The Oxford English Dictionary defines “relevance” as “the state of being closely connected or appropriate to the matter in hand.” To be relevant is thus to be important, but the term implies more than that. Trivial things—appointments, events, e-mails – that intrude themselves into life can easily become “important,” at least for a time. To be relevant, something must be connected to a larger scheme, a grander plan—the ultimate “matter in hand.”

To be relevant means being an integral part of the new society, of the economy, of the future. It means being the kind of person on whom others depend, whether for leadership, expertise, acumen, or emotional support.

In this video, Philip Styrlund (Augsburg Class of 1979) will briefly discuss the four keys areas of lifetime relevance.

Phil Styrlund is CEO of The Summit Group and a recognized thought leader on strategic selling and business value transformation. His go-to-market strategies have been implemented by some of the world’s premiere organizations, including Cisco Systems, HP, Siemens, Marriott, Xerox, Lockheed, Tetra Pak, Proctor & Gamble, SC Johnson, Kellogg, and the U.S. Federal Government. In addition to his keynote presentations and engaging programs, Styrlund serves as coach, mentor, consultant and advisor to top leaders across a range of industries. He is currently initiating a doctorate program at Middlesex University in London. He is also authoring a new book, Relevance: The Art of Meaning slated for release mid-2013.

A Letter from Tori Bahr ’09

Four years ago I graduated from Augsburg College with a Biology and Chemistry degree. It was a great four years, but I knew more education was needed to get me to my ultimate career of becoming a physician. In August of 2010 I began medical school across the river at the University of Minnesota.

I was fortunate enough to receive the Rein in Sarcoma Scholarship this past year while at medical school. This foundation was started by Karen Wycoff who while in college was diagnosed with Synovial Sarcoma. She had never heard of sarcoma before her diagnosis. Shortly before her death Karen conceived and created the Rein in Sarcoma Foundation as a way to raise awareness of sarcoma cancers, to encourage sarcoma research, and to support other sarcoma patients and their loved ones. In the eleven years since its conception Rein in Sarcoma has raised over $1,000,000!

As a scholar I have been blessed to meet many people who have been touched by this awful disease. Unfortunately, sarcoma is too often misdiagnosed and many have stories of doctor after doctor not taking them seriously. While most cancers are diagnosed four months from the onset of symptoms, the average time to diagnosis for sarcoma is 14 months! It is time to change this story! Catching sarcoma early is the best way to improve outcomes.

Over the past three months my fiance, Paul Sanft (also an Auggie, class of 2005) and I have invited survivors and the loved ones of those that sarcoma took too soon to come tell their stories in front of the camera. The goal of this project is to change the sarcoma story from “never heard of it” to “we caught it early.” I am so thankful to have met these wonderful people. I will always carry their stories near my heart as I approach my future patients. Please help us change the sarcoma story by sharing this video with your friends, family, and colleagues!

-A special thanks to Zach Sobiech, a 17 year old from Minnesota, currently fighting osteosarcoma for providing the music.  He also was recently featured in People magazine.

-A special thanks to Paul Sanft at Ideatap Studios for donating the editing and filming.

Thank you for helping change the sarcoma story today!

Tori Bahr
University of Minnesota, MD candidate 2014
Rein in Sarcoma Foundation Scholar
Augsburg College, 2009

When an Auggie recently visited the Airlie Winery in Airlie, Oregon, he asked fellow-Auggie and winery owner Mary E. Olson ’74 if the large “A” in the landscaping (carved out of boxwood) stood for “Augsburg.” She just smiled and said, “Sure!” Even though very few of the Auggies she encounters at the winery—or at other wine-tasting events around the country—are acquaintances from her student days, Olson still feels the connection.

Years after the Osceola (WI) native had graduated with a political science/English double major, she found her liberal arts education particularly useful as she left her work with US West after 22 years, and switched gears by following her dream of moving back to Oregon and owning a winery. In 1997, she purchased Airlie Winery, situated on the coastal edge of the lush hills of Oregon’s Willamette Valley—an area that has captured her heart. She says it’s Minnesota-friendly with better weather, and she fully intends to retire there. “My winery is not a stop along the way,” says Olson, “it is a place to sit and stay.”

When her friend and Airlie’s winemaker, Suzy, died suddenly in 2005 from a brain aneurism, friends and volunteers from other Oregon wineries came to the rescue and helped Olson until she could find a replacement—Team Oregon, she likes to call it. She views sustainability of the winery as a three-legged stool—“the earth, employees, and your customers”—and she purchases grapes from a nearby vineyard that, like Airlie, is Certified Sustainable and Salmon Safe. Being part of the Oregon Pinot Noir continues to be her dream-come-true.

Airlie’s website (www.airliewinery.com) provides an opportunity for Auggies to sign up to receive emails, as well as info on where you can find Airlie wines in your area. Airlie’s distributor (amy@oenodist.com) stands ready to add another shop to the list, and responds well to such customer requests.

If you happened to visit the Minnesota Twins’ spring training facility in Fort Myers (FL) last month, you may have purchased a FINNEGANS beer, available this year at Hammond Stadium for the first time. You might be surprised to learn that, with that purchase, you also would have helped supply fresh produce through the Harry Chapin Food Bank.

Minnesota-based FINNEGANS, owned by Jacquie Berglund ’87, was the first for-profit beer company in the world to give away 100% of its profits, a feat accomplished through the FINNEGANS Community fund—a sustainable business model through which the company can make a difference in the community. Last year alone, FINNEGANS raised over $100,000 that went to support the purchase of fresh produce at local food shelves. This unique beer business intrigued Buffie Blesi ’90 ’97, who had done volunteer work at FINNEGANS over the years, and who turned to Berglund in 2009 for networking advice when she started her business coaching company, KnowledgeSphere, Inc. In turn, Berglund called on Blesi for help in managing FINNEGANS’ future—a mutually beneficial way of reconnecting since their first meeting years ago as Augsburg students.

As a result, FINNEGANS has rebounded nicely (growing by an average of 40% each year), and Blesi continues to help Berglund strategize about its growth—looking at new markets and products, determining who should be on the team and how to engage them in the company’s mission, and earning more profits in order to make a greater impact in the world. Recently, FINNEGANS received two special awards: Social Entrepreneur Award for Minnesota Business, and the Small Business of the Year Award from the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to her coaching work, Blesi has worked in recent years with other Auggie alumnae and Donna McLean to establish the AWE (Augsburg Women Engaged) program, which provides opportunities for Auggie women to connect, learn, and give.

The Wild West of Information Technology

Dan Terrio ’90 feels privileged to have gotten his start in IT at Augsburg in the early ‘90s, when he managed what was then called the Academic Computing department. Since those days, however, electronic devices have become ever more prevalent in all aspects of college life, to the point where an IT staff is expected to support a BYOD (bring your own device) environment—less controlled and more “wild West.”

Now, as chief information officer at Whitman College, a position he has held since May 2011, Terrio is committed to collaborating with all of the college’s constituents in order to understand their “business” and needs more fully, and acquire devices that help them do their work. In addition to the interpersonal and communication skills required to do this, he knows the IT staff must also be able to influence some decisions up-front. Of course, balancing security and privacy issues with a traditional culture of openness is always a challenge in IT.

Terrio has taken steps at Whitman to enable IT to work in partnership with faculty to identify innovative ways to tap into the potential that technology has to enhance teaching and learning. Though he may see himself as a technology skeptic, believing that education is at its best when it is done in face-to-face faculty-student interactions in a small residential environment, he knows full well that technology will need to promote those interactions. And who knows what devices we’ll see in the next 5–10 years to help keep IT departments on their toes?

Paulson Runs Marathons in All 50 States and DC

In 2009, after finished his first official marathon, on Lithia Park Trail (FL), he wasn’t so surprised that he had been able to finish, even though he had had to walk much of the last five miles. But he was surprised that, in the process, he had managed to avoid a four-foot black snake and plenty of horse manure (especially pungent in the day’s heat), and that the prize for finishing was an “ugly kiln-baked campfire mug” and a knit ski cap with machine-sewn palm trees on it—hardly useful for this Floridian. But that event was the beginning of a long string of events, and he finished in marathons in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. He recalls thinking many times while running, if he didn’t hurt, then he just wasn’t running fast enough.

Competing in all 50 states has helped Paulson level out his emotions, and made for some interesting encounters—like obtaining an endearing autograph from author/runner Dean Karnazes (who wrote “Ultramarathonman”), and running with a 22-year-old woman in the Missoula marathon who ran the entire race with crutches as she endeavored to compete in all 50 states as well (and is in the Guiness record books).  About 10 of Paulson’s marathons were 24-hour races (ultramarathons), and he would run all night (with short naps, lots of coffee, and regular eating), then sleep for 14 hours the following day, hardly able to walk afterwards for two or three days. He had to switch shoes throughout the day to “keep his feet confused” so as not to feel the pain. But running this long makes him feel alive and vibrant.

When Paulson is asked about his days at Augsburg, he remembers the faculty as very caring and decent Christian people, whose care made him feel special. His father, George Pauluk ’55, also attended Augsburg, and Neil feels fortunate in having been able to establish a scholarship at Augsburg in his father’s honor.

Following an early career as a lawyer, focusing on trial practice (family law, criminal defense, and personal injury) and on car accidents, Paulson retired in 2000 and is now director of a private mortgage investment fund affiliated with Equity Trust Company. Paulson also enjoys running the 5K, coaching soccer at the YMCA, and weight training

The American College of Physicians-Minnesota Chapter presented the 2012 Laureate award to Dr. Amit K. Ghosh MBA ’12, of Mayo Clinic at its annual scientific session in Minneapolis on November 2.

Ghosh is a professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and a consultant in the division of general internal medicine. He is the current director of the International Clinic.

The Laureate Award honors an Internal Medicine physician and member of the American College of Physicians who has demonstrated an abiding commitment to excellence in medical care, education or research.

Ghosh received his medical training and completed his internship in India, graduating from the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education. He came to the United States in 1993 and completed a fellowship at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in Nephrology and hypertension.

Ghosh was the previous editor-in-chief of two Mayo internal medicine books, namely the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Review Book and the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Concise Textbook.

When several high school students visited her second-grade class for a week to help each one write their own book, Sarah (Norton) Solmonson ’10 wrote not just one, but five of them, including what she considers to be the first draft of the book she just published this past summer. The book, Taking Flight, gives the reader a window into Solmonson’s life, with particular focus on the joy of working with her father in their basement for six years to build his own VP-1 airplane, the excitement of flying with him often, and the painful loss she endured when, due to a wind fluke, the plane went down three months after its first flight, killing her father instantly. That was when Sarah was 16.

Writing the book, then, was a natural outlet. Grateful that her parents read to her often, Solmonson credits her Augsburg experience with instilling in her the drive and discipline required to write the book. She says pushing herself through night and weekend classes while working full-time was the most exhausting and rewarding period of her life thus far. She especially remembers the challenge of Professor Cowgill’s English and Irish Literature course, and still relishes his encouraging words about her D.H. Lawrence paper—“Sarah, you are a writer.” (She keeps the paper with Cowgill’s comments in her “motivational tool kit.”). When she stood at the Augsburg Bookstore on graduation day, with aspirations to be an author, she thought once again, “Some day…”

Fond of narrative non-fiction and memoir genres, Solmonson is convinced that being an author is the career she wants to continue to pursue, and completing her first book has given her an amazing sense of accomplishment. The subject of her second book will be the life-changing trip through Germany and Poland that she took with Professors Cowgill and DeVries, along with Auggie classmates (many of them now long-term friends), in connection with a dual course in the History and Literature of Post WWII.

Her book is available through Amazon.

The Crowning Touch

Taking an eighth-grade drafting class (rather than one in cooking) and doing estimates for construction plans brought home by her master-plasterer father moved Sarah (Wojtowicz) Bazey ’88 a step closer to ownership of her own company. Bazey started Simplex Construction Supplies, Inc. while she was still a student at Augsburg, and she continues to serve as president and CEO. The company has worked on projects across North America and with some of the most accomplished contractors in the world.

Beyond her success in the business world, however, is an even richer story about the courage and perseverance of this Scandia, Minnesota native.

On a sunny October afternoon in 1994, after completion of a large highway project, Bazey expressed her gratitude to the work team by chartering a helicopter for several tours. But on the day’s last ride—the only one that Bazey took—disaster struck. The helicopter caught some newly strung power lines, crashed, and skidded into a temporary concrete barrier before it exploded. Bazey, still strapped in, was soaked in jet fuel and in flames. Continue reading “Spotlight on Sarah (Wojtowicz) Bazey ’88” →