“There are times when I ask a class what they think a librarian does,” says Tanya Gunkel, one of �̲�ֱ��’s outreach and instruction librarians. “At that point, direct eye contact drops, and someone will mumble quietly, ‘ … books?’”

She laughs. “Books are definitely part of it, but we see our job as helping students build lifelong skills that they can use at any job: how to find good information. Our goal is for students to know that they can come here any time, to say ‘I can see myself here.’ We want them to feel like this library is theirs.”

Sitting in the common area on the first floor of Lindell Library, there is a palpable sense that what Gunkel says is true. For one thing, she’s speaking at a normal volume—and she’s not the only one. While there’s plenty of quiet study space in the building, gone are the days of hushed whispers and silent stacks. There are people using this library.

The transformation underway at Lindell isn’t a radical departure so much as a deepening of long-held principles. In 1931, Indian librarian S. R. Ranganathan proposed five laws of library science. His precepts continue to shape the profession nearly a century later, and they are at work in this unexpectedly lively place: a library where community is at the center.

“My absolute favorite thing about the library is the people,” says Augsburg Library Director Sara Fillbrandt. “The heart of the library is the community, and that heart goes home every night. Without them, it’s just a building full of things.”

First law: Books are for use

A major goal of the new instruction and outreach librarian team—Gunkel, Megan Schierenbeck, and Kira Cronin-Hennessy, a trio hired at the same time in 2025—is to make it as easy as possible for students and faculty to get the most out of the library’s resources.

They’re getting creative to do it. Both online and in the library itself, the takes students on a self-guided tour of key resources and points of interest in Lindell, from study spaces with the best natural light to where students can check out a laptop. A new visual menu lays out ways the library can support faculty, from short tutorials on library basics to specialized research guides on topics ranging from medieval history to preserving open data. Fable the Fox, an unofficial mascot designed by Jasmine Yacabalque ’25, beckons library patrons in with his whimsical flair for Scandinavian wear.

Last fall, the instruction and outreach team partnered with AugSem, ���ܲ������ܰ���’s required first-year introductory seminar, to bring every AugSem section on a library field trip through the Talon Trail. Among other resources, these visits highlighted the suite of academic supports on the second floor, including TRIO Student Support Services, the Writing Center, and academic advising. The goal was simple: to get new students in the building and help them understand it as a one-stop information hub. In Fillbrandt’s words, “If you don’t know, go to the library.”

“At one point we hit the maximum building capacity with 350 AugSem students in the building,” says Gunkel. “It’s really meaningful knowing that projects like that make an impact, because I see them come back—to ask for help, or play a game, or check out a Chromebook.”

This spring semester, Technical Services Coordinator Kristine Kammueller spearheaded a project to build out a new collection of . The project represents a major shift from past practice, one that’s grounded in broader efforts to address financial need among Augsburg students and families. With 178 titles in the collection, all with multi-use licenses that enable a whole class to use them, the library staff estimate that the collection is providing 25% of textbooks used by Augsburg students for free. “Whatever [digital texts] we can purchase, we do,” says Fillbrandt.

Second law: Every reader, their book

In 1997, Karen Hogan answered a newspaper classified ad for a position in ���ܲ������ܰ���’s new Lindell Library building, which had just opened. Her first job in the library involved managing more than 800 titles in the library’s print periodicals collection. Later, she moved into course reserves (“giant file cabinets full of articles”) and electronic databases. Today, as resource sharing coordinator, she manages interlibrary loans, working to connect students and faculty to the resources they need.

“I love to see them working through a research problem, and to see what projects faculty are working on” via their requests for books and articles, Hogan says. She often attends ���ܲ������ܰ���’s annual Zyzzogeton student research symposium to see the finished projects she supported behind the scenes.

Hogan’s career at Augsburg over the past three decades reflects the seismic shifts in technology that have changed so much of culture and education—libraries included. She says the challenge for students, researchers, and librarians has gone from “how do I find it?” to “how do I manage this firehose of information?”

The advent of artificial intelligence has accelerated this shift. A notable impact on Hogan’s work has been helping frustrated students identify and guard against “hallucinatory citations”—real-seeming citations of research works that were invented by AI and don’t, in fact, exist.

In partnership with faculty, ���ܲ������ܰ���’s librarians are on the front lines of teaching AI literacy. Their aim in developing ���ܲ������ܰ���’s first is to nurture students’ critical thinking about generative AI, with a focus on ethical considerations and how to evaluate online information, both in and out of the classroom. Next year, students will be able to enroll in a two-credit course based on modules the library developed around AI literacy—including a section on generative media, a category that includes images, videos, and deepfakes. Additional modules are in the works around mis- and disinformation.

Third law: Every book, its reader

Two years ago, the library team began a massive effort to remove volumes that were more than 20 years old and hadn’t been checked out in more than a decade (a process known in library lingo as “weeding”). This effort reduced the collection from 160,000 volumes to 90,000. But removal from the catalog is not the same as removal from the shelves, notes Fillbrandt. Their physical removal, what student worker Cyril Foday-Kailie ’26 calls “a huge project,” is ongoing. Over the summer, more than 40,000 volumes in poor shape were recycled. An additional 30,000 are in the process of being distributed to Better World Books and other libraries.

Why reduce the physical collection? Space is a key motivation. Fewer physical volumes means more room on the shelves. The library staff have been intentional about reducing the density of books on shelves to eliminate “title blindness” and make it easier to see what’s on the shelves while browsing. Additionally, the weeding project has allowed the team to remove shelves, open up new gathering spaces, and move items like CDs, DVDs, and reference books out from behind the desk into more accessible areas. (Fillbrandt drops her voice and confesses that her long-term, radical dream is to file the reference collection in with everything else, where it will be available to check out like any other material: one continuous collection filed in Library of Congress order from A to Z.)

Each of ���ܲ������ܰ���’s five schools has a dedicated librarian who specializes in subject matter research, from accounting to urban studies, though they are all equipped to help students and faculty who come in with any question. Every day is different, says Gunkel; in addition to sleuthing private company salary data as part of her work with the School of Business, she’s fielded recent questions on topics ranging from adverse childhood experiences to perimenopause.

Computer science major Foday-Kailie sought help from his library colleagues with research into the so-called “Sarajevo Incident”—the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914—for a history class that required he consult primary sources. Not long after, he was perusing 100-year-old newspapers on microfiche. “All you have to have is the topic,” he says. “They can help you with citations, how to get sources—they can help you thoroughly.”

When Lindell doesn’t have something, another library invariably does. Hogan can find almost anything via interlibrary loan; at present, she’s working on getting a musical score from Canada. She remembers a Halloween pumpkin making the rounds via the Minitex library courier system, each library adding a sticker with its three-letter identification code. Once, she challenged the library student workers to a contest to see who could obtain the most unique item from another library. She won with a Lightning McQueen bake pan sent north from a public library in Iowa.

Fourth law: Save the time of the reader

In 2024, Augsburg became one of the first academic libraries in the U.S. to go completely self-service for circulation. With James and Jean, a self-checkout station and smart locker named in honor of library benefactors James G. Lindell ’46 and Jean G. (Tigwell) Lindell, students check out and return books, retrieve holds, and pick up interlibrary loan materials with less staff support.

It’s been a seamless transition for a generation of students who are accustomed to self checkout at the grocery store and picking up packages at Amazon lockers. For the library, the benefits were immediate. Now that students don’t have to wait for someone to help them at the desk, circulation has actually increased, and staff time has been freed up for other priorities. Hogan says utilization of course reserves has also significantly increased by reducing friction for students.

The library also recently joined the MnPALS consortium, a network of 54 libraries in Minnesota whose scale makes it easier and more cost-effective for individual libraries to manage digital assets in an increasingly complex information environment. This involved a catalog migration—another major summer undertaking—but Fillbrandt says it was worth it, even as the staff continues to clean data following the migration. These changes are part of a broader shift, initiated by former Library Director Stewart Van Cleve, to leverage technology in order to free up staff time for more meaningful work with students and the Augsburg community in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Earth Day programming. Therapy dogs in the library. A student-curated Día de los Muertos ofrenda last fall. Vibrant mosaic artwork in the windows. “Instead of fixing broken links, our staff members are now spending time on things that matter more and are more visible to the community,” says Fillbrandt.

Fifth law: The library is a growing organism

Gunkel often sees the library’s rolling whiteboards covered in chemistry notations when she arrives at work in the morning. Throughout the first floor, intentional changes have made the space more student-friendly in recent years. New tables and chairs on wheels make it easier for groups to gather in flexible arrangements around the whiteboards, whether to map out ideas or work out tricky equations. Where bare metal shelves used to display old yearbooks, students browse new collections on bright blue shelves—comics and graphic novels here, books by Auggie authors there. The tech help desk now shares space with the library front desk.

Next to racks of board games, students are working on the community jigsaw puzzle. In previous eras, one puzzle used to last the whole semester. But Fillbrandt says the refreshed community spaces in the library have made the puzzle a consistent draw for students, staff, and faculty alike. “We have three students who come in a couple times a week and sit for two hours. They’ve done three or four puzzles in the last two weeks!”

Students have had a hand in shaping the space. When Jerid McDonald ’28 initially reached out to the library staff, he was just trying to find a place for the Augsburg Board Game Club to meet. One thing led to another: the library offered space, the game club donated games, and Lindell’s game collection was born.

“I would say Azul and Root are the most popular games,” says McDonald, “along with Uno and chess. It helped that the library specifically surveyed people about what games they wanted to see in the collection.”

A sturdy, high-quality chess board was a common request. Munchkin and Slay the Spire get a lot of use. Students can play in the library, of course, or check out games to take back to their residence halls. It’s one of many ways the library is focusing on social belonging as well as academic success—by offering “brain breaks” when students need them. McDonald, a triple major in math, physics, and computer science, has had to step back from leading the board game club due to time constraints, but he’s proud and grateful that the permanent game collection in the library is now available to the whole Augsburg community.

This June, Fillbrandt will present as part of a panel at the American Library Association conference about the ways Augsburg has embraced change to make the library a more human-centered place. Hogan says doing so has required the courage and willingness to say “we’re not going to do that anymore” in order to make space for what students need today.

“I think this is the best iteration of the library so far,” she says.

At Lindell Library these days, that’s something you can say out loud.

Top image: The Lindell Library service desk is a one-stop information hub for students, faculty, and staff.

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Nose cone. Airframe. Apogee. Newton-seconds.

Mubarak Abdi ’27 sketches in the air with his hands as he describes what it takes to put together a rocket from scratch, a process he likens to building with Legos. “If I had a rocket, I’d show you,” he laughs.

Abdi speaks the language of rocketry with a fluency that suggests long familiarity. But in fact, he built his first rocket less than two years ago, when a friend invited the recent transfer student to check out the Augsburg Rocket Club during Fall 2024. Abdi, who was contemplating a future in robotics at the time, thought it sounded like a fun way to try out engineering.

Today, the physics major from Green Bay, Wisconsin, holds a national high-powered rocketry certification and serves as one of the facilitators of the Intercollegiate Rocketry Challenge, a program of the . In this role, Abdi leads regular Zoom workshops for rocketry clubs from a diverse group of seven institutions around Minnesota, including Minnesota State University Moorhead, Gustavus Adolphus College, and Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. In the fall, the groups learned to build “dual deploy” (two-parachute) rockets from kits. This semester, they’re using what they learned in the fall to construct their own airframes along with a sophisticated suite of electronic sensors that will collect and log data at least once per second.

Several of these institutions, including Augsburg, will compete in the 2025–26 Space Grant Midwest High-Power Rocket Competition launch day in May, which takes place on a private sod farm in North Branch in partnership with the Minnesota chapter of the national Tripoli Rocketry Association. Abdi explains that this year’s competition involves “roll control,” or devising a mechanism to control the direction and degree of spin during flight. Teams will also use a downward-facing camera to decode a message displayed on the ground before landing their rockets safely. He expects the rockets to reach an altitude of up to 3,000 feet based on their motor size.

Daniel Hickox-Young, an assistant professor of physics at Augsburg, works with Abdi and ���ܲ������ܰ���’s rocketry team as a mentor for the Intercollegiate Rocketry Challenge.

As a computational physicist, his own research in materials science involves quantum-based simulations of structure-property relationships (in layman’s terms, “picking interesting materials to understand how they work”) rather than direct experimentation. But being at Augsburg provides plenty of creative ways to work with students. For Hickox-Young, this includes supervising summer research; teaching “Physics for Fine Arts,” which uses the arts as an entry point to explore physics principles and the scientific method; and learning alongside amateur rocketry enthusiasts about fin placement and microcontroller programming. Weaving in and out of the classroom, these different threads contribute to an evolving curriculum. Next year, ���ܲ������ܰ���’s School of Natural Sciences will debut an engineering minor, which Hickox-Young helped design along with Professor Moumita Dasgupta (physics) and Assistant Professor Jacob Troutman (chemistry).

Abdi and Hickox-Young are part of a rewarding and close-knit STEM lineage at Augsburg, one of three founding members of the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium. The consortium is part of the NASA-funded National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, a network that spans all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. All Minnesota Space Grant affiliate institutions offer specific, NASA-themed opportunities for their students as a means of advancing aerospace education. Since 1991, ���ܲ������ܰ���’s Space Grant program has provided scholarships and paid research opportunities for Augsburg students, educational events for the campus community, and support for K-12 teachers with the latest tools for science and mathematics education.

In early February, Abdi delivered a poster presentation about the Intercollegiate Rocketry Challenge at the consortium’s annual student symposium at the University of Minnesota Duluth. While in Duluth, he also took the opportunity to tour the facilities of aviation company Cirrus Aircraft. While all of his five older siblings have gone into health care, Abdi is now set on pursuing aerospace engineering after graduation. The hands-on aspect of rocketry, and the opportunities he’s had to learn, teach, lead, and launch, hooked him.

“Building stuff that flies is so cool,” he says.

Slideshow: Launch Day

Students from Augsburg’s Rocket Club participated in a launch day in North Branch, Minnesota, in November 2025. (Photos by Hayley Selinski)

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Top image: Mubarak Abdi ’27, center, works with other Augsburg students to construct a rocket as part of the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium’s Intercollegiate Rocketry Challenge. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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Yuming Fang takes the “critical thinkers” part of ���ܲ������ܰ���’s mission statement seriously. Now in her second year as an assistant professor of communication studies, she is an expert in misinformation—how it spreads, why we believe it, and how to disrupt it.

Fang’s research has shown that familiarity leads to credulousness: the more familiar a piece of misinformation feels, the more likely people are to agree with it, regardless of prior exposure to the misinformation. Media literacy and numeracy as well as deliberative information processing are critical in prompting individuals to be more suspicious when encountering misinformation, she says, noting that people are also more likely to believe false claims that contain statistics.

Fang is a key faculty member in ���ܲ������ܰ���’s strategic communications major at a time when the world is grappling with misinformation challenges fueled by the explosive rise of generative AI and social media. First introduced two years ago, the strategic communication concentration equips students to navigate complex communication challenges in a range of settings, from traditional agency work in advertising, public relations, and marketing to in-house roles focusing on social media, content creation, and crisis management for major companies.

But Fang notes that students should think broadly about their career options. The strong written, oral, and visual communication skills that are foundational to strategic communication are relevant across many contexts, including big tech, the nonprofit sector, government and public affairs, health, sports, entertainment and media, and more. Whether individually or at the societal level, the ability to create messages that break through and influence behavior is increasingly valuable.

This fall, Fang’s classes—Principles of Strategic Communication, Organizational Communication, and Mass Media and Popular Culture—address both the micro and macro. “If you think of an inverted pyramid,” she says, “at the top is the societal level, where we think about what emerging trends need to inform strategy. Below that is the organizational level, where communication helps to reach the goals and objectives of an organization. Then you move down to the communication level, where all the elements of a campaign come together to persuade.”

Prior to pursuing a PhD in mass communication and media studies at the University of Minnesota, Fang received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School. In that program, students ran a newsroom and graduated with a set of published projects that spanned print, video, and interactive multimedia. The deadline-driven environment was “stressful but worth it,” she says, and she carried the hands-on approach forward into her own classrooms. She asks her students to develop a communications campaign for a real-world client of their choosing—for example, a coffee shop, an immigration nonprofit, or a local retailer. Over the course of the semester, they come up with the strategic plan, key messages, creative design elements, budget, execution, and evaluation plan. In a competitive job market, Fang wants her students to graduate with a tangible portfolio in hand and the experience to back it up.

This experiential approach is a natural fit at Augsburg, where Fang appreciates the culture of welcome on campus. As a first-generation college graduate herself, the sense of connection has made a deep impression, both in terms of the support she has received as a new faculty member and the ease with which students and faculty interact every day.

“Students are really seen here,” she says. “It feels great to work at Augsburg.”

Top image: Beginning her second year at Augsburg, Yuming Fang dedicates much of her work toward media literacy and numeracy. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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The application process includes a written exam and a grueling physical test performed while wearing 50 pounds of gear. In St. Paul, candidates have to be EMT- or paramedic-certified before they are eligible for hire. Hiring periods open only every few years, and prospective firefighters can spend years on the eligible hiring list.

Despite a perfect score on his entrance tests, it took three years and five separate panel interviews before Jamie E. Smith Sr. ’04 got a job offer from the Saint Paul Fire Department in 2013. He was starting over mid-career in a field that is mentally challenging and inherently dangerous, making one-third what he earned as a real estate agent.

But Smith knew how to work hard in pursuit of a meaningful goal. Six years and three months later, he was promoted to captain—one of the fastest advancements in department history. Today, as deputy chief, he holds the third-highest rank in Minnesota’s largest fire department and serves as the SPFD’s fire marshal and public information officer.

“It was speaking to me,” he says of his decision to join the department in 2013. “I became a firefighter to make a difference in my community.”

Smith spent his early life in South Minneapolis and St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood before moving to the suburban east metro as a teenager, where he was frequently one of the only Black students in class or on a team. The contrast between his childhood in the city and his new surroundings was stark. “I looked around at people who had more financial stability than I had ever experienced,” he says. “I wanted to know, what’s the common denominator? How do I get there?”

The difference, he decided, was a college degree. Smith looked to sports as a financial pathway to higher education, joining ���ܲ������ܰ���’s football team as a running back and later switching to wide receiver. (“The best decision I ever made,” he jokes, “since I graduated high school at 155 pounds.”) As an athlete, Smith intended to pursue physical therapy as a major and a career path, but anxiety about his ability to manage the required science coursework crept in. “I was passionate about it, but I let my insecurities and self-doubt get in the way,” he says.

Instead of physical therapy, Smith declared a major in history education. Throughout college, he coached basketball, track, and football at a local middle school. He had an affinity for the job; he liked working with young people, he was good at it, and the school had a permanent position lined up for him after graduation.

But when Smith became a father during his junior year at Augsburg, he worried about how he would support a family on a teacher’s salary. Out of a long list of alternatives generated by a career aptitude test, “real estate” stood out to him, despite his lack of sales experience. Remembering how it felt to give up his interest in physical therapy, Smith decided he wanted to bet on himself this time. He graduated and took a job with Keller Williams Realty. His mentor in the business told him, “It’s not going to be easy, but I can show you how to do this job. I can teach you if you listen.”

It was a frightening leap of faith. In his first six months as a real estate agent, Smith sold “maybe four houses.” He was 21 and had a baby at home, and the job was 100% commission-based, meaning no salary and no safety net.

His mentor turned out to be right on both counts. It wasn’t easy, but Smith hustled, set goals, developed consistency and daily routines, and learned how to deal with failure and keep going. His hard work paid off: The next year, he made six figures. Yet, Smith found himself deflecting criticism from friends and family who questioned his choices.

“People said I wasted my college education, taking on debt for a history degree—absolutely not! It’s not just what you learn in the classroom. It’s the lessons about how to respond to self-doubt and challenges when life gets in the way. At Augsburg, I learned how to buckle down to get things done correctly and on a deadline. That directly translated to success in real estate,” he says.

The degree itself mattered, too. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, it devastated the mortgage lending industry. Overnight, Smith’s income was cut in half, “despite working twice as hard.” To make ends meet, he worked a variety of jobs, including managing the food department at a SuperTarget and selling legal products for Thomson Reuters—all of which required a bachelor’s degree.

When the housing market started to recover, a return to real estate seemed obvious. At the same time, Smith’s father and uncle, both St. Paul firefighters, were encouraging him to think about joining their profession. Having witnessed their struggles as Black men hired in the 1970s, he had previously refused to consider firefighting for himself. But his uncle in particular wouldn’t let it rest, telling Smith, “The pride you will have riding in that truck is something you can’t get anywhere else.”

This time, something clicked. “By then, I recognized that money can come and go,” Smith says. “I went into firefighting for the pride and fulfillment that public service brings—something that chasing money simply did not.”

He left real estate to learn the family business. It turned out that he loved being a firefighter—and that his Augsburg degree made a difference. While a degree isn’t a prerequisite to become a firefighter, it is required to advance in leadership. When opportunities for promotion came along (first to captain, and five years later, to deputy chief) Smith was both prepared and qualified.

He’s also still relying on the liberal arts education he received at Augsburg, from critical thinking to public speaking. As fire marshal, he oversees teams tasked with public education, fire investigations, and code inspection and enforcement. As public information officer, he serves as the department spokesperson and media liaison, handling communications, speechwriting, and public events. There’s no such thing as a typical day. Beyond responding to fires, SPFD handles emergency medical care, technical rescues, structural collapses, ice water rescues, and much more. Smith is always on-call for major emergencies.

“Firefighters get into this job to do the work,” he says. “We’re all adrenalin junkies who get a rush from being in the middle of the action where there are real stakes. My current role still fulfills that need for excitement, whether it’s being on camera or being the public face during an emergency situation.”

Most of all, being in leadership amplifies the impact he’s able to make on the community that his parents and grandparents came from and still call home. It’s not always easy, but he’s willing to put in the effort.

“Get up and do the daily stuff,” he says. “That’s what I’ve learned. As a father to three sons, I tell them life isn’t about how hard you can hit or avoiding challenges. It’s about getting back up. We all want the easy way out, but success is not found there.”

Top image: Deputy Fire Chief Jamie E. Smith Sr. ’04 is a member of the Saint Paul Fire Department. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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Jasa McKenzie ’14 didn’t know much about art when she arrived in Minneapolis from rural South Dakota for college in 2010. For that matter, she hadn’t known much about �̲�ֱ�� before crossing Riverside Avenue on a whim after a University of Minnesota campus visit. A generous scholarship offer led her to enroll at Augsburg.

The art program convinced her to stay.

“When I came to school, even though I didn’t know anything about art, I figured that people don’t know how to be a doctor, and they go to school for that. I don’t know how to be an artist, so I’ll go to school for that,” she said. “The Augsburg art program scooped me up and set me off in the art direction.”

After pursuing curatorial opportunities in New York, Southern California, and Germany, McKenzie is back in Minneapolis, where she now works as the producer of The Great Northern festival. She regularly crosses paths with former professors and colleagues from Augsburg in the vibrant Twin Cities arts scene. When Associate Professor Chris Houltberg shared the news about a gift to establish a named art school at Augsburg, she was thrilled.

“Any success I have—and even just the fact that I know about curating as an option—comes from Augsburg,” McKenzie said. “I feel like if I mention Augsburg, people might think of the nursing program, or maybe science. I’m always like, ‘No—the art program!’”

An Augsburg arts school

The Augsburg Schwartz School of the Arts, first announced in April 2023, brings together the performing, visual, and narrative arts into a single hub of creative exchange at Augsburg. This new administrative structure includes existing programs in art and design, creative writing, film, music, music therapy, and theater, as well as new opportunities to innovate across disciplines.

At a time when access to arts education is increasingly jeopardized across the United States, creating a new arts school might be a countercultural move. But leaders at Augsburg see it as the perfect time to double down on creative expression.

“We’re staking a claim that the arts matter, the arts are essential for everyone, and that in a world moving toward automation, we need creative thinkers and creative problem solvers,” said Houltberg, who was tapped to lead the Schwartz School as its inaugural director. “We’re going to need the outcry and the ability to articulate the human experience, which art has done in all its various forms.”

The Schwartz School was made possible through a transformative gift from Regent Emeritus John Schwartz ’67, for whom the school is named. A longtime supporter of Augsburg music students, Schwartz sang baritone and toured Europe with the Augsburg choir as an undergraduate—an experience that ignited a lifelong love of choral music. His time at Augsburg indelibly shaped his worldview and his leadership approach over a four-decade career as a healthcare executive.

In many ways, he is the model for the goal ���ܲ������ܰ���’s faculty has adopted for the Schwartz School: “a life changed through the arts.”

“Although his career was outside of music, I think John Schwartz exemplified the greatest hope we have for liberal arts students: that they have a love and appreciation for the arts, even if they go and do something completely different,” Houltberg said.

Designing from scratch

Two of ���ܲ������ܰ���’s defining attributes—the diversity of its student body and its location in the heart of Minneapolis—make it a particularly exciting place to establish a destination arts hub, according to faculty.

“The arts constitute one of the most vital economic sectors in the Twin Cities, in turn one of the strongest creativity markets in the country,” said Kristina Boerger, the John N. Schwartz Professor of Choral Leadership and Conducting. “Serving our students—many of whom have not previously been privileged with access to quality arts education and training—means making strong arts education available in the heart of this metropolis.”

Artists’ ability to adapt to change and to work with fluidity makes the arts an ideal testing ground for a new, interdisciplinary school, added Houltberg. Twenty-first century artists are required to move between disciplines in a way that has only accelerated in recent years. Today’s students are arriving eager to collaborate, already innovating across genres, technologies, and boundaries.

The challenge has been coming up with a structure to facilitate and sustain this type of creative exploration, not constrain it. Over the past year, Houltberg has led the arts faculty in a collaborative process to develop a vision for a unified arts school with a distinctive Augsburg flair.

The Arts at Augsburg Slideshow

The faculty sorted into five working groups focused on intersections, identity, structure, curriculum, and “big ideas” for the Schwartz School. “I had always been apprehensive about trying to get consensus amongst faculty, because it’s challenging,” Houltberg laughed. “They’re all very intelligent, autonomous folks. And then if you have artists on top of that, they’re really independent thinkers!” But, he said, what quickly emerged was a powerful blend of creativity, openness, and camaraderie.

The working groups tackled big structural questions—not in the sense of a new building or physical location (neither of which is currently planned)—but in terms of how students spend their time and how the curriculum can be reimagined to facilitate interdisciplinary cross-pollination. New “on-ramp” and “sampler” courses are being developed to lower barriers to exploration for majors and non-majors alike. Parallel scheduling for lab time across programs will make it easier for students to work together—for example, writing original music for a theater production or collaborating on a film script—and for students from any discipline to attend events with local creatives.

There is also abundant opportunity to build on the strengths of existing programs in a multidisciplinary context. Rachel Bergman, the Leland B. Sateren ’35 Endowed Professor and Chair of Music, noted that in addition to performance, the music department offers a variety of degree types, including music business, music therapy, and music education. “One of the things we’ve been talking about in preliminary conversations is how to broaden that to look like arts education or arts administration, so that it’s more comprehensive than just music,” she said.

Bergman added, “I’ve been at several different institutions. It’s really refreshing to see how grassroots this process has been, in terms of the faculty having the opportunity to come together and figure out what we want the Schwartz School to look like.”

Learning by doing

���ܲ������ܰ���’s signature commitment to hands-on learning is perhaps nowhere more salient than in the arts. So it’s no surprise that even the process of developing the Schwartz School has been a site for collaborative learning and creative exchange.

As a film production and history double-major, Ellis Garton ’24 is intrigued by the ways film directing leverages different skill sets: storytelling, photography, screenwriting, and more. He learned of the Schwartz School through a documentary film production class last year, when the rationale for the school became immediately concrete.

Part of a team tasked with shooting a promotional video for the Schwartz School, Garton found himself working with a creative writing student on the assignment. “I kept thinking, this would have been helpful before now!” he said. “I could have known this person long before and developed a relationship, where we could have worked on projects together.”

Darcey Engen ’88, professor and chair of theater arts, pointed to this type of collaboration as the greatest promise of the Schwartz School. In an interview for the short film created by Garton and his teammates, she said, “We know that when students graduate, they tend to stick together. They call each other to work on projects. Your colleagues at Augsburg become your colleagues in life.

“Now, with the Schwartz School of the Arts, these students will leave with a music colleague, an art and design colleague, a film colleague, and that’s going to propel them forward to create really complex, culture-specific art in ways that we haven’t seen here at Augsburg before now.”

From trust to belonging

One after another, the faculty working groups zeroed in on the fact that arts “classrooms” permeate much further than the boundaries of campus. From concerts and exhibitions to performances and publications, the arts require public-facing engagement.

How do you foster the courage for students to put their work out into the world? By building trust—in themselves, their craft, and each other.

“One of the things that John [Schwartz] described to me in great detail was when he was singing in a European church,” Houltberg recounted. “He said, ‘I just remember thinking, I shouldn’t be here. I’m a small kid from a southwest Minnesota town.’

“In addition to amazing opportunities like singing in European churches, music gave him identity and belonging. Oftentimes, I think our students think, ‘I don’t belong here.’ But we know that they do. They just need the space and the time and the place and the opportunities to experience it.”

McKenzie found that sense of belonging in her design classes, as an intern in the Augsburg Galleries, and now as an alum, where she’s come full circle to partner with Houltberg and other Augsburg colleagues on a multidisciplinary project that will explore themes of climate change for The Great Northern on campus this January. She is delighted by the idea that the Schwartz School will bring a level of recognition to ���ܲ������ܰ���’s arts programs that is commensurate with their quality.

“Personally, my life was changed by the arts,” she said. “By the arts at Augsburg.”

Read more about the life of John Schwartz ’67.

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Top image: Augsburg students in a paper making and marbling art class (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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John Schwartz ’67 believed in the power of a liberal arts education to guide students to a successful career and a meaningful life. After all, his own life was, in many ways, a case study.

Raised in Lester Prairie, Minnesota, Schwartz graduated from Augsburg in 1967 and earned a master’s in hospital administration from the University of Minnesota. Over the course of four decades in health care, he held leadership positions in Milwaukee, Oregon, and Montana, concluding his career as president of Advocate Trinity Hospital in Chicago. His significant professional success was balanced by a lifelong engagement with the arts and an especially deep love of classical choral music. After touring Europe with the Augsburg choir in 1965, he continued to sing in ensembles throughout his life, including the Sullivan Chamber Ensemble of Milwaukee and the Apollo Chorus of Chicago.

Schwartz’s extraordinary generosity to Augsburg took many forms, from regularly hosting business students in Chicago to providing wise leadership counsel as a member of the Board of Regents. Schwartz and his husband created the John N. Schwartz and James A. Mosley Scholarship and two endowed professorships: the Leland B. Sateren ’35 Professorship and Chair of Music and the John N. Schwartz Professorship of Choral Leadership and Conducting. Most significantly, his visionary estate gift established ���ܲ������ܰ���’s first named school, the John N. Schwartz ’67 School of the Arts.

“John told me that if just one student would go forward from Augsburg transformed, as he had been, by excellence in choral artistry, then his bequest would have been worth every dollar.”—Kristina Boerger, John N. Schwartz Professorship of Choral Leadership and Conducting

A business administration major with a grand passion for music. A savvy hospital administrator with a knack for storytelling. A humble, generous servant-leader who was committed to being a good steward of the gifts he’d been given.

More than anything else, Augsburg will remember John Schwartz as a lifelong friend.

Read more about the John N. Schwartz ’67 School of the Arts.

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Earlier this year, George Dierberger was appointed the inaugural Thomas ’72 and Karen Howe Endowed Professor for Entrepreneurship. The Howe professorship was established in 2022 to strengthen ���ܲ������ܰ���’s business department and inspire innovation and leadership. Dierberger spent 25 years in a variety of leadership positions at 3M and continues to consult for entrepreneurial organizations. As director of ���ܲ������ܰ���’s Master’s of Business Administration program, he oversees MBA field projects that include writing strategic plans for Fortune 500 companies, Mayo Clinic, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits. He was a 2022 Fulbright Scholar in Letterkenny, Ireland.

In May, Rachel Bergman was named the inaugural Leland B. Sateren ’35 Professor and Endowed Chair of Music. The Sateren chair was established in 2022 to advance the Department of Music’s commitments to inclusion, access, equity, and belonging, and to serve as a local and national spokesperson for the department’s distinctive programs and learning opportunities.

An active flutist and advocate of new music, Bergman previously served as director of academic initiatives and arts outreach, dean of visual and performing arts, and dean of online learning at Sheridan College in northern Wyoming. She also previously served as associate professor of music theory and director of graduate studies for the School of Music at George Mason University. In addition to teaching, Bergman researches, promotes, and performs contemporary works for flute in solo and chamber settings.

At its January meeting, the Board of Regents approved staff emeritus status for Lawrence Handsuch, who served as the university locksmith for more than 40 years until his retirement. At its May meeting, the board approved faculty emeritus status for David Apolloni, associate professor of philosophy, and faculty emerita status for Joan Kunz, professor of chemistry. The board also recognized the distinguished contributions of three regents completing their final term of service: Karen Durant ’81, Matt Entenza, and Jeff Nodland ’77.

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Clara Webby, a former MIAC competitor, joined Augsburg as head coach of women’s soccer this spring. Webby earned all-conference and all-region honors as a defender during her intercollegiate playing days at Macalester College. After graduating cum laude in 2019, she served as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Macalester and as an assistant coach at St. Catherine University. She has also coached at Twin Cities area youth soccer clubs, including Twin Cities Rush and Minneapolis United.

For Webby, the move to Augsburg felt natural. “Despite being an Augsburg opponent during my playing and most-recent coaching days, I have always admired ���ܲ������ܰ���’s diverse and inclusive campus, competitive athletics, and celebration of the Division III student-athlete,” she said. “I am ecstatic to be joining the Augsburg community.”

There are no hard feelings over previous rivalries from her new squad. “It has been such a joy to spend time with the dedicated individuals in the program,” Webby said. “They have shown me tremendous respect and made me feel like an Auggie instantly. They are committed, hungry, and ready for our new chapter together.”

Webby is the seventh head coach in program history. She follows Mike Navarre, who retired in February after leading the Auggies to 235 wins in 24 seasons.

Ali (Bernard) Sprenger, a two-time Olympian and five-time collegiate national champion, started as head coach of ���ܲ������ܰ���’s women’s wrestling team this fall.

Sprenger competed in women’s wrestling at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, finishing in fifth place in the 72-kg (158.5-lb) weight class. She won a bronze medal at 72-kg at the 2011 FILA World Championships and also competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, finishing in a tie for 13th place in the 72-kg class.

Sprenger competed collegiately in Canada, where she won five national championships—four titles (2005–08) at the University of Regina and the 2010 title at the University of Alberta. She served for four seasons (2009–13) as a wrestling assistant coach at the University of Alberta, where she was part of the 2011 women’s team national championship, two Canada West women’s titles, and one Canada West men’s title. In recent years, she has been active in leadership for Minnesota-USA Wrestling.

“I love that Augsburg sees the value in wrestling and specifically having a women’s wrestling team,” Sprenger said. “Women’s wrestling is a growing sport, and I am proud to be a part of a program that is committed to providing opportunities for young women to compete in this great sport.”

Augsburg is entering its fifth season of intercollegiate women’s wrestling in 2023–24. Sprenger follows Jake Short, who coached the Auggies to finishes of sixth place and fifth place in the National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships, with three national champions, nine All-Americans, and a 14–4 dual-meet record in his two seasons.

Top image: Augsburg women’s soccer plays against Concordia College-Moorhead in October 2021. (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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As of Fall 2023, Augsburg offers three graduate business certificates:

• Business analytics
• Entrepreneurship
• Finance

The certificates are a new offering in addition to ���ܲ������ܰ���’s traditional MBA and the MBA dual degree programs in leadership and social work. Each certificate consists of four core courses in the MBA curriculum and can be completed in as little as eight months. Each course meets one night per week for eight weeks on ���ܲ������ܰ���’s Minneapolis campus.

Graduate certificates offer the opportunity to develop key skills for today’s evolving global business culture without committing to a full degree program. They are ideal for busy professionals seeking career growth, new skills, or higher capacity to tackle complex problems with integrity and responsibility.

Learn more about ���ܲ������ܰ���’s graduate business certificates.

Top image: Students in their MBA class, December 2019 (Photo by Courtney Perry)

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Named for Ronald E. McNair, an astronaut and physicist who was among the first African Americans in the U.S. space program, McNair Scholars is one of eight federal TRIO programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education to increase access to higher education for economically disadvantaged students.

McNair Scholars specifically aims to increase graduate degree awards for first-generation college students with financial need and/or members of traditionally underrepresented groups in graduate education, as defined by federal guidelines.

With the $1.3 million grant, Augsburg will continue to support a cohort of 26 McNair Scholars each year. Students apply during their sophomore year to participate in the program as juniors and seniors.

The hallmark of ���ܲ������ܰ���’s program is MCN 301: Research in the Disciplines, taught by Associate Professor Amanda Case and McNair Assistant Director Cruz Rodriguez. In this 2-credit course, students complete a research proposal under the guidance of a faculty mentor. They spend 400 hours collecting data, analyzing findings, and preparing a formal presentation for a national McNair research conference in July.

The students also undertake significant preparation for graduate school outside of research, from GRE study to an intensive “boot camp” to develop their application statements.

“McNair is a rigorous commitment,” said “Tina” Maria Tavera, program director. “Each TRIO McNair program is designed for a particular population. We are fortunate our programming is designed specifically for Augsburg students. Our numbers prove that our program at Augsburg works.”

In a highly competitive funding landscape, ���ܲ������ܰ���’s program has received continuous federal support since 2007. Many of ���ܲ������ܰ���’s McNair alumni have successfully gone on to graduate school. Twenty-one have completed or are enrolled in a PhD program, 58 have completed or are enrolled in a master’s degree program, and 12 have completed or are enrolled in other advanced degree programs (including MD, MBA, PharmD, and PsyD).

Top image: 2022 Fall McNair Scholars: front row (left to right): Hafsa Hassan; Edward Stockard; Cynthia Faber; Logan Bradley; back row (left to right): Ifrah Edow; Jose Orozco Islas; Theo Wayo; Natnael Mulu; Leeroy Doe; Alex Hernandez Olivera; Drew Gross (Courtesy photo)

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