Center for Teaching and Learning - Programming - Community Building

Community Building

The creation of community exhibits openness, exemplifies openness, and enables openness. Without such a sense of community we will simply avoid talking about anything that really matters. Tom Christenson, The Gift and Task of Lutheran Higher Education.

These activities are designed to help build a sense of community among faculty, staff, and leadership. Components include the Life of the Mind Retreat, Mindful Dialogues, Community Circles, CTL Night at the Theater, the Hoversten Peace Seminar, and Wellness and Well-Being Series. The Convocation series and Advent Vespers also serve to build a sense of community HR and ACFL are important partners in planning these programs.

Life of the Mind Retreat

This year’s Life of the Mind Retreat will be held at Oak Ridge Conference Center from 11:30 Saturday, October 22 through noon on October 23, 2011 and focus on “Social Inequity and Global Poverty.” All faculty, staff, and administrators are invited to participate. Each year, we hold a retreat to explore a topic of interest to us as global citizens – a topic that is informed by numerous disciplines and can best be addressed through a transdisciplinary approach.

The two-day retreat will address the history of development on different continents, global economic disparities and their effects, oppression as reflected in theater, and confronting class in the classroom. In addition to readings, discussions, videos, poetry, spiritual exploration, and music; it also includes reflective time in a natural setting to think about how the discussions apply to our lives. Planners for this year’s retreat include Kevin Bowman, Orv Gingerich, Steve Peacock, Sarah Myers, and Katie Clark.

To register for the overnight retreat and obtain the readings, contact Sarah Hedstrom (hedstrom@augsburg.edu). If you are willing to share a room and help reduce our expenses, please let her know. Since there are a limited number of participants possible, reservations will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Mindful Dialogues

Mindful Dialogues is a series of conversations designed to collectively examine issues relevant to higher education. All sessions are held from 2:00-3:30 on Thursdays in Lindell 202. Each session includes a facilitated conversation about the reading and healthy snacks.

During the spring, Annette Gerten is leading dialogues on Douglas Thomas and John Seeley Brown’s A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. James Duderstadt, President Emeritus of the University of Michigan described this work as, “A provocative and extremely important new paradigm of a ‘culture of learning,’ appropriate for a world characterized by continual change. This is a must read for anyone interested in the future of education.”

Sessions will include:

January 19 – Arc-of-Life Learning, A Tale of Two Cultures, and Embracing Change (Ch. 1-3)
February 16 – Learning in the Collective and The Personal With the Collective, and (Ch. 4-5)
March 15 – We Know More Than We Can Say; Knowing, Making, and Playing; and Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (Ch. 6-8)
April 12 – A New Culture of Learning for a World of Constant Change (Ch. 9)

If you would like to participate in these sessions, please contact Sarah Hedstrom (hedstrom@augsburg.edu).

Community Circles

CTL also supports a number of both open and closed learning circles or book groups through work culture grants. Support for book groups is available through group and individual project grant applications on the CTL website. This year we are sponsoring the following reading groups open to faculty, staff, and students:

Resilience

Four personal narratives on having the inner strength to overcome barriers in life, led by Melissa Hensley. The purpose of this group is to explore the idea of resilience by reading four memoirs of people who have overcome substantial barriers in order to achieve success. The group will read these books and discuss both personal and environmental factors that contributed to resilience and the capacity to overcome hardship. In particular, the role of educational organizations and systems in promoting resilience will be explored. The group will meet twice in the fall and twice in the spring, to discuss four different books. These brown bag (byo) discussions are scheduled in Lindell 202 as follows:

Friday, December 9, 12:00-1:30 – Welcome, Silence, by Dr. Carol North
Friday, February 10, 12:00-1:30 – Breaking Night, by Liz Murray
TBD– The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore
Friday, April 13, 12:00-1:30 – Balancing Two Worlds: Asian American College Students Tell their Life Stories, edited by Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny, and Vernon Takeshita

To register for this book group, please contact Sarah Hedstrom (hedstrom@augsburg.edu).

Social Learning

David Brooks’ The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Virtue led by Jacqui DeVries.

Wednesday, January 25, 12:15-1:15, OGC 100
Thursday, February 23, 3:10-4:30, OGC 100
Wednesday, March 28, 12:15-1:15, OGC 112
Thursday, April 19, 3:10-4:30, OGC 100

New York Times columnist Brooks attempts in The Social Animal to explain why so many of our contemporary social problems and inequalities have proven so intractable. Weaving insights from sociology, psychology, history and brain science into an engaging narrative reminiscent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile (a classic study of how people learn), Brooks tries to “explain how these findings about the deepest recesses of our minds should change the way we see ourselves, raise our kids, conduct business, teach, manage our relationships and practice politics.” His work is certainly not without critics, but his insights and findings can be valuable to educators, who grapple on a daily basis with the implications of his observation that “we’re not rational animals, or laboring animals; we’re social animals. We emerge out of relationships and live to bond with each other and connect to larger ideas.”

To register for this book group, please contact Sarah Hedstrom (hedstrom@augsburg.edu).

CTL Night at the Theater

During both fall and spring semesters, CTL buys tickets to an Augsburg theater production and offers them to faculty, staff, and their significant others. Theater offers a unique way of learning or knowing – from stories that touch our hearts and mind. Experiencing it together adds a social dimension that allows us to discover what the stories mean to others and what new possibilities they see. Through theater we can be healed and transformed, as well as entertained. In addition to the performance, participants engage in an informal reception and discussion with the director and cast. All productions are in the Tjornhom-Nelson Theater. This year, we have reserved tickets for:

November 10, 2011 – Marat / Sade, Directed by Darcey Engen

It's best known as Marat/Sade, but Peter Weiss' play actually bears the lengthy title, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade. Within France's Charenton Asylum a number of years after the French Revolution, the Marquis de Sade stages his play about the murder of a key figure in the revolution, Jean-Paul Marat, using his fellow asylum inmates as actors. As the performance begins, the bourgeois asylum director watches as inmates use the play to rail against post-revolutionary privilege. Chaos arises as the play within a play disintegrates into anarchy.

February 9, 2012 - 365 Days/365 Plays, Directed by Martha Johnson

In the fall of 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks (Pulitzer-prize winning playwright) decided to take on the challenge of writing one play a day for a full year. 365 Days/365 Plays is the successful result, featuring 365 short plays whimsically exploring such divergent topics as sex, war, fairy tales, Indian mythology, American historical figures, love, politics, race, contemporary celebrities--and numerous other issues from American life. The world premiere of these plays was an extraordinary event: From 2006 to 2007 more than 700 theaters in major cities across America performed various pieces or sections from Parks' cycle. This production we will include selections from this body of work to create an entertaining, thought- provoking, and imaginative assortment of contemporary theater pieces.

Reservations are taken on a first-come, first-served basis. If you would like to attend either or both of these productions, please contact Sarah Hedstrom (hedstrom@augsburg.edu).

Hoversten Peace Seminar

The next biennial Hoversten Peace Seminar will be June 1-9, 2012 in El Salvador. This is an opportunity for faculty, staff, and students to experience a Center for Global Education (CGE) program together, at a subsidized cost ($1090 for faculty and staff, $890 for students). The deadline for applications is February 1. More information is available on the CGE website (http://www.augsburg.edu/global/).

Well-Being and Wellness

Your personal well-being is important to your physical and mental health, and ability to contribute effectively to the Augsburg community. To support faculty and staff, CTL, in conjunction with Human Resources, the Center for Counseling and Health Promotion, and the Department of Health and Physical Education, offers the following programs.

Well-Being Series

CTL sponsors a series focused on well-being. It includes a broad look at well-being based on Rath & Harter’s book Well-Being: The Five Essential Elements. This monthly series is held 12:00-1:30 pm on the second or third Friday in the Augsburg Room, and includes a copy of the book and a diagnostic. It consists of the following sessions:

October 14– What is Well-Being? (Velma Lashbrook)
November 11 – Career Well-Being (Lois Olson and Heidi Lender)
January 20 – Social Well-Being (Glenda Rooney)
February 17 – Financial Well-Being (Ashok Kapoor and Stephanie Ruckel)
March 16 – Physical Well-Being (Nancy Guilbeaut and Tony Clapp)
April 13 – Community Well-Being (Andrea Turner)

If you would like to participate in these sessions, please contact Sarah Hedstrom (hedstrom@augsburg.edu). If you sign up, you are expected to attend at least 4 sessions.

Brown Bag Wellness Series (Sponsored by Human Resources)

Human Resources and the Benefits Advisory Group offer monthly programs on physical well-being. This year’s brown bag sessions will be from September through May. Contact Kelly Crawford for more information.

Wellness Incentive Program (Sponsored by HPE)

The Wellness Incentive Program offers prizes for exercising a minimum of 30 minutes per day (1 point per day). More information about the program is available on the Fitness website (http://www.augsburg.edu/wellness). The following on-campus activities are also available for your participation from Wednesday, September 7 – Friday, April 27:

Basketball, Si Melby – MWF @ noon; contact Joe Erickson (erickson@augsburg.edu)
Yoga, Marshall Room – TTh @ noon; contact Dianne Detloff (detloff@augsburg.edu)
Ultimate Frisbee, air structure – T @ noon, beginning in mid-November; contact Christina Erickson (ericksoc@augsburg.edu)
Golf, air structure – TBD, beginning in mid-November
Auggies v. Tommies, 3rd Annual Fitness Challenge – February-April

For more information or to volunteer to lead other activities, contact Carol Enke (enke@augsburg.edu), the program coordinator.

Convocation Series – Many Voices, Bold Visions

The 11th annual Augsburg convocation series represents another opportunity to join members of the campus community to explore how we can make the world a better place. This year’s schedule includes:

September 26 (5 pm) and 27 (11 am) – The Bernard Christiansen Symposium: Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary Professor of the Old Testament
October 26 (10 am) – The Humanities and Fine Arts Convocation: David Carlyon, Historian, theatre director, teacher, actor, and ex-circus clown
November 3 (11 am) – The Anne Pederson Women’s Resource Center Koryne Horbal Lecture: Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University professor of African and African American Studies
January 16 (1 pm) – The Martin Luther King, Jr. Convocation: T. Mychael Rambo, Actor, vocalist, and educator
February 11, (Noon) – The Center for Counseling and Health Promotion Convocation: Frederick Luskin, Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects and professor of clinical psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.
February 13 (10 am) – The Batalden Seminar in Applied Ethics: Alaa Abd El-Rahman Obeida and Ahmad Omar Afifi, Co-founders for the eYouth project (Engaging and Empowering Egyptian Youth)
April 16 (7:30 pm) and 17 (11 am) – The Sverdrup Visiting Scientist Lecture: Brian J. Anderson ’82, physicist with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and deputy project scientist, NASA MESSENGER mission
May 15 (7 pm) – The Rochester Convocation: Shanna Decker, Cancer survivor and mentor

For more information, go to www.augsburg.edu/convo.