.

“We’re the only institution doing anything like this,” said Pippert, who is also Augsburg’s Joel Torstenson Endowed Professor of Sociology. “If being in foster care was a significant part of your past and that’s an important aspect of who you are, then Augsburg Family Scholars is absolutely something you could be a part of.”

An accelerated start

Pippert led the creation of Family Scholars as a response to some of his experiences teaching sociology at Augsburg.

“As a family sociologist, I got tired of being the professor who talked about how our foster care systems really just set up youth for failure,” he said. “I love teaching, and I still want to do that, but I was also thinking about ways in which I could do something more.”

Then, in May 2021, Pippert began a yearlong fellowship with the Lutheran Education Conference in North America, which required him to complete a leadership project. He chose to develop a program to support students from foster care.

At the time, Pippert didn’t know that the state of Minnesota had its Fostering Independence Grant in the works. “I had started developing what I thought would be a proposal to launch something in a couple of years,” he said.

But after Minnesota legislation to establish the state grant passed in the summer of 2021, Pippert quickly accelerated his plans for Augsburg’s program. By Fall 2022, Family Scholars was ready and began serving 15 students.

The state legislation not only sped up Pippert’s timeline for the Augsburg program—it also changed the way he shaped the program to most effectively support students.

“Originally, I thought I was going to have to fundraise to help pay the tuition for fosters,” Pippert said. With the Fostering Independence Grant, the need to cover tuition immediately went off the table, so Pippert focused on efforts to enhance the student experience and retention.

“Just having the state pay your way isn’t enough,” he said. “Having the financial resources, they’re amazing. It is a really good state grant. But it’s not enough on its own, and there’s way more to college success than paying for college.”

In addition to financial challenges, foster youth often experience instability and frequent changes in where they live and where they go to school, according to the National Foster Youth Institute. This contributes to academic difficulties, with only 50% of foster youth finishing high school, studies show.

“This program, Augsburg Family Scholars, is based on the idea that if somebody has worked hard enough to get to college, then we will support them and do what we can to help them finish,” Pippert said.

Building a support system

Family Scholars is built around three components: financial support, academic support, and community and relationship support.

The financial support involves helping students navigate the Fostering Independence Grant and other financial aid programs. This component also includes funding from the Sauer Family Foundation and the Constellation Fund to give students money for basic needs such as buying groceries, outfitting dorms, or living on campus during the summer. While many college students may be able to turn to their families for extra financial help, students who grew up in foster care usually do not have that option.

“A lot of people have their parents put money away for their college fund, or they have the time to focus on school and get good grades to get scholarships,” said Donovan Holmes ’26, a Family Scholars student. “But foster youth don’t always get those opportunities. Some of us end up being homeless. Some of us have domestic violence going on at home. A lot of us have extremely unstable lives for a long time, so our grades go down, and then we don’t get those scholarships.”

That’s part of why the academic support component of Augsburg Family Scholars is crucial. Pippert meets with students individually as needed to help them stay on track with their schoolwork.

“I’m pretty rigidly tracking how they’re doing,” he said. “Some students I meet with every week. Some students I meet with once or twice a semester because they’re killing it and they don’t need much, so we just kind of check in. But there’s heavy academic mentoring and support available to help them get through.”

The program’s final component, community and relationship support, includes activities and events to help the Family Scholars students bond with each other. The students also have a designated lounge in Memorial Hall where they can relax or study together.

“It feels like we are our own little family,” Yang said. “We’re just a bunch of fosters that attend the same college, but when we hang out together, I forget that we’re even in this program because we are fosters. … It’s nice that you forget about that part.”

Holmes said he has also made meaningful connections through Family Scholars.

“It’s really nice to know that there are other people who have similar experiences to me,” Holmes said. “My peers in Augsburg Family Scholars share my perspective.”

From foster care to college

According to the National Foster Youth Institute, the challenges that children in foster care face outside of school can affect their academic performance and ultimately lower their chances at graduating from college. Studies show that only 3–4% of former foster youth obtain a four-year college degree.

“Many students (who are not from foster care) don’t have to figure everything out on their own. They have folks who have their back,” Pippert said. “But for some of our Family Scholars, there just isn’t that home base where they can call and get advice or resources. … There are more barriers when you don’t have a secure home or guardianship base.”

However, the challenges that come with foster care affect each student differently, Pippert said, and Augsburg Family Scholars works to address each student’s individual needs. “With 15 students, it runs the gamut of folks who need an awful lot and folks who are doing really well on their own,” he said.

Holmes, for example, entered foster care when he was 2 years old. He bounced around between schools for years while switching foster homes. Then, he stopped attending high school for a while when he became homeless.

“Up until high school I had a really good academic career,” Holmes said. “I got straight As. I was a huge nerd. … But then in high school, I became homeless. I was homeless for about a year and a half, couchsurfing with my friends, and I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t do school anymore.’”

Holmes said he eventually ended up with a foster family that helped him get back into high school, but then he dropped out after experiencing transphobic discrimination at school. “I could have graduated, but honestly, I just didn’t want to be there,” he said.

Instead, Holmes pursued a career in activism and landed a job with the Division of Indian Work office in Minneapolis, where he was also a client. Holmes said he never intended to go to college until his mentor at the Division of Indian Work encouraged him by saying that not having a college degree would limit his future job prospects.

“I was doing all this learning through work experience. I thought, ‘I don’t really need to go to school,’ until my mentor brought up a really good point, which was, ‘You’re going to stay at these lower-level jobs if you don’t pursue an education,’” Holmes said. The new state grant offering free tuition was another reason Holmes began to seriously consider going to college.

Holmes had also met with Pippert and learned about Family Scholars, which sealed the deal—he applied to Augsburg and started classes in Fall 2022.

Navigating the first year

Holmes’ transition to Augsburg felt very easy. “I definitely have to say it was because I had people who were supporting me and helping me through,” he said. He added that he enjoys being able to just focus on school as a full-time student.

There are some Family Scholars students who have had a harder time adjusting to college, Pippert said. “We’ve had some real academic challenges, and we have a couple folks who won’t be able to continue at Augsburg because the issues were so significant. That’s the reality of it,” he said.

“We do our best to help students navigate those situations,” Pippert said, “and I think we still consider it worthwhile if they know that when they are more able to navigate life and when they can feel like college is an option again, we’ll be waiting for them.”

Overall, though, Pippert reflected on the first year of Augsburg Family Scholars by describing the students’ eagerness and growth at Augsburg.

“It’s simple stuff,” he said. “It’s when students come into the Augsburg Family Scholars lounge or up to my office to tell me about something, like how well they did on a test. We had a student who got an amazing internship this summer; he was so excited to tell me about that.”

Yang is among the students who say Augsburg has helped her feel more excited about her education and future opportunities. “College flipped my life around. It’s just different now because I finally get the chance to do my own things and choose my own path,” she said.

Pippert added that seeing the students come together in community is also rewarding. “Sometimes, from my office, I can hear people in the lounge laughing. That, to me, is amazing,” he said. “I’ll usually stay away because I’m not going to interrupt that at all. When they connect with each other, that’s so much fun to see.”

Looking ahead

With Augsburg Family Scholars moving into its second year this fall, Pippert is looking for ways to grow the program and offer more support to students.

This includes exploring grants or other fundraising that might financially support former foster youth who do not qualify for Minnesota’s Fostering Independence Grant. To be eligible for the state grant, students must be younger than 27 and have been placed in foster care in Minnesota after age 13. Those requirements leave out non-traditional students, students who experienced foster care in other states, and students who were in foster care before age 13 but still need support, Pippert said.

“The students who are not eligible for the Fostering Independence Grant need a lot financially. I’m trying to work on fundraising for those students,” he said.

Pippert also wants to better promote Augsburg Family Scholars. “Every person in Minnesota who has a foster care background should know that college is a possibility, and so many assume it’s not. They don’t even apply because they don’t think it’s possible. So, I’m hoping that Augsburg becomes a model,” he said.

Both Yang and Holmes said they are looking forward to starting their second year at Augsburg with Family Scholars.

“I’m just excited for the fall semester to start again,” Holmes said.

Top image: Professor Tim Pippert (right) talks with Augsburg Family Scholars students, Madelyne Yang ’26 (left) and Donovan Holmes ’26 (middle) in the Augsburg Family Scholars lounge on campus. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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Jane Helmke ’83 was named executive editor of in November 2022.

“I’m so honored to be a part of the inspiring team of exceptional journalists at MPR News at this point in my career,” Helmke said. “Every day, we are working to include and inform all of our audiences across Minnesota, including today’s Auggies! I’m excited to learn how we can connect with and serve these thriving young adults with the news they want and need each day.”

Prior to taking on this lead role at MPR, Helmke worked at NBC affiliate KARE 11 News for 35 years. She started there as an intern during her senior year at Augsburg, and she left as the TV station’s news director.

With her move to MPR, Helmke joined two other Auggies in key roles at one of Minnesota’s largest media organizations.

Jean Taylor ’85 was named the CEO of American Public Media Group, the parent company of MPR, in 2021. Before her work with MPR, Taylor was the board chair of Star Tribune Media, an executive consultant for the Platinum Group, and the CEO of Taylor Corporation.

Andre Griffin ’20 is the community engagement specialist for , a new music stream from MPR that launched in June 2022 in partnership with KMOJ radio. Carbon Sound, which also includes a website and app, is dedicated to celebrating the wide-ranging influence of Black musical expression.

For Helmke, joining MPR feels like “a wonderful, full-circle moment.”

“Every day now,” she said, “I carry with me the Auggie pride of serving the greater good in our community. MPR News is a place that allows me to live this important value.”

Top image: Minnesota Public Radio News building, downtown St. Paul (Photo by Minnesota Public Radio)

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For Kao Nou Moua, research is about storytelling. The Augsburg assistant professor of social work spent a year gathering stories from Hmong business owners and entrepreneurs to find trends in their experiences and to help public and financial agencies better serve the Hmong business community. After presenting this research at the first-ever national HMong Economic Advancement, Research, and Equity (HERE) Conference late last year, Moua reflects on what she’s learned and what she’s planning to study next.

Q: Tell us about your latest research, the HMong Economic Advancement and Capacity Building Research Project.
A: For that particular project, I worked with a national organization based in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, called HMong American Leadership and Economic Development (HALED). While working at a different institution, I had started to build relationships with people in Eau Claire, particularly in the Hmong community there. They were really interested in looking at economic development among Hmong Americans and trying to understand the barriers to becoming a business owner based on the different organizations, agencies, and financial institutions that were supporting entrepreneurs.

We had all of these anecdotal stories about Hmong business owners not being able to access services, but there wasn’t really any research. Being in the world that we are in, in terms of needing research or data to support these stories, we wanted to be really mindful of being able to go to lawmakers and policymakers and say, “These are the barriers that people are experiencing, and these are the actual numbers of people who are experiencing these things.” And so, that’s what we did. My research partners and I secured a grant from the state of Wisconsin to do this economic project. By that time, I had transitioned to Augsburg, so I hired a social work student to work with me, to mentor them in the social work research process. I was working with students at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire as well.

We interviewed about 20 Hmong entrepreneurs in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We did focus groups with Hmong farmers, women entrepreneurs, and young people who were interested in entrepreneurship. It was a wide range. And the thing is, I’m not a businessperson. I’m a social worker. So, it was really kind of a leap for me to put my mind in this world of economic development. But my particular lens as a social worker was: “What are the barriers in organizations?” It’s always been my work to think about how we can build culturally grounded services—in this case, working with banks and state agencies and organizations.

Q: What were the results of this research?
A: The yearlong project of data collection culminated in the HERE Conference in Eau Claire last September. It was a national conference, the first of its kind, to bring together Hmong entrepreneurs, lawmakers, other business owners, and financial institutions to really think about and look at the data.

There were a couple of important findings. One was that Hmong women entrepreneurs have a very different experience than what we think of when we think about entrepreneurship. Even within the Hmong community, there are cultural barriers that exist for Hmong women entrepreneurs. That’s something we want to explore a little bit more.

Another important finding was that it wasn’t so much about having translated materials or things like that; it really was a need for a sense of belonging in those institutions so people could feel like they were welcomed. Some of the most heartbreaking stories that we heard were people sharing about how they’ve been denied multiple times (for loans) from financial institutions, but once they were able to have a white colleague come and vouch for them, then people at the bank were like, “Okay, I can trust this person because they had a white person vouch for them.” Those were some of the really hard stories.

Q: While you were conducting this research, was there anything that surprised you?
A: One thing that did surprise me, especially when we did the focus group with young people, was that they all talked about the idea of financial literacy. In high school, they learn how to balance a checkbook, but they’re like 15—they don’t have a checkbook. But now, here they are as college students, and they’re like, “I would like to learn that now.” And we had older adults who would say, “I want to learn more about investments or the stock market.” So, we learned that financial literacy is something that needs to happen multigenerationally or intergenerationally. It is something that needs to happen over time.

That was really important learning for the organization that I was working with. HALED was able to shift their programming to be multigenerational. And the great thing was that also aligned with Hmong cultural values. A lot of the community celebrations are also multigenerational. So, this programming became culturally grounded all of a sudden because we centered Hmong values in terms of learning about economic development.

Q: What comes next?
A: We got a really great response from the HERE Conference. Many lawmakers or policymakers were super interested in us coming into their individual agencies to present our data. The next phase is to continue to get more funding so that we can do more. Always in research, there’s more research to be done, and part of that is to continue to really focus on some of our key findings and really expand on them. The other part of it, for me as a social work professor, is to always think about opportunities to mentor student researchers.

And then, we did talk quite a bit about this idea that Hmong have a very entrepreneurial spirit. Because of their experience of being persecuted and having to move from country to country and having to adapt, Hmong people have learned how to be entrepreneurs and business owners. You can go to China and find Hmong people, you can go to Laos and Thailand and Vietnam, and you can go here in St. Paul. Hmong have always figured out ways to be entrepreneurs. So, I think that’s the other line of research that we want to explore—what does a history of trauma and war do to a people? How do they adapt in new spaces? Entrepreneurship is one of those ways that they’ve learned how to make sense of their lives.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Top image: Kao Nou Moua speaks with students during her social work class. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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Augsburg Health Commons has received a $50,000 grant to continue its work in advancing health equity through nursing.

The Health Equity Innovation Fund grant, awarded in early January, came from AARP and the Center to Champion Nursing in America, a joint initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Augsburg Health Commons will use this funding to deepen its work of providing free services to marginalized communities. The grant also allows Health Commons to consider expansion, including a possible new location in North Minneapolis.

“We are moved beyond words to be selected for this opportunity,” said Katie Clark ’10 MAN, ’14 DNP, associate professor of nursing and executive director of Health Commons. “These funds will not only help relieve some of the suffering people are forced to endure in the immediate term, but will also help cultivate ideas and solutions for the long term in caring for people who experience marginalization.”

The first Augsburg Health Commons drop-in center opened at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis in 1992. Most people seeking care there are unhoused or marginally housed. In 2011, a second location opened in Cedar-Riverside in response to a need for accessible health care services identified by members of the East African immigrant community.

Both locations center community voices and are operated by Augsburg nursing faculty, nursing and physician assistant volunteers, students, and community members. Everyone is welcome, and all services are free.

With this grant, Health Commons will continue providing services at both locations as well as at local homeless encampments. Faculty will explore new partnerships at other locations including in North Minneapolis in collaboration with Augsburg’s physician assistant program.

The grant will also support the educational mission of Health Commons by providing paid research and practice internships for graduate nursing students.

Augsburg Health Commons is one of 16 organizations nationally to receive a Health Equity Innovations Fund award for 2022.

or visit the Augsburg Health Commons website.

Read more about the work at Augsburg Health Commons in this issue of Augsburg Now.

Top image: An Augsburg nursing faculty member sorts through donated supplies at Health Commons. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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In separate efforts to help unhoused people in Minneapolis, two members of the Augsburg community take a similar approach.

They ask a simple question: “What do you need?”

Then, they work to provide services based on people’s self-identified necessities.

“It’s about meeting people where they’re at,” said Katie Clark ’10 MAN, ’14 DNP, associate professor of nursing and executive director of Augsburg Health Commons, which provides free supplies and nurse consultations to anyone in need. Many people who access these services are unhoused or experiencing housing insecurity.

“Oftentimes, health care providers are not trusted by people living on the street who feel like they might be stereotyped or judged when they enter a facility,” Clark said. “We need to ask people what their experiences are, what they deem necessary, and why they aren’t able to get what they need.”

Emily Bastian ’07 MSW works with a similar philosophy—she led the creation of an entire homeless shelter based on asking people about their specific needs. Avivo Village, which opened in December 2020, has received widespread attention because of its unique concept.

Bastian, who is the nonprofit Avivo’s vice president of ending homelessness, said she and her team went to an encampment in a Minneapolis park. “We asked them, what would it take for them to come indoors? And many of the things that they said are things that we are able to put into practice at Avivo Village.”

Creating a shelter

Unlike most traditional homeless shelters, Avivo Village lets residents come and go as they please. Residents are not separated by gender; they can have pets, and they can drink legally. All these things are allowed in response to Bastian’s conversations with people living outdoors.

“We want people to know that we care about them and that we’re not shaming them for the choices that they’re making, because they are the ones living their life, not us,” Bastian said.

Avivo Village is made up of 100 tiny homes meant to be temporary housing as residents work to find a more permanent place to live. So far, more than 110 people have successfully moved on from Avivo Village into permanent housing.

In addition to temporary shelter, Avivo provides thorough case management to help people find housing. This includes services aimed at addressing some of the root causes of homelessness. Avivo offers transitional recovery housing, which houses people who are enrolled in the organization’s chemical dependency treatment program. Avivo also provides mental health services.

“Case management supports people through all the bumps in the road as they’re learning to be a renter or as they’re experiencing some other trauma or barriers,” Bastian said, “because we truly, truly, truly believe that everyone deserves housing and everyone is housable.”

A range of services

While Health Commons does not provide housing, it offers many services to support unhoused people. Like Bastian, Clark works to create a place where people feel accepted and safe while asking for help.

Sometimes, people simply hang out at the Health Commons location in downtown Minneapolis’ Central Lutheran Church.

“If you’re experiencing homelessness, oftentimes you can’t go places and hang out without showing proof of why you need to be there or without being harassed,” Clark said. “So, sometimes people need a place where they can just sit down, take their shoes off, and be part of what’s happening.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The free supplies offered at Health Commons include socks, hygiene products, and diapers. Visitors can meet with Augsburg nursing students for basic health services such as having their blood pressure checked or asking questions about medical conditions.

“We’re not providing clinical care or diagnosing, but more just bridging the gap between meeting people where they are and connecting them with services if they deem it necessary,” Clark said.

A place to learn

Health Commons is not only a place where people can go to learn about health care—it’s also a place where any Augsburg student can learn about serving a wide range of needs, including the needs of unhoused people. More than 1,600 students have volunteered at Health Commons in the 30 years that it’s been open.

“Health care providers often begin to have biases or might actually stereotype people who are unhoused. So, Health Commons is really a first step for nursing, physician assistant, or other students to unpack those moments and challenge biases,” Clark said.

“The complexities of peoples’ circumstances are better understood as students build relationships with people living on the streets,” she said. “And it’s faculty-led. Students say having those real-life experiences has been very meaningful, especially when they see faculty model it as well.”

Clark encourages students to practice compassion in all their interactions with people who visit Health Commons. She has even talked with some student volunteers who have experienced homelessness themselves. “They often share that they find value in the approaches here, that shared community,” she said.

As a former Augsburg student, Bastian said her education in the university’s social work program informs the work that she does today.

“(One) thing that Augsburg really drilled into my head, and the master’s of social work program very much so, is the conversation around privilege, the willingness to do that tough work personally to recognize what my own privileges are, how that impacts how I see the world and how the world sees me, and in turn my responsibility based on that,” she said.

Getting involved

Both Clark and Bastian shared ways that people can get involved in serving the Twin Cities’ unhoused population.

Anyone is welcome to volunteer at the Health Commons Central Lutheran Church location, but priority is given to Augsburg students. Volunteers can sign up on the Health Commons website.

Health Commons also takes online. To donate supplies, contact Clark at clarkk@augsburg.edu.

Information about volunteering with or donating to Avivo can be found on the .

“If people don’t feel comfortable or don’t know what to do, donating is a good way to start,” Bastian said. “I would also say that volunteering somewhere you can have interactions that feel at a safe level for what you’re ready for is also a great way to get involved and to help.”

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Top image: Katie Clark and graduate nursing student Claudia Rubio-Mendoza help Health Commons visitors pick out free items that they need. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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This designation was announced by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs on February 10. It recognizes the colleges and universities that had the highest number of applicants selected for the 2022–23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.

Each year, this elite program selects approximately 900 faculty members or administrators from across the country to lecture, conduct research, or pursue short- or long-term professional projects abroad.

In the 2022–23 academic year, Augsburg faculty members George Dierberger, Thomas ’72 and Karen Howe endowed professor for entrepreneurship, and Joseph Erickson, professor of education, were named Fulbright Scholars. Dierberger’s Fulbright took him to Letterkenny, Ireland, while Erickson is spending the spring in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

“The fact that we have so many Augsburg professors who have been selected to participate in the program speaks to the quality of our faculty and the support of the administration,” said Dierberger, who serves as one of Augsburg’s faculty liaisons for Fulbright Scholars.

Augsburg has also been named a top producer of Fulbright students among U.S master’s institutions, with three students receiving scholarships to teach English abroad in 2021–22.

“It is such a great achievement, both faculty and student Fulbright awards, and it should be celebrated,” said John Zobitz, professor of mathematics and data science. Zobitz serves as Augsburg’s other faculty liaison for Fulbright Scholars and was a Fulbright Scholar himself in 2021.

The Fulbright Program has been a cornerstone of international education and cultural exchange for the United States since 1946. The purpose of the program is to inspire, innovate, and contribute to finding solutions for communities and the world.

Top image: The Quad at Augsburg’s campus (photo by Courtney Perry)

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