On Monday, May 3, Augsburg University celebrated commencement virtually with the release of a prerecorded video ceremony. The event included remarks from several presenters and personalized slides for graduates displaying photos and messages that the students submitted. The viewers posted comments to the videostream as they watched the event, and students took to social media to share their graduation posts using the hashtag #AuggieGrad.

On Tuesday, June 8, Augsburg held an in-person commencement for the classes of 2020 and 2021 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Because the 2020 commencement ceremony was virtual in alignment with public health guidelines designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many graduates from the Class of 2020 opted to participate in the 2021 in-person ceremony, where attendees were asked to wear face masks and stay physically distanced from guests of different households.

Visit to find video recordings of Augsburg’s virtual and in-person events.

Did you know?

The traditional undergraduate Class of 2021 is Augsburg’s most diverse graduating class with 45.6% Indigenous students and students of color, an increase of more than 20% over the past three years.

Katie Clark ’10 MAN, ’14 DNP sees resilience every day as executive director of Augsburg’s Health Commons, which are drop-in health centers led by the nursing program with a model focused on caring for those in the community who are marginalized. Guests are not required to show identification, and medical professionals don’t wear scrubs or stethoscopes in order to increase relatability and public trust in health care workers.

Her focus at the Augsburg Central Health Commons is with individuals who are experiencing homelessness or who are marginally housed in Minneapolis, and the Health Commons in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood provides care for residents, many of whom are East African immigrants. As an assistant professor of nursing, Clark teaches primarily in the graduate nursing program through courses that emphasize social justice, health disparities, and civic engagement.

The Augsburg nursing program, Clark said, is unique because faculty and students are embedded in the community. Other schools often see that work as “extra service” and send students to nonprofits, but Augsburg considers place-based work as central to the educational experience.

Hospitality and healing

“We help students serve and explore the world we live in, and we’re with them when they do it,” Clark said. “They get uncomfortable and lean into the biases they may have and really get involved in a community to understand the issues from the people who experience them.”

“You can’t come up with answers if you don’t know the problems.”—Katie Clark ’10 MAN, ’14 DNP

When COVID-19 hit, the Health Commons at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis was one of the only drop-in health centers that continued to stay open. At the height of the pandemic, Clark said staying open meant standing outside, passing out hygiene kits, and bringing meals and supplies to encampments of unhoused people.

“Many of our students are adult learners seeking bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees. Some of them have dealt with furloughs or are at the bedsides of patients, holding up the [touchscreen] tablet for family members to say goodbye, and adapting to constant changes in health care environments. Then they have school in addition to their own stressors at home, like juggling kids or responding to family members who say, ‘COVID isn’t real.’ These students want to get involved and tackle the issues in their communities, and they are doing it! I get chills talking about it.”

Ellen Kearney ’23 DNP is one of Clark’s students in the Doctor of Nursing Practice: Family Nurse Practitioner program and also a registered nurse at a Twin Cities intensive care unit. Kearney admitted that despite extensive safety measures, it was scary to be indoors at the Health Commons with patients early in the pandemic. But the work—her passion—is critical, she added.

“Before COVID-19 we were able to serve between 50 and 100 people each Monday and Thursday,” said Kearney. “Now we can only see 12 people each day we are open. But because our hours have not changed, it has been nice to have a longer period alone with each guest if they chose to stay and talk. I’ve been able to learn about one guest’s upcoming trip to her home country in Africa and her worries about traveling, and I have been able to follow up with one older man while I do his foot care. It has been hard to not open the doors fully, especially now that the weather is colder and knowing there are so few public spaces open, though it is clear that we need to stay capped for everyone’s safety. While the scale of the Commons is small, the impact is large.”

When Augsburg temporarily restricted students from working at the Commons, volunteers and Augsburg alumni, like Emily Pierskalla ’20 DNP, stepped in to keep doors open. The most challenging aspect of working as a registered nurse is ricocheting through stages of grief, which Pierskalla said is emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting. She avoids news about COVID-19 and social media because it can trigger haunting memories.

“I have flashbacks of the faces of patients I’ve seen die while their loved ones cry watching through an iPad or seeing my own co-workers struggling to breathe after getting sick,” said Pierskalla, who has worked for eight years at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. “It has taken a lot of therapy, self-care, and effort to keep the burnout from causing me to become bitter and angry, or worse, apathetic to the world and society.”

She has also worked as a nurse practitioner at CVS MinuteClinics, administering COVID-19 tests and helping people understand their test results and quarantine recommendations—efforts that have immediate practical effects.

“When I’m at the Commons or out in the camps, I actually feel like I’m helping to create the world I want to live in.”—Emily Pierskalla ’20 DNP

Advocates for change

Auggies are working across the globe to create policies and medical solutions to realize that better world. Dr. Ray Yip ’72 is a global health specialist serving as special advisor to the Gates Venture on China Partnership Development. For the past 22 years, he has assisted the Chinese government in improving its public health system, with a focus on disease control and response capacity. When COVID-19 began spreading in January, Yip was in Beijing.

“I was impressed with how aggressive the outbreak was in Wuhan, and I predicted that China would be able to get it under control by April. To my pleasant surprise, China achieved that seemingly impossible task by mid-March.”

In February, he returned to his home in upstate New York, from which he has advised several organizations about COVID-19-related issues and provided a range of companies with updates about the progress of vaccine development worldwide.

“This pandemic, which we knew would happen sooner or later, requires strong government leadership as well as commitment and partnership with the private sectors for the solutions.”—Ray Yip ’72

“More than 23 years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told me the United States had the know-how and capacity to contain this epidemic. After all, I was sent to China to help them to build such capacity. My prediction was so off, I hate to admit it. We all suffer dearly from the dire consequence of horrible mismanagement, which largely has to do with leadership failure. It was particularly painful to watch the CDC get sidelined, and public health measures became politicized.”

The heroes of the pandemic, Yip said: health care workers.

“Most people do not realize the risk and danger of those health care workers taking care of the COVID patients, especially in the early phase when protective gear was in short supply. A disproportionate number of them got infected and died. If I were my younger version, I would not hesitate to join them in on the front lines. I am grateful for their service and sacrifice.”

Dr. Paul Mueller ’84, regional vice president for Mayo Clinic Health System’s Southwest Wisconsin region, oversees thousands of such workers attending to patients in two hospitals and eight clinics. He manages COVID-19 response through policy decisions and exploring new treatments while treating the disease in his own patient panel.

“It is weighty from a psychological standpoint, as you try to be a leader in such an ever-changing, high-stakes environment, knowing the lives you impact,” said Mueller, who has served as an Augsburg regent and as the campaign chair of Great Returns: Augsburg’s Sesquicentennial Campaign. “But every day I walk the halls of our hospitals and clinics and see the resilience and ingenuity of our staff who have delivered on the promise of medicine. Nurses greet me with a smile behind personal protective equipment. They are busy but feel called and up to this work. With a can-do attitude, we are caring for patients in the darkest of times, administering novel treatments, and preparing to safely roll out vaccines.

“We’re still in the thick of it. If you think of it like a marathon, we are at mile marker 19. But if we can maintain resilience and hope, we will finish the race and be better for it.”—Paul Mueller ’84

“This pandemic has shown us that we all breathe the same air, and it is the one thing that is unifying our entire planet. While the virus rages on killing people, we continue to see the brilliance of the human spirit—beacons of hope and optimism, compassion and resilience, integrity and ingenuity.”

Caring for patients, fueling research

Brittany Kimball ’13 is a third-year resident at the University of Minnesota in internal medicine and pediatrics. The pandemic has taken its toll on her and other residents, as expectations are in flux and workloads are stressful and exhausting. Virtual visits are difficult because of a lack of internet and personal connectivity, Kimball said. Loneliness has infected the hospitals. Last week, Kimball watched a nurse gently care for a patient isolated from visitors, playing his favorite music as he died.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly compounded patients’ conditions. Children are missing well visits and immunizations. Cancer patients require COVID-19 tests prior to chemotherapy, sometimes missing a treatment because they have the virus. Many of my primary care patients with diabetes are wary of clinic visits, thus making it harder to [measure doses of] their medications,” said Kimball, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Augsburg.

“Most troublesome, the pandemic has compounded inequities for already marginalized people. Some of my patients don’t have internet, while others don’t have access to a regular phone. For some patients, limited English proficiency can make getting set up on a virtual platform more difficult.

“Patients dealing with addiction and trying to maintain sobriety have told me that their usual coping mechanisms—like getting together with other people who are sober or participating in a faith community—have become inaccessible. For patients living in poverty, balancing virtual school and frontline jobs has been incredibly stressful and sometimes impossible. It’s often people living in poverty that are doing frontline work that makes them more likely to be exposed to the virus, like working in a restaurant, public transit, or in a store.”

“We need to figure out how to make telemedicine more equitable.”—Brittany Kimball ’13

Her dream has long been to be a doctor, so despite the challenges, she pushes on—driven to pursue a fellowship in hematology-oncology. As a Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor, Kimball is particularly interested in caring for adolescents and young adults with cancer and blood diseases. “As an 18-year-old in my first semester at Augsburg, I was figuring out dating while bald, chemo after classes, and trying to study when my brain felt foggy and my body felt sick,” she added. “Sometimes I needed a bit more guidance and support than a typical adult patient, but not in the same way that a much younger child might. Teens and young adults don’t fit neatly in the pediatric or adult-centered models of care, and I hope I can make that better.”

Hamdi Adam ’18 is similarly driven to make a difference. As a doctoral student of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, Adam followed his bachelor’s in biology from Augsburg with a master’s degree in public health at the University of Minnesota. Adam studies cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and neurocognitive disorders. He is focused on investigating the impact of COVID-19 on chronic conditions, which can lead to higher risk of mortality, especially among people with existing risk factors, like high blood pressure and diabetes.

“At some point down the road, I’ll probably get the chance to utilize COVID-19 data to assess the relationship between COVID status and various chronic disease conditions in population-based research studies and hopefully add valuable and timely information to the base of existing literature,” said Adam, who—as a first-generation Oromo American—is interested in applying his research to address health disparities affecting people of color. “It feels good to know that your studies and work are for the betterment of people. With research, sometimes you feel like your work is so detached from the true health problems you are attempting to address, but I like to think that epidemiologic research provides the basis for informing more direct actions, such as health policy development and effective community-based interventions.”

Another researcher, Will Matchett ’13, earned a doctorate in virology and gene therapy from the Mayo Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. He works as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota, where he will spend up to five years acquiring training that will allow him to run his own lab. Between April and August, his research focused exclusively on developing a SARS-CoV-2 test to measure the specific antibodies that block the virus from entering cells. Since September, his focus has shifted to testing a COVID-19 vaccine being developed at the University of Minnesota.

Increasing and diversifying COVID-19 testing

Does all the medical terminology sound like a foreign language? That’s how Elaine Eschenbacher ’18 MAL described her first few weeks as the higher education operations lead for Minnesota’s COVID-19 Testing Work Group. Since 2009, she has worked at Augsburg, the last six of those years as director for the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship. But since June, the Sabo Center has put her “on loan” to Minnesota’s State Emergency Operations Center to work with a team of experts to in collaboration with colleges and universities. Subgroups are assigned to areas such as long-term care, child care and schools, , hotspots, case investigation and contact tracing, research, data, purchasing, and contracts.

“My work at Augsburg prepared me for this role in a variety of ways. The role is necessarily collaborative and involves recognizing that different people have different roles to play and respecting those different perspectives and sets of expertise.”—Elaine Eschenbacher ’18 MAL

“Civic engagement work is like that, too. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the Master of Arts in Leadership program, which I completed in 2018. This work is like having a master class in leadership and public health every day.”

In April, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced a “moonshot goal” of 20,000 tests per day in the state, at a time when only about 2,000 tests were being performed daily, Eschenbacher said. The testing work group increased capacity and made that moonshot goal by the end of June.

“Since then, we’ve been continuing to increase and diversify COVID testing, and make sure that the people who most need it have access to it. During the week of Thanksgiving, our daily average for testing across the state was more than 57,000,” she added. “Testing is an important tool in controlling the spread of COVID-19, and making testing accessible regardless of income or location is an important equity issue.”

Eschenbacher has spent her days planning and data-modeling as it relates to higher education, consulting with specific institutions in the wake of outbreaks, guiding higher education testing, and organizing partnerships for case investigation and contact-tracing. She facilitates webinars and other information pieces about saliva testing, serves as state incident commander for community testing events, and helped coordinate mass testing of 18- to 35-year-olds prior to Thanksgiving. More recently, she has served as incident commander for a community vaccination site.

“It feels like a cliché to say this, but it is an absolute honor to do this work. We talk a lot about vocation at Augsburg, and I guess I would say that vocation can sneak up on you. I never would have dreamed of doing the work I’ve done since June, but it feels like purpose.”

These are only a handful of the Auggies who are living out their passionate purpose to bring an end to this crushing pandemic and, in the meantime, to soften the blow.

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Augsburg stories on COVID-19:

• What it takes to fight a pandemic, part 1: Community collaboration and mutual aid
• Augsburg’s in-house epidemiologist guides Auggies through the COVID-19 pandemic
  

Top Image: Augsburg’s coronavirus guidelines, including face coverings and physical distancing in classrooms and public places, helped protect Auggies from COVID-19. Professor and Chemistry Department Chair Joan Kunz instructs in the Hagfors Center. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

The COVID-19 pandemic put a major pause on 2020’s athletic competitions. The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference . In January the league announced for basketball, hockey, indoor track and field, and swimming and diving (though it’s not officially part of the MIAC, wrestling will follow the same guidelines). Auggies can’t wait to get back in the game.

Many student-athletes have been practicing their sports since elementary school. During the past year, the pandemic disrupted participation in activities that have been important to their lives. But Augsburg’s Athletics staff and student-athletes have met this challenge with a commitment to the health and safety of the community. This willingness to put safety first means that student-athletes are now able to compete.

In order for student-athletes to participate in sports this year, the NCAA created rules designed to promote safety. also made sure that strong safety measures were in place, which has helped students feel a bit more at ease during an anxious time.

, a guard on the men’s basketball team, said, “We have the freedom to decide whether or not we feel comfortable with an activity. The Athletics Department is handling this well, keeping us safe physically and mentally, too.”

Coaches play an important role in student-athletes’ lives, which means they are often among the first people to learn when a student receives a positive COVID-19 test result. This means that they are not only helping students develop skills in their sport; they are also watching out for the safety of their team.

, a middle blocker on the women’s volleyball team, said, “The coaches and trainers are sharing campus resources like the Center for Wellness and Counseling. They have check-in times when we can talk about anything, and they will call or text us: doing contact tracing, helping us understand how to quarantine correctly if we have to do that, and making sure we have everything we need.”

Changes to practice and competition

Even with precautionary measures in place, there are times when teams have to pause their practice, whether a teammate tested positive for COVID-19 or a rising number of cases in Minnesota required universities to temporarily close workout and sports facilities, which occurred in the fall and early winter.

When they’re able to practice, Augsburg’s student-athletes gather in pods that have gradually increased in size as they were safely able to do so. While the smallest pods have allowed students to practice their sports safely and to control the spread of the virus, they’ve also presented a challenge. “It’s difficult to get to know each other and to gel as a team,” Hannah said.

“Practices are very different,” said Evans. “You can’t see people’s faces because of the masks. But we’ve been able to move up into bigger pods, which gives us a more normal team chemistry and allows us to have a full team practice and do some scrimmaging. The challenges are more mental than physical.”

In early January, the MIAC gave teams the go-ahead to compete again, although competitions are limited and spectators are not allowed. (Augsburg has offered free .) Students in sports that present a higher risk for COVID-19 transmission must get tested three times each week in order to practice and compete—measures well worth it for eager players and coaches. “It’s exciting to be able to get back to playing and feel in the groove again,” said Colleen Enrico ’14, assistant athletic director, volleyball assistant coach, and Student-Athlete Advisory Committee advisor.

Prioritizing mental health

Augsburg Athletics had already begun addressing the mental health of student-athletes before the pandemic. In the summer of 2019, all coaches and staff took an eight-hour course in mental health first aid, which can provide support for student-athletes and coaches until they can speak with mental health professionals.

Mark Wick, men’s hockey assistant coach, has recently taken on new, temporary duties at Augsburg as he sets up a mental health advocacy program for Augsburg Athletics. “We need to know how to deal with what is happening now, but in five to 10 years, people still will be dealing with losing jobs or loved ones,” Wick said. “Hopefully it won’t be as bad as it is now, but how we use this time can help prepare us for growth.”

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and Assistant Hockey Coach will hold a golf tournament to raise awareness, as this subject is very personal to him. “It’s OK to reach out and ask for help,” Wick told .

— Augsburg University (@AugsburgU)

Fostering the Auggie Experience

Enrico reported that in past years, student-athletes met with the entire team staff on a weekly basis, but this year they are meeting with a different coach each week. This allows them to be more open and build better relationships with their coaches. As in past years, coaches touch base with students about their lives outside of their sport so that, for instance, if they are struggling with classes, the coach can suggest resources for help. This year coaches are also making a point of paying attention to upcoming events so that they can suggest activities that might help student-athletes better connect with their fellow students.

It’s been a tough year for everyone, and that has been particularly true for first-year students who were unable to participate in many traditional activities at the end of their senior year in high school and now have begun their college experience under difficult conditions. For that reason, Enrico said, coaches have made a point of connecting third- and fourth-year students with first-year and other new students.

Check out some photos from a recent Augsburg women’s basketball practice!
— Augsburg Athletics (@AugsburgAuggies)

Different teams have different approaches to these connections. In volleyball, coaches have suggested podcasts that each student can discuss with a different teammate each week. “We want them to get outside of volleyball, so the podcasts might be on topics such as banking or racial diversity,” Enrico said.

Fostering these connections—between teammates, between each student-athlete and coach, and between student-athletes and the wider Augsburg community—is, perhaps, one of the most important things coaches can do for their student-athletes this year. All of them help these students feel a sense of community. In Enrico’s words, “the Auggie experience is community.”

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Top image: The COVID-19 pandemic has required temporary closures and reopenings of workout spaces, including Augsburg’s weight room, with students’ health in mind. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

Remember those days of uncertainty in March 2020, when we had more questions than answers, and before most of us used terms like “coronavirus” and “social distancing”?

The United States saw an increase in COVID-19 infections, and some states—including Minnesota—applied stay-at-home orders to mitigate the spread. Weeks before that inflection point, Augsburg University administrators, faculty, and staff convened a COVID-19 task force.

Not all educational institutions have an epidemiologist on staff, but Augsburg is fortunate. One of the task force’s principal leaders is Alicia Quella, associate professor and director of Augsburg’s physician assistant program. As an educator with a PhD in epidemiology and experience in public health settings around the world, her expertise has proved invaluable for the university’s grasp of the evolving global crisis and Augsburg’s response to maintain the health and safety of community members.

Between fielding student questions about the coronavirus, volunteering at COVID-19 testing sites, and ensuring the Augsburg community can trace contacts and reduce transmission on campus, Quella shared some perspectives on her work and where we go from here.

Q: How have you been involved in Augsburg’s outbreak planning and COVID-19 response?

A: I serve on the pandemic task force, a university-wide team of people that assembled after it was apparent that COVID-19 would significantly affect institutions of higher education across the United States. We collaborate regularly with epidemiologists from the Minnesota Department of Health to implement public health guidelines for campuses. We started to meet daily to coordinate issues involving classrooms and labs, athletics, residence halls, dining services, facilities, and global education. We started a COVID-19 Response Team, which comprises staff and faculty across campus who implement health protocols and support students and personnel who have illness, have COVID-19, or have been exposed to it.

Neither rain nor SNOW can keep ‘s Dr. Alicia Quella from working the walk-up/drive-up COVID-19 testing location Cedar Riverside Clinic

— R.John (@raccajohn)

Q: What were your first thoughts when you heard about COVID-19 and considered its implications for the Augsburg community?

A: When news of a novel coronavirus was circulating in China, I was immediately concerned because I had studied the epidemiology of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV-1) during my doctoral work through the University of Iowa Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases. In 2003, SARS quickly spread to 29 countries, so I knew that this would be a major issue in the United States.

Q: At this stage in the COVID-19 pandemic, what are the most important things for the public to understand and do?

A: To reach herd immunity [when a significant portion of a community is immune to a disease and thereby makes spread unlikely] we all need to continue to ‘bubble’ and limit the number of close contacts, wear face masks, socially distance, and get vaccinated.

I also encourage the students and my patients to be creative and find ways to keep active and engaged—start a new hobby, do something outdoors, and reach out to relatives and friends who may be isolated right now.

Q: What do you see in the post-COVID-19 world?

A: Colleges and universities have seen a rapid diffusion of innovation in how they are using technology to deliver curriculum, participate in athletics, and maintain operations. This energy and innovation will have to continue to promote widespread vaccine uptake. Vaccine hesitancy is an issue, especially in communities of color that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 because of structural racism. Augsburg will need to make this a top priority moving forward.

Q: What’s a memorable moment of the past year that made an impact on you?

A: As an epidemiologist and a physician assistant, I’ve had the opportunity to continue to see patients and work with Augsburg students, staff, and faculty. I recently received the COVID-19 vaccine and have felt humbled and honored to now be able to continue to work more safely in the community.

Top image: Associate Professor Alicia Quella’s experience as an epidemiologist has helped maintain the health and safety of the Augsburg community. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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Read more Augsburg stories on COVID-19.