The ferry moves quietly through the fjord, the water dark and glassy beneath steep rock walls. Waterfalls cut silver lines down the cliffs, dropping hundreds of feet straight into the sea.

For students in the Center for Global Education and Experience (CGEE), this isn’t a postcard moment or a pause between lessons. It is the lesson.

Whether the view is in Norway, Guatemala, or South Africa, this is what learning looks like through CGEE: Students stand inside the geography, systems, histories, and questions that shape a place, rather than studying them from a distance.

For more than 45 years, CGEE has built semester-long, customized short-term, and summer programs supported by its long-standing study centers across Africa, Latin America, and Europe—including a new program in Norway and recently expanded offerings in Northern Ireland and Italy. Rooted in community-based learning, long-term relationships, and intentional reflection, CGEE’s model feels especially resonant, both globally and here in Minnesota.

“[CGEE] offers the opportunity to develop relationships with people across lines of difference, to truly engage,” says Ann Lutterman-Aguilar, who has worked with CGEE since the early 1990s and now leads its longest-standing program in Cuernavaca, Mexico, which started in 1979 and focuses on themes of religion and social change, migration and human rights, among others. “Not to just be a tourist somewhere, read about something in a book, but to hear people’s stories, get to know those people, and put human faces and voices to social issues.”

Learning through presence

CGEE programs are designed differently than many traditional study abroad experiences, with the program built on intercultural, experiential, holistic, analytical, and transformative pillars. Students move through their semesters as cohorts, take integrated courses, and live with host families. And they spend significant time outside the classroom, listening, observing, asking questions, and reflecting together.

“We are deeply in relationship with the places we serve,” says John Schwehn, one of Augsburg’s campus pastors, who participated in an Augsburg CGEE program in Central America as a St. Olaf student in 2006. “We’re challenging and inviting students to integrate what they’re learning with their own set of values, their own processes of discernment about who they want to be and the world they want to build.”

That discernment goes hand-in-hand with immersion—in community meetings, at kitchen tables, and in places where theory intersects with real life. Lutterman-Aguilar describes how quickly abstract ideas give way to empathy.

Once students have seen different realities up close, she says, indifference becomes harder to maintain and their engagement increases.

Northern Ireland: conflict, peace, and transition

One of CGEE’s newer program offerings takes students to Northern Ireland, where they study conflict, peace, and social transition in a region shaped by decades of division. The program builds on longstanding partnerships and focuses on how communities navigate reconciliation after violence.

From the late 1960s through the 1990s, Northern Ireland’s history was marked by The Troubles, a period of violent conflict rooted in political, national, and religious divisions that claimed thousands of lives. For Schwen, being physically present in a place shaped by that history deepens the learning.

“Being in places that are post-war, thinking about how religion and faith and identity play a role in the conflict and in building peace after the conflict, that’s a really unique and amazing opportunity,” says Schwehn, who visited Northern Ireland in 2025.

CGEE does not offer students easy answers. Instead, it asks them to sit with complexity, to listen to voices shaped by loss, resilience, and disagreement, and to reflect on what peace looks like in practice, not theory.

Norway: history, sustainability, and shared questions

If Northern Ireland invites students into conversations about reconciliation, Norway draws them into questions of sustainability, social systems, and equity. These themes connect directly to Augsburg’s history and Minnesota’s identity.

Launched in Fall 2025 after four years of planning, the Norway program is based in Fredrikstad, south of Oslo, and examines environmental sustainability, welfare systems, and contemporary social challenges.

For Ben Malovrh ’26, an Augsburg computer science major from Shakopee, the impact came as much from daily interactions as from coursework.

“It just boils down to the people,” he says. “I met friends and folks I never would have met, and was exposed to ideas I never would have been.”

For Liken Hefte ’26, an Augsburg urban studies major from south Minneapolis and part of the program’s first cohort, Norway offered a lived example of a society organized around different assumptions than those they grew up with in the U.S.

“So much of the political and societal infrastructure, including for things like transportation, are just more human-centered than we see in the U.S.,” they say. “It created a contrast for me to see and experience a society set up with a different type of community-building in mind.”

At the same time, the program resists romanticizing Norway. Bettine Hoff Hermanson, who helped build and currently leads the Norway program, pushes students to ask difficult questions about oil production, immigration, indigenous rights, and equity.

“While Norway is considered a utopia in many ways, my job is looking at the bigger questions of, ‘Who is Norway?’ to help students consider the notion that change needs to happen, even in a country like Norway,” she says.

Building on 200 years of connection

In 2025, Minnesota marked the 200th anniversary of Norwegian immigration, a milestone that resonates deeply at Augsburg University, founded by Norwegian Lutherans and shaped by generations of transatlantic ties. CGEE’s new semester program in Norway builds on that legacy while looking forward, inviting students to examine sustainability, equity, and social systems in a contemporary Nordic context. Rather than treating Norway as a symbol of the past, the program asks what ongoing relationships, shared challenges, and critical questions can emerge when history becomes a starting point, not an endpoint.

Reflection as curriculum

Across CGEE programs, reflection is not an add-on; it is core to the curriculum. Students write, talk, and revisit their assumptions throughout the semester.

“Part of my grading is their own reflections throughout the semester,” Hoff Hermanson says. “Their own experiences and growth: that’s important to me.”

Those moments often shape students’ sense of vocation. Lutterman-Aguilar recalls students who changed career paths after witnessing the effects of immigration policy firsthand or seeing community organizing in action.

“Whatever their major is, seeing they can make a difference and contribute to the common good is an important part of their experience,” she says.

Learning across difference, together

CGEE cohorts bring together students from Augsburg and partner institutions across the country. Many arrive with different backgrounds, beliefs, and levels of time traveling abroad. Learning to navigate those differences is part of the work.

“The life and viewpoint diversity in our classrooms is really profound,” says Patrick Mulvihill, Augsburg’s assistant provost for global education and experience and head of the CGEE program since 2017. “Our model asks them to work on those issues together in good faith, even when they strongly disagree with each other.”

That practice feels increasingly relevant.

“Part of these programs is not just to learn about where they’re going,” Mulvihill says, “but about where they’re coming from.”

Students return home with sharper questions about the U.S., about community, democracy, sustainability, and responsibility, and with a clearer sense of how their own lives fit into a global context.

A global legacy, still unfolding

Standing in a fjord, debating social policy with Norwegian peers, or listening to stories shaped by conflict and reconciliation, students encounter something deeper than academic credit.

“One of the things that’s so transformative is these experiences provide a lot of students a sense of hope,” Lutterman-Aguilar says.

And that may be CGEE’s quiet through line: helping students step into the world with curiosity, return with clarity, and carry what they’ve learned—and hope to help change it for the better—into the communities they call home.

Top image: Students bundle up for a hike in Randholmen, a small peninsula located in the Fredrikstad municipality of Østfold, Norway. (Courtesy photo)

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Camera lights flashed. Augsburg students struck modeling poses, alternating between runway-approved stoicism and wide grins. As each image appeared on the camera’s digital screen, the clothing they wore looked good.

Really good.

Lee’RayVone G’everdloaahn ’26 smiled wider than anyone as the reality of months of work was being realized in front of him. The smile was well-earned: He had spent much of his junior year creating connections with organizations across campus in support of Augsburg’s , an on-campus resource that repurposes clothing, household goods, and other necessities for students for free.

As part of that work, G’everdloaahn discovered that many students assumed the ShareShop’s clothing was too low-quality for them to add to their wardrobe. To ensure students understood that wasn’t the case, G’everdloaahn created the modeling program, showcasing members of the campus community in fresh looks from the ShareShop.

“Seeing everything come together was very fulfilling,” he said. “The whole experience with the ShareShop showed me how well I can lead and how much I can give back if I’m given the opportunity.”

It’s also a shining example of the kinds of experiences dozens of Augsburg students have each year as part of the Bonner Community Leaders program. Augsburg transitioned in 2023 from the Leaders for Equity, Action, and Democracy (LEAD) Fellows program to Bonner, which is part of that work on campuses and with local community partners on a wide range of issues.

“It’s a wonderful, two-sided kind of impact: the impact on the student and the impact on the community,” said Coral Ramos, Bonner’s program manager at Augsburg. “For students, they’re able to have a group of peers who care and are making time for doing things on and off campus that relate to helping and engaging with the community. Through that, students can learn new things or deepen their knowledge. And the people we work with outside Augsburg gain a dedicated young person giving their energy and time to improving their local community.”

Four years of growth

The journey from Puerto Rico to Minneapolis is a little over 2,400 miles. During her first year at Augsburg, Genesis Loza ’27 said the distance often felt longer—that is, until her roommate mentioned the Bonner program. Intrigued, Loza dug deeper, discovering a ring of familiarity with her home culture.

“So much of what I was raised with in my country and family is similar to what you do with Bonner. You get to work with the community, exploring and investing in the area you’re part of,” Loza said.

Now in her third year in Bonner, Loza has invested not only in the community but in her own development as a leader. Her experience with 826 MSP’s after school program exemplifies why Bonner has been and remains such a strong realization of the university’s mission to educate students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. Bonner sits at the intersection of all those outcomes.

“It’s all about you wanting to better yourself and your community. You commit fully to gain an experience that you won’t forget,” said Teresa Kemp ’25, who recently partnered with the Brian Coyle Community Center in Minneapolis. “The possibilities for friendships and connections that you wouldn’t have gotten any other way are huge.”

Bonner students generally start in their first year at Augsburg and go through a cornerstone activity each year: a first-year trip to places like Chicago; a second-year exchange with Bonner students at other colleges and universities; a third-year leadership experience; and a senior capstone. Through it all, selected students—who typically come from lower-income or first-generation backgrounds—are paid to partner and work with a wide range of campus and community organizations.

“You have to show up on the regular, do whatever needs to be done, and be willing to share not just your skills but some of who you are. Learning will happen in that process, no matter what,” said Jenean Gilmer, program manager for community engaged education, who said Bonner stands on a decades-long foundation of community partnership between Augsburg and the surrounding Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. “So much of this kind of experiential learning is about feelings and relationships. It requires flexibility and openness, authenticity, and being clear about what you have to offer.”

Supporting students in their development of that authenticity is part of regular meetings and touchpoints for the Bonner students on campus, Ramos said. The program’s cohort model and intentional community-building help students build a tight-knit network of friendships and professional relationships, as well as leadership skills.

“It was such a supportive group, especially for me when I first got there,” Kemp said. “Transferring in as an older student, it was hard to make connections. I was fortunate in the Bonner program: Everyone was so welcoming, open, and wanting to learn from each other. It helped me settle in at Augsburg and became a community I really relied on.”

Those communities extend beyond Augsburg and Cedar-Riverside as well: As a national organization, Bonner connects students in its programs to institutions throughout Minnesota and the United States, especially during the sophomore year exchange. And with opportunities like Bonner Congress in Chicago, where case studies and solutions to community challenges are presented and studied, students widen their networks and broaden their ideas.

“The range of opportunities and experiences you can have as a Bonner student are pretty amazing,” Loza said.

‘So much more than that’

Back on campus during his senior year, G’everdloaahn appreciates the opportunity to talk about the value of his experience with Bonner. In fact, it’s at the heart of his senior capstone experience. As a student programming assistant with Bonner, G’everdloaahn is building on his own experiences to help shape even better ones for those coming after him.

“We’ve just started the Bonner Families program this year, where we’re funding three Bonner student leaders to guide their fellow students through their experiences,” G’everdloaahn said. “I’m really excited to see how we can help students connect even more deeply.”

“The energy of where we’re at [as a program] and where we’re going is really exciting,” Ramos added.

As G’everdloaahn nears the end of his four years of growth as a Bonner student, his leadership skills, community network, and set of formative experiences have grown. His perspective, too, has grown.

“When I first learned about and joined Bonner, I essentially just thought it was a job. I didn’t realize it was so much more than that,” he said. “Now I’m doing everything I can to help other students and the rest of our community know it, too. Bonner has exceeded all my hopes and expectations.”

Top image: Genesis Loza ’27, Lee’RayVone G’everdloaahn ’26, and Beti Milashu ’27 attend their Bonner Leadership Team meeting. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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All colleges and universities share a relationship with the community they’re situated within.

����������ٳ������𲹰���,������������󾱲԰� started to sense there was something unique about Augsburg and its relationship with the surrounding Cedar-Riverside community.

“The consistent message I heard from the young people I spoke to in the neighborhood was that Augsburg has kept inviting us in,” he says. “Augsburg has shown its long-term commitment to being part of the community.”

That change-making work drew Fink to Augsburg, where he now serves as an assistant professor of social work and director of Augsburg’s Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship. What he has seen at Augsburg has only confirmed his impressions of a university committed to preparing its students to be agents of positive change in their communities.

“It’s in the water and the air here. Once students arrive, they understand what the university is about because it’s built into so much of what they do here,” he says. “[Augsburg students] understand their role in the world is to be part of the community they live in, and to contribute to it in a meaningful way regardless of what they decide to do for their career.”

Countless alumni have brought life to Augsburg’s mission, enacting both local and systemic change. Erin Boe ’23 MAT, Jamil Stamschror-Lott ’16 MSW, and Jasmine Grika ’14 are three recent examples, transforming lives and garnering recognition for their innovative leadership. Within their unique spheres of influence, they model what it means to be an Auggie.

Inclusion through art

It’s the fall of 2024, and Erin Boe is seeing her impact in real time. Then again, that’s a near-daily occurrence.

Her classroom at Maple Grove High School is the home base of the Unified Art curriculum, which pairs students with and without disabilities in collaborative art projects. Boe says she created the 12-week curriculum as a framework for art to teach life skills, leadership, and compassion.

“It’s incredible to see what happens in this classroom and how these ideas cascade outward,” Boe says. “I tell my students from day one they’re becoming active agents for social change.”

It’s very intentional that disability inclusion and change-making are at the heart of Boe’s curriculum, which she developed in partnership with the Special Olympics.

“When I was at Augsburg, inclusion efforts weren’t an isolated topic; they were embedded in every class,” Boe recalls. “We were constantly encouraged to question how our work could foster belonging. This critical thinking and intentionality were embedded into the forefront of everything we did, so we were putting culturally-relevant pedagogy at the front of every class.”

Boe was recently named Minnesota’s 2024–25 Art Educator of the Year, a recognition that has brought visibility to her groundbreaking curriculum and helped spread its ideas to educators across the United States.

“It makes me want to think bigger,” Boe says. “How can we spread the message further and grow our impact into even more communities?”

Transforming mental health care

It’s the fall of 2005, and Jamil Stamschror-Lott is wide awake in class.

He’s been waiting for something like this, exactly what his undergraduate sociology professor is speaking to: explanations for why Stamschror-Lott has seen so many people who look like him being mistreated. The class helped him name and contextualize so many of his own life experiences, from his family’s early years in rural southern communities to his middle and high school years in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“I struggled socially, emotionally, and mentally, and so did many of my African American peers,” he says. “My family had a caring experience and a level of stability [through my mom, who] went to college and worked as a nurse for 30 years. But I was recognizing what was happening to African American folks like me and those around me who have been marginalized, oppressed, and dealt with all these different ‘-isms.’”

That kind of exploration sparked Stamschror-Lott’s career and a desire to provide an “outlet of relief for folks experiencing that marginalization.” After several years seeing many of the same inequities impacting youth in detention facilities and schools, Stamschror-Lott felt he needed a more advanced degree to attain his desired level of impact. Augsburg’s Master of Social Work program provided the training he wanted at both the micro and macro levels.

One year after graduating in 2016, he and his now-wife, Sara, took the leap into opening their own practice, Creative Kuponya, which provides culturally-responsive care outside the traditional medical model. The impact has been immense, with more than 6,000 free or reduced-cost mental health sessions completed since. Eighty-six percent of sessions have served people of color, with the majority of those clients receiving mental health services for the first time.

“To see so many concepts and stereotypes be busted in this process has been remarkable,” Stamschror-Lott says. “There’s been a perceived stigma of, ‘Folks of color do not go to therapy.’ However, what I have witnessed is that to connect with someone who speaks my language, has walked in similar shoes, it is extremely liberating. I’m incredibly happy and proud of the connections we’ve made.”

The Stamschror-Lotts’ work was recently affirmed when Jamil was named a 2024 Bush Fellow, which will support his and Creative Kuponya’s work the next two years.

“It’s been a phenomenal journey,” Stamschror-Lott says.

Advocating for Native communities

It’s the fall of 2012, and Jasmine Grika just had a light bulb moment. She’s been talking with Jennifer Simon, then-director of Augsburg’s American Indian Student Services, who encourages her to explore a career in social work.

“This all really clicked at Augsburg. I had been adopted at age 10 and had these life experiences shaped by the Indian Child Welfare Act,” says Grika. “I was starting to understand the successful impact [the Indian Child Welfare Act] had on me, having that cultural preservation from being raised by family members with the same background as me,” including citizenship in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe through her mother and a tribal affiliation with the Red Lake Nation through her father. “That [contextual learning at Augsburg] sparked this passion in me to really drive systems change and help people understand the importance of cultural and family preservation on a systems level. Everything took off from there in those beginning stages.”

Grika’s experiences at Augsburg helped shape her passion and skills toward radical change, and after graduating she continued her education at Washington University in St. Louis. After completing her master’s degree, she returned home, working with the Ain Dah Yung Center to decrease disparities among American Indian families in the child protection system. Three years later, Grika transitioned to a St. Paul-based nonprofit, Alia, this time advocating for national child welfare systems change.

Just two years ago, Grika completed her doctoral degree in social work from the University of Southern California. She is now the tribal collective supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which focuses on strengthening government-to-government relations between the state and Minnesota’s 11 tribal nations.

Last year, Grika was also named a fellow at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, where she spearheads work to shape legislation on data sovereignty within Native American and Indigenous populations.

Through all her professional work experiences and advocacy efforts, Grika has built on a foundation of cultural identity and drive for change that her time at Augsburg helped shape into her ongoing vocation.

“Representation is so important in the systems that impact our community,” she says. “It can be off-putting to work for a system that has historically done harm, but the only way it will change is through representation from the communities that are impacted by these policies.”

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Top image: Student portraits line the wall of a Maple Grove High School hallway near the classroom of Erin Boe ’23 MAT. (Courtesy photo)

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Countless individual threads have formed a tapestry of 100 years of Augsburg Athletics.

1926: Olaf Hoff ’27 fires a pass to a cutting Luther Sletten ’29, the ensuing basket earning the Augsburg men’s basketball team a victory over St. Olaf.

1928: Five Hanson brothers (Joseph ’28, Louis ’28, Oscar ’30, Julius ’31, and Emil ’32) criss-cross on the ice, leading the Augsburg men’s hockey team to a big win.

1958: The Auggiettes run the fast break after securing a rebound, providing a glimpse into their legacy of women’s basketball throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s—long before the passage of Title IX.

1975: Marilyn Pearson Florian ’76 laces a double into the right field gap on the softball field. A three-sport athlete, Pearson Florian would go on to coach women’s volleyball and basketball, as well as serving for nearly two decades as the women’s athletic director at Augsburg.

1987: Melanie Herrera ’88 spins and unleashes the shot put in a striking arc across the track and field pitch.

2005: Men’s wrestling national champions Marcus LeVesseur ’07, Mark Matzek ’05, Matt Shankey ’05, and Joe Moon ’05 stand in the White House Oval Office, conversing with U.S. President George W. Bush.

2019: Emma Kraft ’22 pumps her fist as a 12-foot putt curls into the cup on the eighth green of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Women’s Golf Championships.

The official recognition of a century’s worth of Augsburg Athletics gives the university community a collective opportunity to celebrate the generations of Auggies who have built a lasting legacy.

“Student-athletes are so grateful for their Augsburg experience,” says Athletic Director Jeff Swenson ’79. “We carry the torch for those who carried it before us. That’s what 100 years of athletics at Augsburg is all about.”

A well-run athletic program teaches student-athletes many important life lessons, such as the values of hard work, determination, goals, and teamwork. Augsburg has a long tradition of dedicated athletic directors and a long list of committed coaches who have made this happen over the last 100 years.

Dan Anderson ’65, men’s basketball

Humble beginnings, purposeful growth

The origins of Augsburg Athletics trace back to 1924, when the university joined the Minnesota Conference of Colleges, the precursor to the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Well before then—back to 1907, at least—Augsburg students competed in sports like basketball, baseball, and gymnastics against other colleges, high schools, and club teams.

Following a successful student-led push to join the MCC, Augsburg’s early athletics ambitions were shaped and driven forward in large part by J.S. “Si” Melby, the school’s first athletic director and a founding father of athletics at Augsburg.

Writing in the 1925–26 yearbook about his hopes for a continued growth in Augsburg Athletics, Melby says, “An education has been and is still looked upon as a preparation for a life calling. A broader and truer conception is to view an education as a preparation for life—nay, as a part of life itself. The best preparation for life is living, and so school life should approximate real life. Athletics has claimed its rightful place in this day and age.”

In his view of athletics’ role as part of a student’s full life at Augsburg, Melby set forth a vision of student-athletes that Auggies would come to embody for the next century.

The Augsburg experience as a student-athlete taught me who I want to be as a leader and teammate in life. I surrounded myself with people who had a similar goal in mind, and those people are some of my closest friends to this day. The ability to bring people alongside you on this journey of life was instilled at me as a college athlete, and I am forever grateful for the experience.

Alex Hildebrandt ’10, men’s soccer

Excellence inside and outside the lines

From those beginning years, Augsburg student-athletes and teams have excelled in competition.

The 1928 men’s hockey team won Augsburg’s first (unofficial) national championship and was invited to represent the United States at the Olympics in Switzerland, although the U.S. Olympic Committee ultimately decided not to participate in men’s hockey. That winning tradition has continued across teams through the decades, including this past year when the men’s wrestling team won its 15th national team title, adding to Augsburg’s dizzying total of 18 team national championships, 73 individual national championships, and 89 MIAC team championships.

“We’ve had so many incredible student-athletes and teams over the years,” Swenson says. “There are years and stretches when our men’s athletes have led the charge, and years and stretches when our women’s athletes have led the charge, but they’ve always represented our university well.”

Swenson has a unique perspective on the history and legacy of Augsburg Athletics. Ever since arriving as a student in 1975, he has remained at the university in some capacity. Throughout that time, Swenson has seen the values of faith, family, and academics emphasized ahead of athletic pursuits, represented each year by the outstanding collective scholarship level of student-athletes, including an average 3.17 GPA among student-athletes in 2023–24.

“It’s one thing to talk about a value system and setting our priorities like that,” Swenson adds. “At Augsburg, we live it.”

We always knew that this wasn’t just about hockey. It was about having a great college experience: being students, growing as young women, and having fun. We were a team—a family—within a great community and with the best people.

Sydney Rydel ’24, women’s hockey

Honoring all Auggie athletes

Augsburg’s yearlong celebration of a century of athletics will be highlighted by the on Saturday, October 12, and will conclude in May 2025 with the annual Auggie Awards.

It’s all part of the ongoing opportunity to reflect on and celebrate what a century of Augsburg Athletics has meant to its thousands of student-athletes and many more university community members.

“It’s always important to remember and appreciate your history and the student-athletes who have come before you and worn the Augsburg ‘A’. It’s always significant,” says Sports Information Director Don Stoner.

“There were student-athletes throughout all 100 years who made the same kinds of sacrifices and were learning the same values our student-athletes are now: being a solid student; pursuing a career and what you want to do in your future life; and being an athlete, a team member, and a part of this wonderful tradition.”

Celebrating a full century of athletics at Augsburg is a tremendous milestone. Athletics has been a source of pride for the university community, producing leaders in the classroom and other areas on campus. Athletics enriches the entire community on Riverside Avenue.

Mark Matzek ’05, men’s wrestling athlete and coach

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Elsy Cruz Parra ’26 had planned to attend college for as long as she can remember. After neither of her parents were able to complete school through the middle school level in Mexico, they instilled the importance of education in Cruz Parra and her two younger siblings as they raised their family in Richfield, Minnesota. 

With her high school graduation approaching in 2022, Cruz Parra was fully prepared to go through a rigorous process to get accepted to a higher education institution that would keep her close to home and help her grow academically and professionally. Imagine her surprise and delight, then, when she received a letter that said she had been accepted to Augsburg University without even applying. She just had to fill out a short form, and she knew her future education was secure. 

“I felt so relieved,” said Cruz Parra, who is now studying biology as a sophomore at Augsburg with the intention of attending medical school. “It was delightful to be able to just make sure I was getting prepared and ready for my first semester at college.” 

Cruz Parra’s experience has been shared by thousands of high school students since the fall of 2022, when Augsburg became one of the first institutions in the country to completely shift to direct admissions, a frictionless process that offers automatic college admission for students who meet certain academic criteria. 

At Augsburg, it’s known as Augsburg Applies to You. Any graduating high school student with a 3.0 GPA qualifies for direct admission. With the lengthy admissions process out of the way, students have much more time to plan for their futures, including connecting with Augsburg’s financial and support services to prepare for success in their first year and beyond. 

“It’s a paradigm shift from you applying to the college to the college applying to you,” said Robert Gould, vice president for strategic enrollment management. “We’ve changed the way students experience the admissions process, the way counselors experience the admissions process, and, really, what the admissions process means.”

‘The next big step’

One year in, the early returns are more than encouraging: Augsburg welcomed its largest and most diverse first-year class in history last fall. While some critics of direct admissions have argued the policy leads to more accepted students who don’t actually enroll, Augsburg hasn’t seen this negative impact on enrollment yield with direct admissions. (Ninety-nine percent of students offered direct admission would have still been admitted under Augsburg’s previous admissions criteria.)

“This initiative has the potential to be really transformative nationally,” said Rachel Farris, director of public relations and internal communications. “It’s a very powerful change.” 

To understand the decision to move to direct admissions, it’s useful to back up well before 2022. Driven by the university’s mission of intentional diversity, the past 15 years have seen a series of steps toward removing barriers in admissions and ensuring traditionally underserved communities have access to an Augsburg education. That includes programs such as , which provides a range of assistance for housing, textbooks, and food. There have also been policy changes such as removing standardized test scores and letters of recommendation from the undergraduate application process and providing more need-based financial aid. 

“We’ve been working to remove barriers for students for many years and understanding the impacts of those changes we’ve made,” said Stephanie Ruckel, director of strategic enrollment management, who partnered closely with Gould to plan out the move to direct admissions. “Direct admissions is just the next big step as we’ve built momentum. Every step along the way we were seeing benefits for students, the process, and the effectiveness of admissions counselors.”

As was the case for Cruz Parra, the immediate benefit for students is the shift in being accepted to Augsburg much earlier (by October 1 in their senior year of high school) and feeling secure knowing a college education is available to them. 

“With earlier acceptance, direct admissions supports the goal of having more students feeling like they have more choices, and that they’re making well-informed decisions and are choosing the right school for them,” Ruckel said.

Beyond giving students more time to interact with the university after being accepted, Augsburg has tied direct admissions to financial aid. The Augsburg Promise Scholarship offers students who have been directly admitted to Augsburg full tuition if they are Pell Grant eligible (or have a family gross adjusted income of $80,000 or less) and are a Minnesota resident graduating from a Minnesota high school. This aligns with the requirements of the state of Minnesota’s North Star Promise program, which starts later this year and will cover all tuition and fees at public institutions for resident students whose families make $80,000 or less. 

“Our model is to have a student receive a letter without applying by October 1. By November 1, they fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and by December 1, they have a financial aid package in hand,” Gould said. (The high school senior class of 2024’s timeline will be delayed by a change in FAFSA policy, so financial aid packages won’t be available until spring, Gould added, but the federal policy should return to normal next year.)

Augsburg Applies to You has led to invitations for the university to participate in direct admissions pilot programs with Common Application, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, and the Chicago Public Schools. 

“[Augsburg] has really anticipated the way of the future,” said Minnesota Office of Higher Education’s Direct Admissions Coordinator Aaron Salasek, who has partnered closely with Gould and Ruckel. “The institution is really prioritizing equity before enrollment, but that’s sort of a false dichotomy. The two can go hand in hand, and that’s what direct admissions is all about. It’s student-centered, family-centered, and higher education institutions will all benefit from this effort as we scale across the state.”

‘Much more meaningful work’

Anna Cox ’22 remembers well the experience of applying to Augsburg as a high school senior in Indiana. Now an admissions counselor at her alma mater, she’s on the other side of the process, but her work looks drastically different than that of the counselors who read her application in 2018. 

“I get to do so much more meaningful work with students after this direct admissions change,” Cox said. “I absolutely love it.”

Traditionally, the bulk of admissions counselors’ work in higher education has been tied to recruitment, reviewing applications, and supporting students through the logistics of applying, such as submitting transcripts, letters of recommendation, and test scores. In removing hundreds of hours spent in “essay review season” and application review time, counselors at Augsburg have shifted to more of a coaching role. That means intentionally supporting students to make the right school choice for them, helping guide them through the financial aid process, and preparing them for success should they choose Augsburg. 

That increased support also extends to students who fall below the direct admissions threshold. A new success coaching program at Augsburg has admissions counselors providing a range of support for students coming in with high school GPAs lower than 3.0. 

“It really starts to break down the model of admissions counselors being gatekeepers,” Cox said. “Instead of interactions with students of, ‘Turn this in, do this,’ it’s more, ‘You’re already in, what are you interested in? What do you need from me? What are your goals and how can I help?’ It’s more intentional relationship building and supporting students before they even get here, but also once they’re here.”

Ready to replicate

Among those working to drive Augsburg’s move to direct admissions, there is genuine belief in the policy’s power to shift a paradigm around college admissions. The goal, they say, is to fundamentally change a decades-old system that has driven inequities across American education, which Gould points out “hasn’t structurally changed since its origins of enabling the children of wealthy white merchants to get a higher education.”

“Augsburg wants every institution to copy what we’re doing,” Gould added. “We’re willing to share how we’re doing it. Each institution will have to adapt it to their profile, but we want the concept of direct admissions and success coaching copied.”

As with any pioneering effort, there are many eyes on Augsburg, evidenced by several national media outlets recently covering the change, including Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and Inside Higher Ed. While Gould acknowledged that paradigm shifts often take a long time, Ruckel said evidence of success will hopefully continue to come as students are retained and work toward graduation, buoying the case for direct admissions for other schools considering it. 

“Other institutions around the country are trying to achieve these same goals around access and equity. This is a powerful example we can point to and show how we’re stepping forward as a leader in higher education,” Farris said. “Admissions is one place where the rubber really meets the road in terms of thinking about how our systems work and how our processes either continue or disrupt inequities.”

“Direct admissions,” she added, “is the Augsburg mission through and through.”

Top image: Admissions staff Anna Cox ’22 and Stephanie Ruckel talk with student Elsy Cruz Parra ’26 in the Augsburg admissions office. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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It’s later in the evening, but Augsburg physician assistant student Alyssa Raiolo ’23 happily takes the time to journal. Gratitude flows into her as she reflects on the experiences of her recent days.

There was her medical preceptor’s hospitality and generosity, going above and beyond the normal requirements of simply supervising a student; the preceptor took steps to make Raiolo feel comfortable as she settled into her five-week clinical rotation in Crookston, Minnesota.

There were the times she directly assisted during surgeries and other procedures, opportunities rarely afforded to a rotating PA student at busier clinics where medical residents and others are well ahead on the priority list.

There were the conversations with her preceptor, who took the time and care to truly walk through an experience they just had with a patient to help Raiolo learn as much as she could from it.

“Learning from someone who has been doing this forever, you can’t put a price on that. It’s just the best,” Raiolo says. “To have the space and time for these experiences, they’re only available because I’m out here in Crookston. It’s priceless.”

It’s no coincidence that one of Raiolo’s rotations as a student in the Augsburg PA program brought her to Crookston, a town of about 7,500 people nearly 300 miles northwest of Augsburg’s Minneapolis campus. It’s one of several rural and underserved communities where Augsburg is working to get students into clinical rotations. These foundational blocks in building true partnerships give students invaluable experiences and serve communities where there is a shortage of health care providers.

“Our president, Paul Pribbenow, has the saying of, ‘Show up and do the work.’ This is us truly doing that,” says Associate Professor Vanessa Bester, the PA program’s director since 2021. She says the program is committed to establishing long-term partnerships with clinics and giving students experiences with the barriers to health care across various communities.

Augsburg’s ability to do that work got a major boost earlier this year when the university secured a $300,000 health equity grant from the Minnesota Department of Health to train students to practice in rural and underserved communities, including through telehealth services. The money helps students pay for transportation and cost of living expenses so they can spend more time living and working in these communities. The grant also funds Augsburg faculty and staff taking time to build stronger relationships and partnership models with medical providers.

“How do we prepare health care provider partners to train our students and to get what they need out of these programs? We’re not swooping in once a year with five students. There’s continuously someone from Augsburg,” Bester says. “It’s really about the long game and building those relationships and trust. … The more trust a community has in you, the more you’re welcome and able to contribute.”

While the grant was obtained by the PA program, it’s also being used to help train students in Augsburg’s nursing, social work, music therapy, and clinical psychology graduate programs. That means Augsburg students are going into communities with a foundation of holistic care built across those programs, and they’re using their experiences to, as Bester says, “continue growing into change agents, recognizing barriers to health care, and helping build a better system.”

“Augsburg’s health programs are really a powerhouse working together; the model of collaboration is really powerful and wonderful,” Bester adds. “There’s this concept of collaborative care that we develop in our students where we work together as a team, support that team-based care, and see that outcomes are so much better.”

Getting students where they’re needed

Well-documented and discouraging health disparities persist in many rural and underserved communities across Minnesota and the United States. (Health disparities refer to differences in health status compared to the overall population, such as higher rates of disease, disability, chronic pain, and mortality.) Perhaps no number paints the contrast more painfully than the harsh gap in life expectancy: , life expectancy in 2019 for rural men and women was nearly three years less than their urban counterparts across the U.S.

Access to health care is a challenge for many rural populations. Although about one in five people in the U.S. live in rural areas, less than 10% of physicians practice there, . Beyond that, nearly 150 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, in part due to staffing shortages.

Those shortages are a key part of why getting Augsburg students into rural clinics and hospitals is so important, Bester says.

“We want to build relationships with our partners so the community is part of the students’ training. Does that guarantee they’ll go practice there after graduation? Not necessarily, but the level of autonomy and feeling of connection may draw students back to rural communities when they are making that decision of where to work,” she says, adding that the PA program has seen success in retention with its clinical partners in Little Falls, Minnesota. The $300,000 grant starting this year builds on the work of a previous grant that helped fund the development of a longstanding relationship between Augsburg and CHI-St. Gabriel’s Health in Little Falls.

Raiolo says that despite being “such a city person” growing up, her time in Crookston has dramatically increased her interest in returning to a rural setting to practice medicine, citing the ability to provide holistic care and time to work more consistently with “people as full people.”

“People come from all over the area to get care in Crookston. It’s so nice to get to know the people you’re caring for and understand more fully their way of life and what their experiences are like,” she adds.

PA student Vanessa Amanor ’23 has had similar experiences: Born in Ghana and raised just west of Minneapolis, Amanor says she has been amazed during rotations in underserved communities—more formally identified as federally designated health professional shortage areas—in rural Sherburne and Morrison counties. Smaller clinics that are part of larger health systems often provide student training in and patient access to primary care, behavioral health, and addiction medicine. As a part of her training in clinics outside of St. Cloud and Elk River, Amanor saw the community connections that providers develop and the benefits of continuous care they have with their patients.

“The provider I worked with in St. Cloud delivered a lot of these patients in Little Falls and was their family provider throughout their life, and now they struggle with addiction and he’s their provider (for coping with addiction). It was just this amazing journey,” she says, adding that she’s planning on starting her career in a rural and/or underserved community. “I love the idea of being able to see people throughout their lives and help guide them through things. You build a sense of trust when you’re with them for that period of time and see them that often. I’m looking forward to that.”

‘Grateful for these experiences’

There’s a sense of excitement and gratitude, Bester says, as Augsburg moves through the first of three years with grant funding from the Minnesota Department of Health. It helps to have so much momentum and experience from the initial grant-supported partnership with CHI-St. Gabriel’s in Little Falls, which helped provide a proof of concept for how to match student training directly to addressing health inequities across Minnesota.

Augsburg established from the previous grant a substance use disorder curriculum, so PA students were ready to obtain their Drug Enforcement Administration licensure and could prescribe suboxone to combat opioid dependence. Funding from the new $300,000 grant is helping ramp up training and develop a curriculum for telemedicine that will launch this fall. It is also paying for two telehealth stations on campus for students to practice and meet with patients during their rotations.

“The biggest thing is that funding opportunities like this are so critical to address the disparities going on in our state,” Bester says. “This is an excellent way for us to help facilitate that access and contribute to improving health in all of our state’s communities.”

For Raiolo, getting to see firsthand the issues facing her neighbors in rural and underserved communities has been eye-opening. She knows there’s plenty more to see and a lot more to learn in how she can help create better outcomes for her future patients.

“I’m grateful for these experiences,” she says. “I’ve seen more now of what people experience and understand more of what needs are out here.”

It’s safe to say there are a lot more journal entries in her future.

Top image: Physician’s Assistant Program Director Vanessa Bester takes a visitor’s blood pressure at Augsburg Health Commons. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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