Augsburg University educates students to thrive in their lives. Every student graduating from Augsburg University will understand what it takes for them to thrive, for their communities to thrive, and for our world to thrive. Our students thrive when they are actively expressing the unique ways they are inspired, equipped, and empowered to create a more just and sustainable world.
Thriving is never something that happens in isolation from others. We thrive in community, we thrive as community, we thrive with community. I am only thriving if you are also thriving. We are only thriving if they are also thriving. Thriving is always something we do together.
How do we begin to understand how we thrive? We discover our unique way of thriving and helping others thrive when we take the time to explore and discover the six different elements of thriving.
The Christensen Center for Vocation is committed to helping every member of our community learn to thrive by exploring these six components through high-impact learning, storytelling, mentorship, and community. Through these efforts, we cultivate the imagination and practices that lead to more just, sustainable, and thriving lives and communities.
A Lutheran Theological Understanding of Vocation
Augsburg University is a university of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Therefore, this commitment to helping our students and our world thrive is rooted in the university’s Lutheran theological heritage, particularly its understanding of vocation. This theological understanding of vocation can best be summarized with these words from Martin Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian (1520).
“. . . we should be guided in all our works by this one thought alone – that we may strive and benefit others in everything that is done, having nothing else before our eyes except the need and advantage of the neighbor.”
The centrality of the neighbor’s well-being, or thriving, is the primary focal point of higher education within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and at Augsburg University. The purpose of a college education is to (1) develop the mindset and skills necessary to discover what our neighbors need in order to thrive, and (2) develop the mindset and skills necessary to pragmatically meet those needs. Every discipline within a liberal arts education including Literature, Business, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Economics, Theater, Political Science, etc. is intended to increase our ability to “benefit others in everything we do.”
Read more about how a Lutheran understanding of vocation informs this Thrive framework.