The summer after Peter Agre ’70 received his Nobel Prize in Chemistry the first Augsburg/St.Olaf Summer Science Symposium for summer research students was held at St. Olaf College and has become an annual event alternating between schools. Augsburg was host this year for the ninth annual symposium held on July 12, 2013 with about 130 attendees, the largest since the symposium began.
Augsburg and St. Olaf have a shared past as the undergraduate schools emerged at the same time from Augsburg Seminary of the old Norwegian Lutheran Synod, and in addition Dr. Courtland Agre was a pre-eminent professor first at St. Olaf and then at Augsburg. The symposium is one more example of many ties between the schools. Each year the symposium has a prominent alumnus of the host school as the featured speaker. When Augsburg hosts a career panel is also featured. Dixie Shafer and Arlin Gyberg have co-chaired from Augsburg over the years working closely with Peter Agre on the planning.
This year’s feature
speaker was Dr. Paul Mueller ’84, Chair of the General Internal Medicine Department of Mayo Clinic, whose talk was in regard to ethics in the practice of medicine. The career panel members were Dr. Rachel Hendrickson Julian ’71 (psychiatry), Dr. Phil Ditmanson ’83 (radiology), Dr. Paul Reicho ’87 (emergency medicine), and Mahad Minhas ’12 who had just completed a degree in MPH at Dartmouth.
After Dr. Mueller’s talk the panel members gave brief introductions of their work and along with Dr. Mueller were in an active discussion including members of the audience. As usual students and other attendees were quite enthusiastic about the experience.
Arlin Gyberg