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Genocide in Darfur. United Nations peacekeeping missions in Syria. Those were only two of the relevant issues Grant Dasher tackled while on the debate team at Edina High School. But they made a lasting impression.

“Those issues are still relevant today, unfortunately,” says Dasher, whose positive experience in the debate world has prompted him to donate $10,000 to endow Augsburg University’s Minnesota Urban Debate League. About half of his donation will be matched by his employer.

The opportunity to learn about topics that are both interesting and important to society is just one of the many benefits debate offers, Dasher explains. It also develops critical thinking skills, expands global knowledge, and provides a chance to become active in the school community. As with sports, debating in a league that also promises tournaments, awards, and trophies simply makes it more fun.

“Research suggests that students who debate often pursue higher education and have better outcomes. There’s even evidence that debate may foster higher learning potential,” adds Dasher, who earned a math degree at Harvard, consulted with the U.S. Digital Service at the White House, and is now a senior staff software engineer at Google. He also notes the positive effects debate has had on his career, as it has helped him work through issues, manage people, and articulate ideas clearly.

After graduating from college, Dasher became involved in Boston’s Urban Debate League, where he enjoyed meeting with and coaching the students as well as judging the debates. Now a resident of the Bay Area, he wanted to extend the same opportunities to students in his home state.

Dasher has fond memories of his debate coach, Joe Schmitt, a labor and employment attorney at Nilan Johnson Lewis, Minneapolis. “He was a great coach. Although we had good relationships with our parents, he was a second father figure to all of us on the team. And we were pretty successful,” says Dasher, who won the state tournament with his partner. “He taught us learning skills and how to be effective. He also taught us how to use debate to become a better person. It was not just a competitive thing.”

Both Dasher and Schmitt are strong supporters of Augsburg’s MN UDL program, which debuted in 2004 and now supports more than 900 students at 39 partner schools across the Twin Cities. Led by executive director Amy Cram Helwich and faculty advisor Robert Groven, an Augsburg communication studies professor, the MN UDL boasts a 100 percent on-time high school graduation rate and 99 percent college acceptance rate among its debaters. The Augsburg Promise Scholarship also offers incoming first-year students full tuition if they have debated for three or more years, have a GPA of at least 3.25 and an ACT score of 20 or more, and are eligible for a Pell Grant.

“Debate is really valuable to people. I have seen firsthand the impact it can have on kids,” Dasher says. “I wanted to help the kids in Minnesota, both in rural areas and in the Cities, have that same experience I have had and seen.”

Endowed by two doctors who met in medical school and want to include Augsburg University in their estate plan, the Rachel and Bruce A. Julian Scholarship will help yet another generation of chemistry majors follow their dreams.

Rachel Hendrickson Julian ’71 grew up in Clarkfield, a small southwestern Minnesota farming town where her father was the Lutheran minister and her mother an elementary school teacher. Both had attended Gustavus Adolphus College and valued education highly, although their finances could not cover college expenses for five children. Their oldest followed their footsteps, but the other four, including middle child Rachel, chose Augsburg for its more traditional values and culture.

Scholarship support was essential. A chemistry major, Rachel admired the school’s top ranking in that field as well as its excellent teachers. One of her favorite professors was Dr. John Holum, who taught chemistry from 1957 until his 1993 retirement and was known for his kindness and generosity as well as teaching excellence and commitment to service. He inspired many, including Rachel’s classmate, Peter Agre ’70, who later won a Nobel Prize in the field.

But Rachel soon found that one major was not enough. She added music.

“I wanted to go to medical school, but I also starting taking organ lessons. I had played piano since I was 6, and I fell in love with the organ. It was practical, too, since I could earn extra money playing on weekends,” she says. “I was very, very busy.”

Armed with her double major and again aided by scholarships, Rachel earned her M.D. at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “My med school preparation at Augsburg was very good. It not only helped me get in, but also prepared me to thrive in that environment,” she says. It was there that she met her husband, Bruce, an Indiana native with similar values and background.

“We have always been interested in education,” says Bruce, the grandson of a Methodist minister. “My father was an adjunct college professor, and although my mother did not complete college, she was a stickler for grammar and word choice. She used to cringe at newscasters.” He notes that Rachel’s siblings also “speak fondly and highly of Augsburg, which is literally in the shadow of the University of Minnesota. But any school with a Nobel winner must have something going for it.” In addition to Augsburg, the couple will donate to their medical school alma mater as well as Berea College, which serves Appalachia area students and is located near Lexington, Kentucky, where the Julians completed their medical training and practiced for several years.

Affiliated with the University of Alabama Birmingham since 1984, Bruce is a professor emeritus of medicine in nephrology and Rachel an assistant professor of psychiatry. They have four children and four grandchildren. Rachel is also an ordained Methodist minister who serves in the church-sponsored counseling center and still plays the organ, too, monthly at the local Lutheran church and yearly in a family recital that includes her older son on piano, her older daughter on organ, and one of their twins on French horn.

Rachel returns occasionally to Augsburg, such as in 2013, when she served on a science symposium panel. “The campus has changed a lot. Some of my old haunts, like the organ studio, are gone now. But I am amazed at the serious research the students are doing now, and doing very well,” she says, recalling her participation in summer research programs. “It goes way beyond anything we could have imagined. It really matters for something.”

And for a future chemistry student who needs financial help, the Rachel and Bruce A. Julian Scholarship will really matter, too.

After a lengthy career as an educator, Arlan Oftedahl ’64 has settled in Inman Park on Atlanta’s east side, where he lives comfortably in a century-old, Craftsman-style house. He recently planted 500 tulips in preparation for a springtime show of color in the historic district that he calls home. In another era, he might have become a landscape architect, but in this one, he is content to value beautiful surroundings, which is just one of the reasons he has chosen to donate to Augsburg University.

Oftedahl, who shares a common heritage with Augsburg’s third president, Sven Oftedal, has given serious thought to why he will include Augsburg in his estate plan. In addition to campus beautification, he cites his support for quality education and small liberal arts colleges as well as paying tribute to his Norwegian heritage.

“I grew up in northern Minnesota on land that my grandfather homesteaded in 1901. He emigrated from Norway in 1881, when he was 23 years old, and he lived right next to Augsburg,” says Oftedahl, who gleaned the street address from letters his grandfather mailed to relatives in Norway. Those letters were saved, and Oftedahl, having absorbed Norwegian while growing up on the family farm in Bagley, translated them. He is also a frequent visitor to his ancestral digs; he was there 2017 to celebrate Syttende Mai, Norway’s independence day.

“I have feelings for my Norwegian heritage,” he says, and his genealogical research shows that he indeed shares roots with Sven Oftedal, although his grandfather added an “h” to the spelling of their surname when he homesteaded in Clearwater County. Arlan Oftedahl was the second in his immediate family to attend Augsburg, accepting the encouragement and help of his cousin, Harlan Christianson ’57. Because his family lacked financial means, Oftedahl combined a part-time job with scholarship assistance to pay his own way through college, including rent in an older house he shared with fellow students. Thriftiness and hard work sufficed, and the experience was a fulfilling one.

“I got a very good education. Because it was a small campus, I got to know my professors. They invited me to their homes and encouraged me to make the most of my education and abilities,” he recalls. An English major, he earned a Master’s degree and taught at the University of New Orleans (then part of Louisiana State University) before shifting to special education and teaching in Fulton County, Georgia, for more than 20 years.

He enjoyed the sense of educational community that Augsburg provided and that he worries may vanish as small liberal arts colleges disappear.

“A small liberal arts college may not be for everyone, but for me, and for a lot of other people, it was a wonderful way to get an education,” he explains. “I experienced much personal growth because of that environment, and the teachers made a real effort to open my mind and make me think. I felt supported.”

As a donor, Oftedahl has designated a scholarship for an English major with a Norwegian background as well as a gift to endow Augsburg’s Urban Arboretum. A beautiful natural environment is part of the small liberal arts college experience, he contends. “Most of these colleges are in smaller towns, in an almost idyllic kind of setting. They are not just a collection of buildings,” he says. “Large trees and walkways between buildings are particularly important in a city. The real advantage of Augsburg’s location is that it owns land that could become a park-like setting, instead of just a campus crammed between high-rise buildings.”

While some students in Oftedahl’s time found the extremely conservative religious culture alienating, Augsburg has progressed in many ways since then, he adds. “It’s more in tune with the rest of society, even as its identity remains tied to the Lutheran church and Christianity, which will be around for a long time in one form or another,” he says. “My reasons for donating may be more rational than emotional, but I feel good about making a financial contribution to Augsburg’s future.”

When Augsburg sociology professor Tim Pippert circulated an email last spring inviting his students to apply for a research opportunity in the South Pacific, at least two of them thought of the trip as little more than a fantasy. Yet Briana Mitchell ’19 and Britta Andress ’19 applied anyway.

“It was very random for me,” Andress says about receiving that unsolicited email. But she was intrigued by the fact that whoever was chosen to go to Vanuatu, a nation comprised of about 80 islands that stretch 1,300 kilometers in the Pacific Ocean, could research whatever they wanted. She also knew she would have the whole summer to prepare.

“I was super pessimistic,” says Mitchell, who doubted she would be chosen because she was a “city girl, always doing city things. I’m not very outdoorsy. I’m a scaredy cat, and I’d heard there were spiders the size of dish plates. But when I got chosen and knew I was going with Britta, I figured she would take care of those spiders.”

Thanks to the Torstenson Scholars Program and the ongoing generosity of Mark Johnson ’75, a retired city planner and former president of Sonju Motors in Two Harbors, Minnesota, the two were about to embark on a life-changing, career-molding adventure. Since a chance encounter with the King of Tanna several years ago, Johnson has actively supported various initiatives on the island of Tanna, which was damaged by a cyclone in 2016. A solar project to supply electricity to the island’s 20,000 residents is currently underway.

Last September Mitchell and Andress, accompanied by Pippert and Johnson, flew nearly 30 hours to reach the island some call the “happiest place on earth.” For Mitchell, it conjured images of Jamaica, where her mother grew up. “When we got there, it had this paradise feel. Everything looked very good. The people were extremely happy, personable, and introduced themselves immediately.” As a black woman traveling abroad, she also noted, it was nice to be the one who fit in.

It wasn’t long, however, before the budding sociologists realized that solar lighting and happiness were not the topics that most interested them or their hosts. “Gender dynamics was a big issue. Behind this happiness were a lot of problems, so we decided to focus on the smaller ones and how they contributed to the larger ones,” Mitchell says. A female translator was secured so the island women could speak freely about their lifestyle and culture.

Life in Tanna is “drastically different. There is no agenda, and the pace is very laid back—they call it Tanna time. They don’t have an official economy and everything is free,” says Andress, describing a system known as cargo cult, where islanders depend on donations they believe will show up as needed.

The researchers conducted 26 interviews, exploring everything from medical care to food preparation to the ritual daily consumption of kava, a hallucinogenic beverage for men only. They questioned how solar lighting might impact women whose workdays were already long, and whether harsh, unsanitary childbirth conditions could be improved. They identified 13 themes in the study they will present at the Midwest Sociological Society conference in Chicago in April.

“Because of how fast it went and the amount of information we absorbed in those days, I now see everything through a more critical lens,” says Andress. Her experience has impacted how she interviews people, how she frames questions, and how she evaluates the research itself. “I see how vital it is, and I developed skills I knew I needed.”

Johnson understands completely. “I had the good fortune to participate in Joel Torstenson’s first Scandinavian Urban Studies term when I was a student at Augsburg. That experience was transformational, opening my eyes to a global context that has shaped my life,” says Johnson, who was named to Augsburg’s Board of Regents in 2018. “I’m interested in making sure that today’s Auggies have the same opportunities.”

“It was an amazing opportunity, and so kind of alumni to use their own time, effort, and funds to support students like me, who hadn’t done research or traveled abroad,” says Mitchell. Even simple things—like the gift of a six-foot-tall stick of sugar cane, which she hadn’t sampled since visiting Jamaica as a young teen—made the visit “a wonderful experience” that also prompted a closer connection with her mom. She hopes to return one day.

“It’s surreal that it even happened, and it’s something I will always reflect on,” she adds. “I was living my best life there. It feels like a dream, still.”

Nathan Schott ’13 spent only a short time on campus at Augsburg, but it was both active and memorable. The Maple Grove Senior High School graduate was an avid sports fan and Twins season ticket holder who wanted to major in English and become a sports writer. Because he also had muscular dystrophy and was confined to a wheelchair, one of his counselors recommended Augsburg for its ease and accessibility.

“We hadn’t heard too much about Augsburg, so we set up a tour. It was one of the first places we visited, and when we saw what sort of help Nathan would get, we thought this must be the place,” his mother, Teri, recalls. Augsburg’s CLASS (Center for Learning and Accessible Student Services) program is designed to help those students who need extra help, whether they are coping with autism, ADHD, mental illness, learning disabilities, or a chronic health condition like Nathan’s. The services are broad, ranging from securing appropriate accommodations to helping with time management, course selection, and any other challenges that might be better met with individual support.

“On a typical day, I drove him to school and dropped him off, then stayed on campus while he went to classes on his own,” Teri says. Nathan made friends. He used underground tunnels to get around. Helpers took notes in his classes and filed them where he could pick them up. The late “Pastor Dave” Wold took Nathan under his wing and made sure there was a parking space behind the church for the family car.

“It seemed like everyone wanted to assist him, and he felt like it was a good place to be,” says Nathan’s father, Chuck. “It wasn’t easy to go into that type of environment with that many students and be accepted for his disability, but he was very comfortable there. He was always eager to get to class in the morning, and he often went back at night for lectures and other functions. He enjoyed it.”

During spring break of his first year, however, Nathan, the oldest of the Schotts’ three children, contracted pneumonia, from which he never recovered. He died on April 1, 2010. His family received many sympathy notes from Nathan’s Augsburg friends and their parents. They grieved, but in their grief, they wanted to do more.

“We wanted to do something to honor Nathan and keep his memory alive,” says Teri. “My older sister, Mary Rose, actually got the ball rolling. We had planned a tour of Augsburg, and she set up a meeting with Doug Scott, Augsburg’s director of leadership gifts, without telling us.” After conferring with Scott, the Schotts decided to establish the Nathan R. Schott Scholarship Fund and donated the initial $25,000 to set it up. Since both Teri and Chuck are the youngest of seven siblings, reaching out to extended family for support made perfect sense.

“We are so pleased that the endowment has now gone over $100,000 and will continue to grow,” says Chuck. Designated for CLASS program participants, the scholarship fund has already helped eight students.

The couple, who moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee, two years ago, are grateful for the close connections they maintain with Augsburg. They named their new miniature dachshund puppy Auggie Doggie. They welcomed Scott for a visit to their new city. They have also attended past scholarship luncheons and met with some of the students they have helped.

“Hearing about past scholarship recipients and what they have achieved must give those students such a great feeling and sense of accomplishment,” Chuck notes. “For us as donors, it is so rewarding to learn of their successes. To be able to lessen their cost burden by providing financial aid means so much. We are very proud to be able to provide this scholarship to the students.”