Something special happens when three things come together.
Science, business, and religion.
An artist, a group of engaged Augsburg women, and dedicated financial resources.
At least that’s what Lisa Svac Hawks ’85 thinks.
The idea that art will bring lasting inspiration to the new Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion motivated Lisa to make the lead gift to help fund one of the two large-scale murals planned for the Center. She and the members of AWE (Augsburg Women Engaged) have set a goal to secure the $150,000 required to fully fund one of the planned stairwell murals.
In designing the new building, HGA’s architects and a team of college leaders set forth a central principle for it: to ensure it considered the neighborhood. The Center must express and reflect the importance of community and hospitality, values that live at the heart of Augsburg’s mission. The Center’s two external stairwells will serve as both beacons and open arms to the community.
These same ideas attracted Lisa and other members of AWE to explore what it would take to support the artist’s installation of one stairwell mural. AWE was founded on the idea that women want to connect and serve in different ways.
“Women think about connection and the social and collaborative nature of learning and living,” says Lisa. “What better way to express those principles than through a mural that is all about connection?” The resulting mural design is titled “Emergence.” It incorporates the image of a monarch butterfly along with references to symbiosis, textile traditions, geometry, faith, home, prayer and identity.
Sponsored by Augsburg Women Engaged (AWE).
Sponsored by Augsburg Women Engaged (AWE).
Muralist Greta McClain, the artist selected by the Augsburg Art and Identity committee, which is working to bring art into the Center, looked deeply into the challenge of combining three disciplines in one building. In shaping the design for her two stairwell murals she asked, “Do those “conflicting/disparate” ideas, all housed together, stand as a reflection of our community, Cedar Riverside? Are they a dynamic social experiment, and a view our very human experience?”
In McClain’s words, “The collaboration between space and artist, community and construction, can take many forms depending on the project. Inevitably it includes a close collaboration between me as artist, and those closest to the project. Together we gather history, ideas, and images. These conversations are the key to the development of a site/content specific work for the finished mural.” Continue reading “A Stairway to Art and AWE “→
Shelby Andress ’56 has believed in the transformative power of an Augsburg education since she was a student. She has stayed engaged with the College by continuing to connect with students, and she hoped to support them in the future. Augsburg was life-changing for her husband, Jim Andress ’51, as a student who came to campus after service in the World War II.
Early in their lives, Shelby ‘56 and Jim ‘51 Andress made a commitment to give back. At age 12, Shelby began to tithe as a young member of the Luther League, and she and Jim continued to give away 10% of their earnings during their lives. After Jim passed away, Shelby established a scholarship in his memory.
For more than 30 years, Augsburg Associates have raised funds to support Augsburg University and today’s students. Their hard work and commitment has enabled more than 50 students the opportunity to live out Augsburg’s motto, Education for Service, as they work towards their degrees. Besides sponsoring the Christensen Scholars with annual gifts, they give to capital projects, including sponsoring a space in the Hagfors Center, and have established an endowment for students and committed to service or participating in campus-wide interfaith programs. Thank you to the more than 90 Augsburg Associates!
Vision Bagonza, Class of 2017
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Karagwe, Kagera, Tanzania
Major: Biology
Minor: Chemistry and Religion
My proudest academic achievement is excelling in classes and then being able to provide academic support for new students by tutoring and mentoring incoming first-year students.
Noah Brown, Class of 2017
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Bloomington, Minn.
Major: Biology
My favorite thing about Augsburg is the community of students and professors who are active and engaged in their communities.
Kayla Grover, Class of 2018
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Blanding, Utah
Major: Sociology
Minor: Religion
Augsburg has shaped me by encouraging me to open my mind and pursue a wide variety of interests. After graduation, I plan to work with AmeriCorps for one year.
Owen Harrison, Class of 2018
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: New Hope, Minn.
Major: Psychology
Minor: Studio Art
My proudest academic achievement is making the Dean’s List every semester. I am also involved with the StepUP Leadership Team and the Mindfulness Club.
Leah McDougall, Class of 2017
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Arden Hills, Minn.
Major: Youth and Family Ministry
Minor: Spanish
Augsburg has made me more aware of the world I live in. My proudest academic achievement was studying abroad in Central America and after graduation I plan to work with youth at a camp, church, or other organization.
Hannah Schmit, Class of 2017
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Tomahawk, Wisc.
Major: Religion and Sociology
Minor: Biology
Thank you for your continued support of Augsburg and for your support of my education! You have helped make my experience possible and I cannot thank you enough.
Rebecca Schroeder, Class of 2018
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Giddings, Texas
Major: Management, Social and Artistic Entrepreneurship
My favorite thing about Augsburg is how diverse and well-rounded the curriculum is. I’ve been able to tailor my college experience to what I feel I’ve been called to do after college and to my future career.
Blair Stewig, Class of 2018
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Oakdale, Minn.
Major: Biology and Chemistry
Minor: Environmental Studies, Physics, and Religion
Thank you so much for providing me with this engaging experience. I am looking forward to growing both as a person and in my relationship with God.
Hannah Thiry, Class of 2017
Christensen Scholar
Hometown: Stanchfield, Minn.
Major: Biology
Minor: Religion and Psychology
Through various experiences, debates, discussions, and philosophical thought, I’ve come to find a home in the ‘grayness’ of life—there’s no distinct ‘black and white’ side to anything. People, opinions, feelings, and passions are fluid, flexible, and unique.
Briana Ekstrom, Class of 2018
Augsburg Associates Endowed Scholarship
Hometown: Chaska, Minn.
Major: Music Performance (vocal emphasis)
Minor: Music Theater
I sang in the Praise Band at my home church of St. Victoria for multiple years before leaving for college. Currently I cantor and sing for Augsburg daily chapel on occasion and am a box office volunteer at Theatre in the Round located in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. I am incredibly honored to be receiving this scholarship again this year.
A section of Stanislav’s design was printed for display in Oren Gateway Center. The music is taken from Martin Luther’s “Ein feste Burg is unser Gott” section 1, manuscript with signature 1527-29, from the online IMSLP Pertrucci Music Library (public domain).
What difference can art make in our experience of spaces and places? Does art add to the learning within a building?
These questions interested both New York City- and Minneapolis-based sculptor Andrea Stanislav and President Paul Pribbenow.
They met through the opportunity to commission a work of art for the Art and Identity initiative at Augsburg. Their answer to these questions, the glass fritting for the new building, will be among the first things you notice when you walk through the doors to the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion, in January, 2018.
Delicately transformed light will stream through the three-story curtain of glass in the building atrium and onto a large, warm wood panel wall. Crafted from local elm, the wall offers both a welcoming tone and a tender reminder of many magnificent trees lost to disease including some on the Augsburg quad by Memorial Hall.
The glass fritting design by Stanislav is one of several artist commissions planned for the new building as part of the Art and Identity initiative, which invites sponsorship of original artwork in the new building. The glass design is sponsored with a major gift from President Paul and Abigail Pribbenow. Previously the Pribbenow’s provided major funding to support the Christ Commons initiative.
Stanislav’s conception of the glass fritting for the windows speaks to the Lutheran heritage of Augsburg. By incorporating elements of Martin Luther’s handwritten original musical score for his composition, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, the artist has rendered the original score, reduced and simplified it, and set it with the graceful shapes of cells from the ring of red elm.
Faculty and staff take note of Stanislav’s design, which will be printed on the glass of the Learning Commons in the Hagfors Center.
According to Stanislav, the hand-written notation speaks to another time and yet reveals itself today in the relevance and power of this hymn. It reflects an evolution of both language and notation with the mark making itself connecting us to Martin Luther the individual while also connecting us to the larger message of the music and the hymn.
Stanislav was attracted to this particular music and notation because Martin Luther’s hand notation is both simple and intriguing. To her eye, it functions as a kind of signature of the founding values of Lutheranism.
“I grew up in the 1970’s in Chicago living with my grandparents who spoke German. I was bilingual until I was 5 or 6 years old. But at the time, my family’s sentiment was to erase our heritage and disconnect from the past. I lost my bilingualism. Then I learned to read music by playing piano and trombone. I discovered to be literate in music is to be literate in another language, a language of the world.”
In considering the request for proposals for the Hagfors Center, the artist drew on time and experience.
“One of my first memories is of the sound of a big tree rustling in the backyard. The sound is so musical. I love the cold of winter and the starkness and beauty of trees, especially their stillness and the way they create a graceful backdrop. When I considered the glass wall fit, I was thinking of the feeling of snow falling. Martin Luther’s notation of the musical notes falls in the same way.”
In considering her design, she said, “The cellular structure between the tree rings reveals the effects of time on growth and development. It shows the motion of music dropping out of the elm.
“I appreciate the clarity and complement of the goals for this building, Plus its location creates an immediacy of experience and a dramatic sense of time.”
Stanislav says, too, that glass itself is an exciting medium. “We live in a time when we must be responsible and sustainable in our making. The ceramic fritting is an important component of the energy savings required for this building to qualify for LEED Silver certification. Sustainability is where my morals and my creating come together.”
As she sees it, “There’s a play between the notes and the elm and they create a push and pull. The cellular structure and the music create a marvelous tension for design. It’s an intimate relationship between them.”
This intimacy will translate into the inspiring space of the Hagfors Center. As the light pours through the glass through the ceramic fit, the individual will see and feel the shapes on and around them.
For President Pribbenow, the combination of elements made sense.
“Music lives at the heart of Lutheranism and in the hearts of Auggies everywhere. When Abigail and I saw the way Andrea had found this remarkable notation by the hand of Martin Luther from 1527 of the great hymn, and the way she connected that image to the shape of cells in the ring of a red elm, we knew we wanted to make our gift to sponsor it.”
The artist is currently working in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the U.S. Consulate on work related to the 900-day Siege of Leningrad in 1941-1943, during which an estimated 1.5 million Russian citizens died. During the siege, art making and cultural production helped sustain the survivors.
“I’m interviewing siege survivors who are now in their 80s and 90s, learning about their will to survive during such terrible conditions.” She’s collecting their stories using interviews, diaries and objects they saved from that time and experience. “In May, I had a show at the Museum of the Defense of Leningrad, which is the Russian national museum of the siege.
Examples of her work included can be found on her website: andreastanislav.com
As President Pribbenow said, “Knowing that light will pour through the tall glass of the Hagfors Center, and that people will pass though the reflected shape of the notes of this stirring hymn, ties the whole idea of the building together for me. Science, business, and religion, drawn together in space, time, and rhythm of the ages.”
Whether in the world of commerce or philanthropy, Chris Purcell ’10 is not one to waste time. Since graduating, he has already tackled three big jobs, enough to preoccupy any young mover and shaker. Yet giving back has also been front and center, and he has had the foresight to designate life insurance policy proceeds to fund a full-ride scholarship for a future Auggie.
“Augsburg has done a lot for me, and I want to give back, especially financially since I was a beneficiary of financial aid,” he says. “Another way is to go back and network, and I encourage my classmates to do so, too. One of the most valuable things we can offer is our networks, to bring more Auggies into good companies.”
Purcell works for Amazon, most recently in Seattle as a buyer on the men’s fashion team, but soon in New York City as an advertising strategist. Amazon recruited him from Target, where he worked after a stint handling mergers and acquisitions for a now-defunct Minneapolis investment bank.
“I saw myself going out to Wall Street, so I started out as a finance major and then added economics,” says Purcell, who grew up in Northfield, the son of a carpenter and a middle school math teacher who strongly encouraged his educational aspirations. Recruited as a baseball player and the recipient of a Regents’ Scholarship, he loved moving to the big city and finding such a diverse, inclusive community within it.
“Augsburg feels much bigger than what it really is. You have a very small community right there on that three-square-block campus, but so much is going on all around you,” he says. He also discovered “phenomenal professors” such as Keith Gilsdorf and Stella Hofrenning, found a “very inspirational mentor” in Marc McIntosh, and treasures the formative advice he received from baseball coach Keith Bateman.
“He used to say, ‘Life’s not fair, I’m not fair, deal with it.’ Those words have helped immensely in getting me through tough situations,” says Purcell. “Augsburg helped me build my social abilities, which is extremely important in any corporate environment, and gave me critical reasoning ability. That’s the huge benefit of a liberal arts background. You learn things outside your main focus, and you learn to understand broad concepts as well as the specific issues you’re taught to deal with.”
His insurance gift will help a future student, preferably a baseball player with an interest in business, learn to navigate obstacles like the ones Purcell encountered when trying to break into the post-recession job market. Despite the bleak prospects, professors, mentor and coach urged him to keep fighting until he found something. That is exactly what he did.
“Augsburg set me up really well,” he adds. “Go Auggies!”
Miriam ’68 and Ron Peterson on a trip to Asia in October 2015.
“What an opportunity for me! The most incredible thing is that I’m going to be able to meet the people,” says Miriam Peterson ’68, who is donating her IRA distributions to fund the Miriam Cox Peterson Scholarship. Soon there will be enough to cover travel and study abroad for a scholarship student, preferably one studying Spanish or another language. Peterson will not only get to meet the recipients, but also share the stories that have inspired her for seven decades so far.
Peterson grew up in St. Paul, where her wanderlust and appetite for learning began early. Her father, who had grown up in poverty but saw the world while serving in the Navy, nourished his family’s cultural curiosity. For example, he assigned a theme to their annual vacations; their “Lincoln year” meant travel to various Lincoln tourist sites.
At school, second grade was Peterson’s “golden year. I had the most wonderful teacher. Our whole class went by train to Red Wing for a day, and she would do all sorts of special projects. She only taught for one year, but she’d have reunions with our class, and I kept in contact with her through high school. She and her husband ended up being missionaries in Hong Kong.”
The teaching seed firmly planted by high school graduation, Peterson discovered Augsburg: “comfortable, welcoming, and ever so much better than the other colleges I visited.” The first in her family to attend college, she majored in English and education but also wanted to continue her high school Spanish. She was thrilled that classes were small and weekly seminars were held in teachers’ homes. “It’s not the norm. I was a part of their lives, and they were a part of mine,” she says.
Miriam and Ron Peterson with Shanghai in the background.
For eight weeks between her junior and senior years, and for a year after college graduation, she lived in Mexico, thus paving her future path. “That made all the difference,” she says. “It widens your whole perspective on the world. You can talk about or think about travel, but if you go to another place, it’s different.”
After earning her master’s degree at the University of Illinois, Peterson taught Spanish in the St. Paul Public Schools from 1970 to 2005. She followed her early mentor’s footsteps, taking her students on trips and teaching them language not just through studying grammar, but through culture, cooking, holiday traditions, even soccer. Even after she retired and taught weekly beginning Spanish classes at the Center for Global Education, she used Fisher-Price little people and Monopoly money to set up play scenarios and make classes fun, which her adult students very much appreciated.
Peterson stays fluent by translating, once during a medical mission to Nicaragua, and, while visiting a Spanish-speaking country, “talking to everyone in the market,” as her patient husband, Ron, sometimes complains. As head of the outreach committee for Galilee Lutheran Church, Roseville, she has also visited students in Tanzania, where she was impressed by the generosity of those who have so little.
She is also impressed by Augsburg’s continuing commitment to service here at home. “They embrace the city—tending gardens, feeding people, using their proximity to the University of Minnesota to good advantage. And the second chances they’re giving to students are pretty remarkable,” she says. “It makes me proud to be a part of it.”
As a young girl raised Jewish in St. Louis, Missouri, Diane Levy Jacobson never imagined that she and her husband, Paul, might one day endow a scholarship for a Muslim student at Augsburg. But then she never imagined that she would teach Scripture, either. Or become a Christian, for that matter.
“Becoming a Lutheran biblical professor was certainly not in my life plan while I was growing up, and I’m sure I had no idea what a seminary was. God has a great sense of humor,” says Diane, professor emeritus at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, where she taught from 1982 to 2010.
By the time she got to Connecticut College, in New London, Connecticut, she decided to major in religion. Times were turbulent, and what was then a liberal protestant church championed civil rights and antiwar causes.
“It’s interesting right now with all the politics swirling, and it wasn’t all that different in the ‘60s. I got involved in the campus ministry, which was a large part of the political movement,” says Diane, a self-described searcher. “I felt very alive and in the middle of things. God works in mysterious ways!”
Diane earned a master’s degree in religion from Columbia University and a doctorate from Union Theological Seminary, where she met and married Paul Jacobson, a St. Olaf graduate and son of a Lutheran pastor. They attended a Lutheran church, where she taught Sunday school, yet she remained Jewish “because it seemed wrong not to.” A change of heart had occurred by the time her second son was born; she and her sons were baptized together.
“Then I became a super Lutheran,” she says with a chuckle. Diane was called to teach at Luther, so the family moved to Minnesota in 1982, where Paul pursued his music career as composer, flutist, and co-founder of the Lyra Baroque Orchestra. At Luther, Diane became the first woman to teach Bible at any Lutheran seminary in the country. A well-respected leader, frequent speaker, and author of numerous publications, she retired in February as director of the Book of Faith Initiative for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
“I can’t imagine anything that would be more rewarding to do,” she says of her career. “It is quite a privilege to be a teacher of any sort, and it has been exciting to be part of the ELCA, the church, and education.” Continue reading “Endowed Scholarship Celebrates the Ecumenical”→
“Augsburg is a second home to me. It always has been and it always will be,” says Patricia A. McNevin, ’90, whose planned gift will be the Patricia A. McNevin Endowed Scholarship, designated for an English and/or art major.
In fact, after a few decades away, McNevin plans to return to her Augsburg home soon to take advantage of reduced tuition for alumni. She needs only a few more art classes to complete a second major in studio art, with a focus on painting and photography. “Last year I picked up a paintbrush, which is something I haven’t done in 30 years. It was very different, almost foreign to me.”
McNevin’s initial Augsburg journey was a long but fruitful one. She planned to double major in English and art, but health reasons forced a hiatus in the middle of her junior year, creating what she calls “my eight-and-a-half-year plan.” She completed her degree in English in what was then called the Weekend College (now Adult Undergraduate) program.
While she was earning her degree, McNevin worked in Augsburg’s college relations office, where writing projects put that major to good use, and the magazine, Augsburg Now, published her photographs. She enjoyed other benefits, too, such as a biplane ride donated by alumni who owned a farm in Farmington. Even then, with money tight, she found a way to donate $25 for one key in the Foss Center organ.
“The gifts I received from Augsburg were many,” she says. “I didn’t even know my name would be on a plaque, but I saw it when I returned for a special event. No matter the amount, leaving some sort of legacy is a way to live on, especially if you don’t have children.”
Though her career path did not follow traditional routes for English or art majors, “my Augsburg degree got me through the door in more places than one, and I’m using my education in ways that I never imagined,” McNevin adds. As an officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, she relies on traditional journalism skills to ask pertinent questions during interviews, and on research skills to learn the constitutional law she must understand to make good decisions.
She hopes that recipients of her scholarship will pursue careers in English and/or art as well as related community or volunteer work. “I would like them to not only be doing something in the field while they’re going to school, but also have a solid plan about what they want to do in the future,” says McNevin, whose volunteer work has included teaching English as a second language in GED programs.
No doubt she will also want them to love Augsburg, just as she admires the many changes that have occurred since she first arrived. She applauds the leadership and direction of recent presidents, the addition of a masters program and nursing doctorate, and the plans for the new Center for Science, Business, and Religion, to which she has also donated.
“I really don’t have very much money, but I wanted to give something back to the college. What it was I didn’t know, but then life changed and this scholarship idea came up,” she says. “Augsburg’s motto when I was there was ‘through truth to freedom.’ I have spent my life searching for truth, and Augsburg provided that background for me. I ended up in my occupation in response to that search.”
As for that feeling of being at home, she says it is hard to describe. Certainly the fellow students, the faculty, the staff, and the physical campus have something to do with it, as does the solid foundation based in the Lutheran faith. “It’s just a spiritual feeling, I guess, a feeling that Augsburg is a safe place to grow—in more ways than one.”
Thanks in part to her Columbia boots and the diligence of her “amazing” guardian angel, Carol Ott ’90 has joined the legion of angels ensuring Augsburg’s future.
“You never know when your time is up,” Ott decided after a 2014 pedestrian accident shook her world. She had just left her yoga class when a truck struck her, trapping her left foot under the tire. Apart from whiplash and some chiropractic needs, she emerged relatively unscathed. But the event gave her pause, and reviewing other meaningful times in her life prompted her to remember Augsburg in her will.
“The relationships built during my four years there were the most impactful of my life,” says Ott, who followed her brother to Augsburg. The two hailed from the small Minnesota town of Lakeville, where their family lived on 10 acres in what was then a farming community.
As a freshman, Ott immediately connected with her orientation leader, Jacquie Berglund ’87, and the two have remained friends ever since. Ott was a chemistry and marketing double major who planned to make and market perfume, but a dismal business climate at graduation steered her toward marketing instead. Berglund, too, ended up in business, as CEO and co-founder of Finnegans, a beer company that is the state’s 10th largest and the world’s first to donate its profits to those in need.
“What I loved most was the ethics, learning right from wrong, and figuring out how to combine my religious beliefs with my daily life. I was very much influenced by Pastor Wold’s views on marketing ethics and religion,” Ott says. (Pastor Dave Wold, Augsburg’s pastor since 1983, was named Campus Pastor Emeritus when he retired in 2013.)
After earning her MBA from St. Thomas in 1996, Ott had ample opportunity to put her beliefs into practice in a career that has ranged widely both geographically and corporately. Her expertise in first direct, then digital marketing and e-commerce has benefitted such companies as Fingerhut, Carlson Wagonlit, Select Comfort, Petco, and ShopNBC, as she moved from West Coast to East Coast and back again to Minnesota.
Now director of marketing analytics at Best Buy, Ott returns to Augsburg annually to share her experience with marketing classes. She is also a fan of class reunions and looks forward to participating in the big one, Augsburg’s sesquicentennial. “When we had our 25th reunion, we just picked up where we left off. It’s a small school, and you know everyone in your grade.”
She has not yet designated where her planned gift will go, though she is considering both science and business. She also welcomes to campus the new Norman and Evangeline Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion, the capital campaign which surpassed its $50 million fundraising goal. Groundbreaking for the building will take place on April 29, 2016.
“Science, business, religion—tying those pillars together is what drives me,” Ott says.
Something special happens when three things come together.
Leah McDougall, Class of 2017
