There was a time not all that long ago when simply getting enough players to field a complete team was a challenge for the Augsburg women’s golf program. As a result, the on-course performance of the Auggies wasn’t where it might have been.

Johanna Frykmark (left) and Stef Zappa (right) have changed that. The two seniors have brought stability, seriousness, and increased levels of success to Augsburg’s women’s golf program. They have both been All-Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) selections, both have shown great improvement on the course, and both will graduate at the end of this semester after three-and-a-half years on campus.

“Without them, our team wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are now,” coach Ted Vickerman says. “They’ve really changed the mentality to where we want to do our best. We’re beating teams.”

The two take pride in how the program has changed during their tenure. “Our first year, we were last in the conference, but we had fun doing it,” Zappa says. “Everybody’s improved. Both of us have had five or six stokes (average per round) of improvement.”

At the MIAC championship meet—her final collegiate event—in early October, Zappa became the first Augsburg women’s golfer to earn multiple All-MIAC honors, finishing seventh, the highest-ever finish for an Auggie at the MIAC championships.

Johanna Frykmark finished in 25th place and joins Zappa as the second of three Auggie women’s golfers to record 25th-or-better finishes in three MIAC meets.

Both appreciate their time at Augsburg and the role golf has played in their Auggie experience. “My first year was pretty rough,” Frykmark says. “I had a hard time fitting in and I missed home a lot. I’ve changed so much as a person since I came here. The golf team was a big part of that; they were my second family when I got here.”

After completing her degree in international business and business management, Frykmark hopes to find a position with an international company that does business both in the U.S. and in

her native Sweden.

Zappa is on her way to becoming a teacher, spending this semester student-teaching first- and second-graders at Barton Open School in South Minneapolis. She’s also helping to coach volleyball at Minneapolis South High School.

While that’s a heavy load, Zappa wasn’t going to walk away from the golf team. Zappa—who had a hole-in-one on her 20th birthday during a tournament at Carleton—didn’t practice with the team as often this fall as she would have liked. Instead, she practiced in the evenings and remained one

of the team’s top golfers—that is, on a team much more stable than before Zappa and Frykmark arrived on campus.

JEFF SHELMAN is the former director of media relations in the Marketing and Communication office.

The post Ladies of the links lift the team appeared first on Augsburg Now.

Oregon author George Wright’s inquiry to me came from his own experience of locating a long-lost store manager who had once befriended him. Twenty-five years later, a search by Wright led to a reunion and frequent luncheon meetings. Pondering the importance of positive influences, especially in one’s early years, gave Wright a plot line for his 2009 book, Driving to Vernonia.

I recently followed the lead of Wright’s protagonist, Edmund Kirby-Smith, whose search for his mentor takes him to a small Oregon town. I sought an important teacher in my life: Augsburg College English advisor Professor F. Mark Davis.

Finding Davis was no small challenge. Internet searches were fruitless. No Augsburg contacts I made were helpful. A letter to another retired English professor revealed that Davis when leaving Minneapolis became a dean of a small, unidentified college in the East.

And then came vital help from a most unlikely source: a financial recruiter combing a list of alumni in the Northwest. We had a friendly visit for an hour in a downtown Portland hotel, which ended cordially, even though I revealed that our estate planning directs an educational gift not to Augsburg but rather to the foundation of the shared high school of my wife, Nancy, and me. That was acceptable to David Benson, who then asked: “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, find Mark Davis!” I abruptly responded.

That he did, querying a contact at Augsburg I had not tried. First to come to me from Benson was a chronology of Davis’s educational degrees and positions. That led to an e-mail to his undergraduate school in Tennessee (Bryan College), which forwarded my e-mail to him. Within days, an e-mail arrived from my one-time professor.

Davis, who had come to Augsburg as English Department chair in 1968 when I was a junior, expressed delight at the contact. During his first two years in Minneapolis, we spent considerable time together in the classroom (including a course in his specialty, Chaucer) and in department meetings (I was a student appointee to faculty meetings). He and his wife, Kay, once hosted Nancy and me in their south Minneapolis home at a gathering of English majors. He even had made the one-hour trip by car to Monticello to visit our hometown and meet my parents.

More amazing than finding him after months of occasional searches was the discovery of his home in retirement in Silver Spring, Md., just weeks before my five-day visit to the same area. One evening, I determined, could be devoted to meeting with my mentor whom I had not seen since the early ’70s.

Mark was waiting outside the entrance to his building in their sprawling retirement community. The professor I knew when he was nearing 38 (I was 22) appeared somewhat like the man in the 1970 picture that carried. For the next hour and a half, the four of us sat in their apartment, reflecting on careers, family and grandchildren, travel, what we read today, retirement activities, people from Augsburg we mutually knew.

There were parallels in our lives: We both have sons in the San Francisco Bay area. We chose our retirement cities to be near grandchildren. We have downsized from larger, single-family homes to urban housing complexes. We reflected, with personal satisfaction, on our working lives—college professor and dean of students (Mark), weekly newspapering (Don) and K-12 education (Kay and Nancy).

Time didn’t permit reminiscing about the courses we shared at Augsburg … or how a former English major and a professor later applied their studies in different pursuits. Nor did we reflect on the frequent campus turbulence during the ’60s from protests against the Vietnam War to the necessary demands for justice and equality by both black Americans and women.

As a gift, I brought a Wright-signed copy of Driving to Vernonia for Davis. In the fictional “Vernonia,” Edmund’s search for mentor Richard Vickerman was (in the author’s words) “awkward, suspenseful and tinged with risk.” Not so for me. Rather my personal (and successful) drive to find Mark Davis was easy to do, without risk, and fulfilling.

DONALD Q. SMITH ’70

Former editor and publisher of the Monticello, Minn., Times; he lives in Portland, Ore., where he occasionally writes “Don’s Column”-like pieces as if he still has a newspaper deadline. He can be reached at donaldqsmith@yahoo.com.

The post A pilgrimage to find my college mentor: Professor F. Mark Davis appeared first on Augsburg Now.

We asked some of the student callers to share their experiences and knowledge with our readers.

Chris Fleming ’12

Psychology/Sociology major, Spanish minor

First year as a student caller

Q. What would you like students and alumni to know about giving back to Augsburg?

A. When you do become an alum, remember that while you were in school someone

made a way for you to get through college. Remember to always give back to the community

that gave to you. I know we all say, “Well I will come back to visit and volunteer my time,” but sometimes you must go beyond. If you dig deep to give a few dollars to support another student, they will be able to give back when they graduate. It’s a domino effect.

Elisabeth Clemans ’11

Social work major, psychology minor

Has been a caller for four years

Q. Why should alumni and friends support The Augsburg Fund?

A. I am a recipient of financial aid at Augsburg, so I want to thank all the alumni, parents, and friends who give to The Augsburg Fund. It’s really important for students like me because every gift increases the percentage of alumni who give back. That makes the College more reputable and helps me get a job after I graduate!

Pa Dao Yang ’11

Sociology major

Has been a caller for four years

Q. What have you learned about Augsburg through this work?

A. What I have learned while working at The Augsburg Fund is the importance of keeping the alumni updated on Augsburg. For example, I talk about the new Oren Gateway Center or speak about events such as the chocolate tasting event at the History Center. It’s fun to talk to alumni about what is happening on campus and to listen to them speak about their experiences.

Ember Russell ’11

Elementary education major

Has been a caller for two years

Q. Have you had any especially memorable calls?

A. I was talking with a lady who had studied elementary education. It was really interesting to hear how much the Education Department has changed! She gave me amazing advice on what to do when I graduate. I really enjoyed the call, and she made her very first donation to The Augsburg Fund!

The post The student phonathon – dialing for Augsburg dollars appeared first on Augsburg Now.

But that is it. Those are the only tangible things the Augsburg men’s soccer coach has left from his time both as a player and as an assistant coach in St. Peter, Minn.

Holker openly admits he didn’t think that was going to be the case when he took over the Auggie program in 2004. His goal was pretty simple: make Augsburg respectable, win some games, and put himself in position to become the next Gustavus coach.

“I had a five-year plan,” he says. “I thought I’d be here three years and I’d be out.” But something happened along the way to mess up those plans—Holker became an Auggie.

“The institution has evolved significantly over the six years I’ve been here and I’ve changed as well,” Holker says. “I started to embrace the institution and our work.”

He also had success. In 2006 Holker led Augsburg’s men’s soccer team to a 13-victory season and a first-ever Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) playoff berth. In 2008 Augsburg reached the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history and reached the Sweet 16 before losing to Loras College in two overtimes.

This past spring, however, brought out the truest example that Holker had genuinely become an Auggie. When the head soccer coach position at Gustavus opened, Holker was approached about the job and spent a day in St. Peter.

Before the search moved any farther along, however, Holker pulled out of consideration.

And this year, following a record-breaking season for men’s soccer, Holker was named MIAC Coach of the Year, and sophomore Chad Gilmer was named MIAC Player of the Year. The team won the MIAC playoff championship and advanced to the national tournament for the second time. It won the first round, but lost to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in the second round.

“At the end of the day, this is where I want to be,” Holker says. “I like being in the city and I like that there’s a very true identity here. I think I’m 100% in love with what this institution does. Seven years ago, this was a job. Now, it’s a part of me.”

And now he’s an Auggie.

The post Coach Holker becomes an Auggie appeared first on Augsburg Now.

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It’s complex, difficult- to-understand legislation and is the product of an extremely contentious political process.

On October 15, at its fifth public policy forum, Augsburg’s Sabo Center for Citizenship and Learning hosted a forum to decode and discuss the challenges and opportunities this legislation presents for Minnesota and the nation—that is, how the current healthcare system will change. The symposium was moderated by retired U.S. Rep. Martin Sabo and presented speakers who are leaders in the healthcare field.

Donna Zimmerman, senior vice president of government and community relations at HealthPartners in Minneapolis, addressed the overall scope of the law and focused on the impact of provisions concerning changes to insurance coverage.

“It is a major task to think about how to explain this major piece of legacy legislation our Congress has passed,” Zimmerman said. “I’ll try to demystify this big bill, and focus on what’s important for us in Minnesota.”

Her presentation explained various provisions of the act that have already taken effect or are being phased in shortly; for example, extension of benefits to dependent children up to age 26, adding more preventive care without costsharing by consumers, and prohibition on insurance denial to children under age 19 for pre-existing conditions.

Dr. Sanne Magnan, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health, spoke about changes to health care itself and the interface with Vision Minnesota, Minnesota’s reform passed in 2008. Her message was that the federal reforms will not have as radical an effect in Minnesota as in some states because Minnesota’s quality and delivery of health care are already consistently higher than in many states.

She spoke about how Minnesota is coordinating with federal initiatives to influence how health reform is implemented, “so that we can build on the innovative strategies Minnesota has been doing as well as learn from other states who have been doing health reform.”

She compared provisions for reform in the new federal law with similar provisions in Vision Minnesota and showed how a number of them are already being implemented in this state.

Magnan also explained that much of the difficulty in enacting reform stems from how the current healthcare system was set up. The incentives and payments for health care are made to doctors and providers for treatment of illness, and not for promotion and maintenance of health. Payment is made for office visits, hospitalization, tests, procedures, and drugs, rather than for better management of chronic disease, prevention, and promotion of wellness.

Dr. Bruce Amundson ’60, president of Community Health Innovators, Inc. and assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, spoke about his longtime work to seek reform in the healthcare delivery system to provide everyone with easy access to a team of healthcare professionals who can provide comprehensive care at lower costs.

Amundson offered a vision of the optimal healthcare model (see next page) that focuses on a team approach to ongoing, primary care in clinics, which includes clinical care as well as services in other areas that affect health. These clinics or “medical homes” must then be part of, or connected to, a system that includes specialty-care and hospital and emergency services.

Sabo Center Public Policy Symposium 2010 Healthcare Reform:

What Will It Mean for You (and the Nation)?

October 15, 2010

Panel Participants:

DONNA ZIMMERMAN, Senior Vice President of Government and Community Relations, HealthPartners

DR. SANNE MAGNAN, Commissioner, Minnesota Department of Health

DR. BRUCE AMUNDSON ’60, President, Community Health Innovations, Inc., and Assistant Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine

MARTIN SABO ’59, Moderator; U.S. House of Representatives, 1978-2006

What is ideal healthcare delivery?

The recent health reform legislation primarily focuses on helping more people get health insurance and on addressing some insurance injustices. It does not systematically address delivery system reform—how you receive health care—but elements of the act do support ongoing reform efforts. To understand this, you must have a clearer picture of what clinical and healthcare leaders see as a “reformed delivery system” and what we have been working towards—for years.

Within the past few years a growing agreement has emerged on what an optimal delivery system should look like, both to be able to provide excellent and comprehensive care and to reduce costs. These are the key elements:

First, your health care must be anchored by primary care clinicians—physicians (family practice, general internal medicine, pediatricians), nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. This ensures that you have a personal ongoing relationship with a clinician who is the “general contractor” for your health issues and who is your trusted partner.

Second, you should be part of a clinic or system that provides a “medical home” with your primary clinician. Your medical home must serve as the first stop for ANY health issues that arise, short of critical emergencies.

Further, your medical home should have:

• An electronic health record to ensure immediate access to your history for all who treat you wherever they are located
• More convenient access to your clinicians— same-day appointments, expanded hours, e-mail to your clinicians
• Management of all referrals to specialists and other services you may need, ensuring coordination and avoiding duplication
• Systematic management of common chronic diseases
• Case management for people with complex and/or multiple health issues including monitoring of prescription drugs
• Healthcare teams to expand clinical competency and

The emergence of primary care teams is one of the most important developments in recent years. I would describe the “optimal primary care team” as comprised of:

• Primary care clinicians (physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants)
• Mental health clinician
• Social worker with family therapy skills
• Nurse case manager for patients with complex conditions
• Chronic disease care nurse
• Patient educator
• Pharmacist
• Physical therapist or massage therapist

Research has shown that with this range of skills a clinic or medical home can competently handle 80% or more of the health problems that it receives. It can care for the whole person and meet total needs. This is a radical change, but examples of this model now exist across the country.

The third component is that every clinic or medical home must be part of an organized system of care that includes most specialty physicians, hospital and ER services, and other important services. If not within the same organization, at least there must be formal ties and relationships between the medical home and these other elements of a comprehensive healthcare system.

Because our human condition is complex, people are affected by physical issues, mental health problems, family dysfunction, substance abuse, environmental exposures— and often a combination or all of the above. Clinical care is, therefore, also very complex if it is going to be relevant to the person’s needs and holistic in its aims. The combination of knowledge and skills represented in the optimal team described above brings the healthcare delivery system closer in alignment with human needs, with the foundation being “relationship-based” (versus “diseaseoriented”) care.

The reform legislation recognizes the work by clinicians and leaders in defining what we seek as health reform goals. While it does not fundamentally change the current healthcare delivery system, it supports clinician- led reform by:

• Recognizing the role of primary care clinicians and increasing financial support for training them
• Providing bonus payments for care management of Medicare and Medicaid enrollees when needed
• Providing financial incentives for establishing organized systems of care
• Expanding wellness and preventive coverage in insurance plans
• Funding research on the clinical effectiveness of various treatments
• Creating a Center of Innovation

The legislation is not radical. It builds on our current private insurance and delivery systems. It may not be able to address cost issues, but it does represent a huge step toward ensuring universal insurance coverage and a more effective delivery system. It also must be seen as a move to narrow the gap between healthcare “haves” and “have nots.”

While there’s an immense amount of work ahead, it’s critical to understand that for clinicians and most healthcare leaders, there is no turning back. The whiff of something better, a humanizing system, is in the air and a national reform process is underway. I could not be more hopeful.

Dr. Bruce Amundson ’60 is president of Community Health Innovations, Inc. in Shoreline, Wash.��

Online exclusive:��Reflections on Sabo Public Policy Forum: 2010 Healthcare Reform—What Does It Mean for You (and the Nation)?

By Khalid Adam ’12

“Medicine’s role is to entertain us while Nature takes it course”

—V�DZ��ٲ�������

The quote from 18th-century French essayist Voltaire about the role of medicine in the continuum of life echoes the evolution of medicine’s role from one that was inherently pacifist to one that was rooted in dramatically extending both the length and quality of life with the use of technology and the scientific method. By the time French philosopher Voltaire wrote his famous quote, the pattern of human disease had changed little over the course of the previous 2,000 years, with doctors only offering hope and comfort for the ill.

In fact, according to British physician and columnist Dr. James Le Fanu’s monumental book, The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, the top-ten defining moments of modern medicine only happened over the course of the last 60 years or so with the discovery of penicillin in 1941. Before 1941 many great improvements were made in public health, allowing people to live longer and healthier. However, few of those changes had little to do with the practice of medicine. They had a lot to do with better housing and nutrition, safe water, and better hygiene, except for a few treatments like bone setting, insulin, and thyroid hormones. Usually patients got better on their own. Or in the case of Calvin Jr., they didn’t (Gratzer, 2006).

Many remember President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, then one of the most powerful men, crawling on all fours to catch a rabbit so his son could hold it while he was dying. This was after the 16-year-old son had one day developed a blister playing tennis without socks on the White House courts. “In his suffering, he was asking me to make him well,” remembered Coolidge; “I could not.” An administration of penicillin would have easily saved Calvin Jr.’s life, but penicillin hadn’t been discovered. It was discovered 17 years later after the fact; in fact, the majority of our most innovative and definitive medical discoveries were made in the last quarter century with the development of advanced antibiotics, steroids, lithium, and drugs that treated neurological disorders. It is for this reason and many others that the issue of health care is especially daunting to analyze and to set policy on because it seems to not follow long-held economic assumptions about supply and demand. Technological growth is so explosive that the CT scanner has been replaced by the MRI scanner, which is now being outdone by the PET scanner. Doctors are no longer as passive as they were; instead they were busy curing patients and using large sets of data to test whether one drug could have multiple uses (Gratzer 2006).

Conventional economic thought has it that there should be an inverse relationship between rapid technological strides and the total costs associated with health care, but the economic data shows otherwise. When economist Milton Friedman compared health care spending with the other sectors of the economy, he wrote:

The change in the role of medical care in the U.S economy is truly breathtaking … in 1946, seven times as much was spent on food, beverages, smoking, and tobacco as on medical care; in 1996, more was spent on medical care than on food and beverages. In 1946, twice was spent on transportation as on medical care; in 1996, one-and-a-half times as much was spent on medical care as on transportation (Friedman, 2001).

So just why has healthcare spending gone so much out of control consuming nearly a sixth of GDP spending in 2008? The answers to this question are different according to whom you ask. Liberals say it’s the health insurance companies’ greed and the government’s inability to take a more concerted effort at containing costs and in regulating the employer market for health insurance. Meanwhile, conservatives argue that it’s too much regulation that is driving healthcare spending out of control, citing the growing budgets of government welfare programs like Medicare and Medicaid as the main culprits. They also cite over use of healthcare resources as the main problem, making the problem of health care a ‘volume-control issue’. However, in spite of these differing viewpoints, a few observations are unarguably universal:

• The science of health care has advanced rapidly over the course of the last 60 years, and this has an effect on prices of medical inputs.
• Increased health costs that outpace the growth in GDP have adverse effects on the economic outcomes on industries with large percentage of workers with ESI (Employer-Sponsored Insurance); this results in the loss of output and by de facto, the loss of jobs in those industries.
• The current trend in the growth of per capita GDP spent on health care is unsustainable in the long term.

Health spending in the United States has increased dramatically over the course of the past 50 years, from $27.5 billion in 1960 to $912.6 billion in 1993, and to a mind-boggling $2.4 trillion dollars in 2008 (Centers for Medicaid and Medicare, 2008). Using data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Percentage for U.S GDP spent on health care, it seems to be rising at an almost exponential rate (OECD, 2009). In 2017, it’s expected to reach all-time high of $4.3 trillion or 19.5% of the GDP and the effect of this spending on the economy is largely unclear. But the following fact rings a mostly lucid tune for health policy wonks. That the American healthcare system of health delivery is like a state-of the art fire department (circuitously referring to the explosive growth in innovation indirectly attributable to relatively a strong and a pro-inventor U.S Patent Office) functioning on an archaic transportation grid.

However some arguments from well-respected researchers have gained some credence. They call for a more sensible approach to the re-structuring of the delivery system into organized networks of providers. Their approach incorporates:

• A comprehensive recalibration of FFS (Fee for Service) system, instituting outcomes-based performance system.
• Creating episode-based payment to encourage cooperation among hospitals, physicians, and other care providers (Mechanic and Altman, 2009).

Policy recommendations that echo system-inefficiencies reform, like the one outlined by Mechanic and Altman for payment systems, are critical for creation of a system that equips consumers, governmental entities, and industry alike with perfect information (relatively of course) to make the most economic choices. Even so, an understanding of the information available to consumers is imperative in order to better understand the health choices they make. We expect the consumers of health care to be fully informed about prices, quantities, and the relationships of medical care and other inputs to levels of health. In reality consumers often have no clue, even about the mortality rates of hospitals in their networks. It seems there is less information in the public realm (consumers of health outputs) about the current health care system than there is about the satisfaction rates of hotel beds. It would only seem logical (believing choices about health care necessitate greater concern) that consumers make the most economic choice. This phenomenon is something that is not new throughout the health economy. In fact the markets for healthcare services and that for insurance are marked by significant degrees of asymmetric information and agency (the former encompasses situations where buyers and sellers have different levels of information while the later deals with situations where the lack of information, buyers, and sellers rely on each other to help make decisions) (Folland, Goodman and Stano, 1997). These phenomena, including the presence of Lemon’s Principles behavior in the market for health services, reverberate the commonly-held belief that American health care is incredibly all encompassing and complex. The risk for repercussions of any health reform can prove to be disastrous for incoming administrations. Since 1962 alone, seven presidents and ten congresses have considered the issue of national health insurance, but reform remained forever imminent (Eastaugh, 2001). Currently, 43 to 46 million Americans or 16 to 16.4% of the population have no health insurance with a growing number weary about losing their plans because of the potential for discovery of so-called “pre-existing conditions” (U.S. Congress, 2000). The working poor have no political power, and special interest groups like the insurance industry are against any change to the status quo. This fact remains harrowingly true.

��

The post The Sabo Symposium: Understanding healthcare reform appeared first on Augsburg Now.

At Augsburg College, we don’t have a lot of traditions. Sure, we have Homecoming every year, and we’ve marked the holiday season with Advent Vespers for the past 30 years.

But there’s no annual canceling of classes so that students can go to a local park to hear bands and eat bratwurst. President Pribbenow doesn’t trade places with a student for a day every year. And though we have some important athletic rivalries, none are so longstanding that the matchups attract fans far and wide.

There is one thing, however, that Augsburg has done quite well for a long time: we are very adept at the Lutheran Scandinavian practice of not boasting about our accomplishments.

Now, after years of celebrating achievements with an occasional internal announcement or a round of applause during daily chapel, we’ve decided it is time for our practice of humility to change.

Shift in expectations

In the past, Augsburg’s tendency toward humility has kept our students from applying for national scholarships or to graduate school. But that trend is changing, thanks in part to the work of one woman—Dixie Shafer.

As director of Augsburg’s office of Undergraduate Research and Graduate Opportunity (URGO), Shafer gives pep talks, takes her trademark green pen to students’ personal statements, and shepherds them through the often daunting graduate school application process.

For a small, private college, Augsburg has an impressive résumé of national fellowships and scholarships. In 2010 alone, four Augsburg students were awarded Fulbright scholarships, bringing the total to nine awardees in the last four years, and Augsburg was recently named to The Chronicle of Higher Education list of top Fulbright-producing schools. Five students received Gilman scholarships for the 2010-11 academic year, and in 2009 one Augsburg student became the seventh Auggie to receive a Goldwater scholarship.

And in 2008, lest we forget, Augsburg added its first Rhodes Scholar to the list of student achievements.

Shafer’s work involves helping students conduct faculty-led research during the summer and school year, advising on the graduate and professional school application process, and helping students apply for fellowships and national competitions.

In general, Shafer says she sees students who don’t believe they can be competitive at a national level. “I rarely meet a student who thinks that,” she adds. “We have a pretty humble group of students.”

But she acknowledges the slow cultural shift in expectations. “We have more students applying for national fellowships and more receiving them, and that allows others to know that they can do it.”

Not just for elite schools

Katie MacAulay ’08 was one of the humble students Shafer typically meets. In her junior year, she was studying abroad in Argentina and read a story about two Augsburg students who received Fulbright fellowships.

“I had assumed it was a fellowship of the elite schools, one in which a smalltown, Midwestern girl with a relatively average résumé would be of little competition,” she says. But the article inspired MacAulay, and she made an appointment to meet with Shafer on the day she returned to Augsburg. “Dixie handed me the Fulbright information book and told me to decide whether or not I was serious about applying. As she put it, ‘Once you start, there’s no turning back.’”

MacAulay says her desire to apply was motivated out of curiosity to test her beliefs about Fulbrights being only for students from “prestigious” schools and to challenge personal feelings of inadequacy.

“Dixie helped me realize that, although I maybe didn’t feel like I had the background, I certainly had the foreground.”

Through the application process, MacAulay says, “I realized that your socioeconomic status and upbringing don’t play as large of a role in defining who you are and what you become.” That insight inspired her to stop feeling inadequate in comparison to others and gave her the motivation to challenge her own boundaries.

In November, MacAulay completed a 10-month grant as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Terengganu, Malaysia. She says it has been the best experience of her life and a gift that will continue to benefit her in the future.

“I am of the opinion that you can never have too many options. Be realistic about yourself, but don’t doubt your own uniqueness and abilities,” MacAulay says. She encourages other Augsburg students to apply for national fellowships and programs and to challenge their own ideas about being competitive at a national level.

Educating the whole person

Tina (Quick) Sandy ’08 is another student whose path was guided by Shafer’s counsel and by the gentle insistence of a few determined history professors. A first-generation student who says she almost didn’t come to Augsburg, Sandy is in her third year at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.

At the end of her second year at Augsburg, Sandy saw a poster advertising the URGO summer research program. This program provides a stipend and housing for students who spend 200-400 hours of their summer conducting research under the supervision of a faculty member. To apply to the program, students must submit a research proposal. Sandy was reading the poster just days before the application was due.

She had been taking a history class from Michael Lansing. “He pulled me aside one day and asked if I had considered a history major,” Sandy said. So she went to Lansing about the summer program, and the two of them drafted her proposal.

That summer Sandy researched the history of the Ku Klux Klan movement in the Midwest, a project that led her specifically to document Klan activities in 1922 in Minneapolis. Throughout the entire project she worked closely with Lansing, especially on writing her final report.

“He totally changed my ability to write,” Sandy says. “His red pen shaped my experience, and it served me well.” As a law student, Sandy says she feels much more confident in her writing abilities than some of her classmates who did not receive the same direction and support in their undergraduate programs.

In her third year of college, Sandy began considering her plans beyond college with the encouragement of Lansing, history professor Jacqui deVries, and political science professor Joe Underhill. Sandy was considering law school. “We discussed her potential and then rallied the wagons to get her to think about her options,” Lansing said.

He recalls that perhaps he tried to be too persuasive at times. “We wanted to see Tina set her sights wide because we knew that she had the potential to go to any institution. We wanted to see that for her because we knew that she could really shine.”

“There were a lot of opinions in my ear about what I should do,” Sandy says. That’s when she went to visit Shafer. “She threw a lot of different ideas at me … ideas that opened my mind.” But Sandy says she had a “gut feeling” about law school.

She wanted to stay in Minnesota to be close to her family and to her future husband, fellow Auggie Sama Sandy ’08. Because the law school application process requires significant time as well as money, Sandy opted to apply to one school only, something most students are encouraged not to do.

The easy part was making the decision; the application process was another story altogether. She needed to study for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), pass it, and submit the necessary application materials, including several letters of recommendation and a personal summary, by the deadline. This she did while taking classes, working, and trying to have something of a social life.

Sandy says Shafer was by her side through the entire experience. “She really ended up being my encourager and sidekick.” As a first-generation student, Sandy appreciated the support of someone who knew the process but also understood her own personal background.

As Tina Sandy’s story illustrates, both faculty and staff can be instrumental in a student’s success. Lansing says that as a professor, he feels that he is called to educate the whole person. “I think that’s the point of a small college, thinking of a young person not just as a student but as a person becoming who they are. You want the very best for them.”

Discovering and meeting challenges

Melissa Robertson ’10 is another first-generation student who benefited from the support of faculty who saw her potential and persuaded her to go outside of her comfort zone. Their encouragement helped her meet the challenges of college and discover new opportunities.

Robertson’s first year of college presented the common challenges of balancing school work and social life. She struggled, and her grades reflected that. But in her second year she became more serious about school as she focused on the natural sciences and mathematics.

As she got to know her professors, they saw promise in her and directed her to study and research opportunities. “Dale Pederson and Matt Haines suggested I think about biostatistics, a field that would combine biology and math. I knew I would have to go to graduate school, but at that point I hadn’t even thought about it,” she says.

In the summer before her junior year, Robertson participated in a short-term study program to examine the biodiversity and environmental politics of New Zealand. She also conducted research with biology professor David Crowe in the URGO summer research program.

“I was new to that type of research, but I was ready and willing to learn,” she says. “David was a very good mentor, always willing to help and always told me when I was doing a great job.”

The URGO program presented a new challenge for Robertson, who says she was shy and had extreme anxiety about giving presentations. “Giving reports about my research in front of my fellow URGO people during roundtable discussions was awful for me,” she says, “and I didn’t even want to think about the final oral presentation.”

But working with Crowe gave Robertson the confidence in herself as a scientist and a scholar. Shafer recalls the change she saw in Robertson throughout the summer and her enthusiasm about presenting her research in a graduate school interview. “To see her go from this quiet girl who could barely talk with other students to graduate school … what an accomplishment.”

Robertson continued her research with Crowe during the academic year and also began, with Shafer’s help, the process of applying to graduate school. Between school, work, and personal issues, Robertson says there were many times she wanted to give up and put off graduate school for a year. “But I told myself to keep on with the help of mentors, friends, family, and counseling support. I thought if I didn’t get in to any programs or didn’t like the places, at least I would have tried.”

She applied to five programs, both master’s and doctoral in biostatistics and biology, and she was accepted to all five. Currently Robertson is studying on a full scholarship in the molecular biosciences program at Montana State University in Bozeman.

From first day to graduation day

There is more to student success than national scholarships and fellowships. For some students, whether they are 18 or 38 years old, the greatest achievement is simply to have arrived at Augsburg. In fall 2010, Augsburg welcomed the largest first-year class and the largest graduate school class in the College’s history.

Within this student body is the potential for many stories of students who overcame the odds to get to college and to obtain a degree. Augsburg has an impressive history of assisting students who might not otherwise be successful in college— first-generation students including children of immigrant families, students in recovery from addiction, students with cognitive disabilities as well as physical disabilities, and nontraditional-aged students who are returning to college to complete a degree.

Rich Osborn is an older-than-average student who found success through Augsburg’s weekend program. At the age of 69, Osborn completed his first bachelor’s degree and was one of the oldest Augsburg for Adults students to graduate. Read his story at

Not only is Augsburg attracting a larger student body—the College is keeping students and helping them persist to graduation. Augsburg can boast an impressive 86% retention rate in the day college program from fall 2009 to fall 2010. That is an increase of 3% from last year and significantly higher than the national average of 73% for four-year private colleges and universities.

All of this success is reason for Augsburg to celebrate and to share the stories of student success. Whether it’s the announcement of another Fulbright recipient, a National Science Foundation grant, or publication in a scholarly journal, these stories serve as inspiration and motivation for other Auggies to pursue their goals.

The post Celebrating our success appeared first on Augsburg Now.

Shortly after she settled into her new home in Minneapolis, Martha Stortz (she prefers to be called Marty) did four things: she became a member of the Seward Co-op, she joined the Midtown YWCA, she took her bicycle in for “retooling” at the Hub, and she took herself on walking tours of the Seward, Longfellow, and Downtown East neighborhoods.

And those activities, along with a genuine love for the city and an infectious enthusiasm for Augsburg’s mission, are what make her a true Auggie.

Stortz came to Augsburg this summer as the second Bernhard M. Christensen Professor of Religion and Vocation. She succeeds David Tiede, who retired and subsequently took a position as interim president of Wartburg Theological Seminary.

The Christensen Chair holds multiple responsibilities including teaching in the Religion Department, serving as counsel to the president and Board of Regents, and chairing the advisory council for the Augsburg Center for Faith and Learning. Furthermore, the chair plays a fundamental role in the interpretation and advancement of Augsburg’s institutional vocation, its calling as a college.

Stortz says she is honored to be at Augsburg and excited about her role in the College’s work. “I was quite taken with everything that you’re doing,” she says. “I love this city. This is a college in and for and with the city.”

Augsburg College President Paul Pribbenow says Stortz’ appointment affirms Augsburg’s vision and direction. “I am grateful for the experience and wisdom Professor Stortz brings to this important position, and for the leadership she will provide as we continue to explore what it means to be a Lutheran college in the city,” he says.

Stortz served as a member of the core doctoral faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., and taught for 29 years at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. She is an acclaimed scholar, teacher, and leader in the realms of the church, academia, and society at large.

Her interest in the Christian pilgrimage has been an important part of Stortz’ personal and scholarly life. She has hiked part of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the Way of St. James, in Spain. She and a colleague have also joined two groups—one in El Salvador and another in Mexico City—as they explore post-modern “pilgrimages” through educational immersion experiences.

Though some might question her move from California to Minnesota, from theological education to higher education, and from seminary to college, Stortz feels as though she’s called to be at Augsburg and to bring her connections, an eagerness to share the College’s story with the community, and a commitment to her position.

She believes that her experience in circles of theological education and religion and education will bring some meaningful connections to Augsburg. “I’m very enthusiastic about what’s going on here, and I think my key role is to make sure everyone knows what is going on.”

“I’m eager to communicate Augsburg’s vision and its sense of a living and lively tradition that is engaged with the city, the community, and the world. I’ve been a writer, speaker, and teacher, and I would now harness those gifts in service of the College’s vocation.”

When questioned about her decision, Stortz says, “I say to my friends, ‘You don’t know the Twin Cities, you don’t know how exciting it is to have colleagues in other disciplines and how vibrant those multidisciplinary conversations can be, and you don’t know Augsburg.’”

Excerpts from Martha Stortz’ Inaugural Address, “Location, Location, Vocation”

“Tell me the landscape you inhabit, and I will tell you who you are.”

—Jose Ortega y Gassett

However much we claim space, making it our own, space also claims us, telling us who we are.

Location shapes identity and gives the people who inhabit it a dis- tinctive vocation or calling. Like the Irish monks, we too live accordingly. I want to look at three dimensions of Augsburg’s location—physical, historical, and spiritual—and probe how it shapes a vocation or calling that is distinctive to this College.

Physical location

… Augsburg is a college in, with, and for the city … [its] urban location is now central to the College’s identity. The Christensen Center and Memorial Hall do not square off an academic quadrangle; rather, the space between them opens to a public park. The plan for the new Center for Science, Business, and Religion … does not feature a closed quad; rather, it imitates the freeway. As the freeway enables crosstown traffic between the cities, so this new building opens to the neighborhood; it invites cross-campus traffic and cross-disciplinary conversation.

Historical location

The College was founded by the Free Church Norwegian Lutheran immigrants who settled in the Cedar Riverside area in the mid- 1800s—and never forgot that they’d been strangers in a strange land … Consonant with that history, the College has welcomed the various immigrant groups that make up this neighborhood: Hmong, Somali, Ethiopian, Eritrean. Moreover, Augsburg consistently saw itself as an institution of higher learning that provided access and excellence to students who simply couldn’t pay higher fees of other private schools. At times when it would have made more financial sense to go after wealthier families and their children, Augsburg elected to be faithful to its historic base.

Spiritual location

A tradition is not a museum piece, but a lively argument with the past, and throughout its history, Augsburg has loved a good fight. Incarnation and the neighbor stand as signal emphases of this tradition, the first witnessing to the fact that God entered the human condition—to the max.

At its best, Lutheranism is a tradition that has always leaned into the neighbor, always learned from the neighbor, and always looked to the neighbor to supply that unexpected bolt of grace that makes all things new (Revelation 21:5).

The Augsburg Center for Faith and Learning

In the spring of 2002, the Lilly Endowment, Inc. awarded Augsburg College a $2 million grant to expand the College’s commitment to connecting faith and learning. As a result, Augsburg developed and implemented the Exploring Our Gifts program. After four years of successful programming (2002-2006), the Lilly Endowment awarded Augsburg a generous sustainability grant, matched by the College, to help support the project for an additional three years (2006-2009).

As a direct result of the success and positive impact of Exploring Our Gifts, Augsburg College is committed to continuing this important work beyond the life of the Lilly grant. To this end, the College has created the Augsburg Center for Faith and Learning (ACFL) to embody and build upon the convictions at the heart of Augsburg’s educational mission:

“… to educate students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders.”

The work of the Augsburg Center for Faith and Learning is guided by the lessons of Bernhard M. Christensen, president of Augsburg from 1938 to 1962. Christensen taught that:

• Christian faith liberates minds and lives
• Diversity strengthens vital communities
• Interfaith friendships enrich learning
• The love of Christ draws us to God
• We are called to service in the world

The Center’s work focuses on three areas of activity:

1. Student and alumni engagement—Supporting discovery and development of talents and gifts, discernment of vocation, and exploration of calling
2. Faculty and staff leadership—Developing curricular and programmatic offerings to guide the theological exploration of vocation
3. Public witness and outreach—Promoting Augsburg’s leadership in the pursuit and realization of individual and institutional calling

Sammie Guck, Christensen Scholar

When senior Sammie Guck sees another Christensen Scholar on campus, she greets them with a simple but reverent, “Scholar.”

“It’s just our way of acknowledging each other when we are out in the world,” Guck says.

Guck is one of 10 students involved in the Christensen Scholar program. Named for Bernhard Christensen, Augsburg’s president from 1938 to 1962, the year-long seminar helps students explore the Lutheran concept of vocation and define their own calling.

Every year 10 junior or senior students are selected for the Christensen Scholar program, which is sponsored by the Augsburg Center for Faith and Learning. The heart of the pro- gram is a monthly three-hour seminar devoted to texts drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Authors include biblical texts, Augustine, Luther, and Flannery O’Connor. Topics can range from religious pluralism to the art of prayer.

A philosophy major and religion minor, Guck says she appreciates the discussion-based seminar and the free exchange of ideas that happens among the scholars. “It’s not a professor saying, ‘Let me tell you what you should know.'” She adds that the scholars, who represent several different faith traditions, are very respectful of each other’s ideas and backgrounds. “It’s a great environment to share and explore,” she says.

Guck says she is having a “senior year vocational crisis.” She met with religion professor Mark Tranvik, who leads the scholar seminar, to discuss the idea of vocation. “I grew up Catholic, so I have a different understanding of vocation than the Lutheran concept,” she says.

Together Guck and Tranvik explored different ways that a person of faith can live out his or her vocation. “I realized that vocation doesn’t have to be one set thing, it can always be changing,” she says. Guck was considering graduate school but does not think she will begin immediately after graduation. Instead, she is looking into other ways that she can express her vocation through a career in editing or publishing.

Whether she’s pursuing her master’s degree or working in a publishing house, two things are fairly certain for this Auggie. One—even after she graduates from Augsburg, she will continue to discern what her vocation is and how to make it a part of her life. And two—if she sees another Christensen Scholar walking down the street, they are sure to greet each other with the brief acknowledgement of the conversations they had at Augsburg.

The post She loves being an Auggie: Meet Martha Stortz appeared first on Augsburg Now.

We celebrated Homecoming this year in grand fashion, welcoming more than 1,000 alumni, families, and friends at events during the week.

I am mindful of the many ways in which coming home to Augsburg has meaning for alumni and those of us on campus. We all share in common this place and the experience that continues to shape our lives in the world. And when we “come home,” we mark just how powerful those connections and shared experiences are to our personal and common callings in the world.

So what does it mean to come home to Augsburg?

First, it is quite literally a homecoming to this place in the heart of Cedar-Riverside and Minneapolis, this campus home we have inhabited since 1872 when our Norwegian-American ancestors first settled here.

Homecoming seems especially meaningful this year as our campus community is engaged in a Commission on Campus Space and Master Planning— exploring together what it means that we are in this urban setting and what our aspirations are for the future of Augsburg’s campus. During this year, we will plan for new buildings, landscape, and the responsible use of space. And we also will consider what it means that we are here in Cedar-Riverside, this neighborhood we share with various neighbors. How best do we honor our role as neighbor here?

Second, homecoming also marks our return to a community, a gathering of those who share our commitments to education for service.

There are clear distinctions in the nature of this community over time. We are much larger—we now count more than 4,100 students and 650 faculty and staff. We offer a wider range of academic programs— from our traditional day program to adult undergraduate and expanding graduate opportunities. We are increasingly diverse—in ethnic and religious background, in age and in socioeconomic class, and in so many other ways. But at its core it is still Augsburg, a community grounded in offering a superior educational experience for all students that focuses on the intersections of faith, learning, and service.

Augsburg is one of the most hospitable and welcoming communities I know, a place that believes deeply that access to education demands of us a commitment to justice for all God’s creatures.

Finally, you come home to a mission, a character, and a set of values that abide over the years. Here, we still celebrate the Word made flesh. Here, we still share with our immediate neighbors an immigrant sensibility, the belief that education is at the core of a healthy neighborhood and democracy. Here, we still work together to ensure that all deserving students can receive an Augsburg education. Here, we still help each other discern our vocations and gain the skills and knowledge to live them out in the world.

In the work and lives of our alumni, we have remarkable stories of how this distinctive Augsburg mission has made a difference in the world over the years. For those of us who are the current stewards of Augsburg’s mission, I urge you to listen to the stories of our alumni for they are our “epistles to the world,” our parables of what an Augsburg education means. You will be amazed by what they have accomplished.

I hope those of you who came to Homecoming were able to meet our current students, because they are the most powerful statements of our mission, our aspirations to make a difference in the world. They are remarkable signs of what we can look forward to as Augsburg seeks to live out its mission to educate students who are “informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders.”

The post Welcome home to Augsburg! appeared first on Augsburg Now.