Augsburg College alumna Caitlin (McDonald) Lietzau ’14 MSW was featured in the Lakeshore Weekly News as she joined the staff of Western Communities Action Network (WeCAN) in the role of food program coordinator. Lietzau is a licensed graduate social worker who received a master’s in social work with an emphasis on program development, policy, and administration. Learn more about her role in the story, “WeCAN has new addition.”
Bridget Robinson-Riegler answers WCCO ‘Good Question’
Professor Bridget Robinson-Riegler spoke with WCCO-TV about how humans recall their memories for the news station’s Good Question segment. Robinson-Riegler, who teaches in the College’s psychology department, explained to television viewers that its common for individuals to have mismemories. She commented that memories are not like tape recorders in that people replay them exactly as they happened. Instead, memories are reconstructed, so when the brain encodes memories, it encodes different pieces of different events.
“When we go to recall it, we piece together different aspects of events,” Robinson-Riegler said. “It’s not just the event that happened we’re trying to remember but other events similar to it.”
Watch “Good Question: How Do Our Memories Work?” to learn more.
Augsburg earns Carnegie Foundation’s Community Engagement Classification
Augsburg College has received its second Community Engagement Classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Institutions are recognized based on evidence of their collaboration with the larger community, which:
- enriches scholarship, research, and creative activity;
- enhances curriculum, teaching, and learning;
- prepares educated, engaged citizens;
- strengthens democratic values and civic responsibility;
- addresses critical societal issues; and
- contributes to the public good.
The Carnegie Foundation’s Classification for Community Engagement is an elective classification. Institutions participate voluntarily by submitting required material as part of an extensive application process. Those materials include but are not limited to a description of the nature and extent of the university’s engagement with the community — local or beyond — plus institutional commitment, its impact on students, staff, and faculty, and an assessment of initiatives geared toward community engagement.
About 8 percent of U.S. degree-granting institutions have earned the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification to date, and Augsburg was one of only eight Minnesota colleges or universities recognized in 2015. Augsburg previously received the Community Engagement Classification in 2008.
The New England Resource Center for Higher Education serves as Carnegie’s administrative partner, and additional information regarding the classification process is available on the NERCHE website.
Pinther and Grewe speak with MinnPost about gender transition
In a recent MinnPost story, Jens Pinther ’15 and Michael Grewe ’12 MSW described ways in which Augsburg College lives out its commitment to intentional diversity in its life and work.
Grewe, the College’s director of LGBTQIA Support Services and assistant director of Campus Activities and Orientation, described some of the ways in which he provides support to the LGBTQIA population on campus. Pinther described his experiences with gender transition and the ways his life has changed during his time at Augsburg — and place where he has found support and acceptance. Read, “Jens’ gender: A college senior works through his transformation” to learn more.
Tim Pippert shares expertise from study of community change in North Dakota
Tim Pippert, associate professor of sociology, was among the first sociologists to visit the Bakken oilfield region in western North Dakota and to research the social effects of the area’s rapid growth. Pippert contributed his expertise to a series of stories by the Forum News Service about sex trafficking in the Bakken, and the articles have been republished by media ranging from the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn., to the Daily Republic in Mitchell, S.D.
Star Tribune features Tom Driscoll ’07 MBA
Tom Driscoll ’07 MBA was featured in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune as one of the construction industry’s “Movers and Shakers” for his work as partner and vice president of business development at the Minneapolis office of the Utah-based Big-D Construction. Visit the Star Tribune website to learn more about Driscoll’s vocation and motivation for bringing Big-D to the Twin Cities.
Olivia Muyres ’15 named in Post-Bulletin’s local sports notebook
Olivia Muyres ’15 has been named National Soccer Coaches Association of America/Continental Tire Division III All-North Region.
Earlier Muyres had been named first-team all-conference in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. She was also named the league’s Player of the Year.
To read more about her achievements, visit the Post-Bulletin news site.
Sun Current features Michael Howard ’05 as he joins city council
Augsburg College alumnus Michael Howard ’05 is celebrating a busy January complete with the potential to become a city council member and a father on the same day. This month, Howard will be sworn in as the replacement for a Richfield (Minn.) City Council member, and this event coincides with the due date for his first child.
Star Tribune columnist catches up with Maximino Garcia-Marin ’14
College alumnus and artist Maximino Garcia-Marin ’14 was featured in a year-end recap column by the Star Tribune’s Gail Rosenblum, who first met Garcia-Marin as a result of his senior art exhibition. Rosenblum noted that Garcia-Marin’s senior project was “personal” and “powerful” featuring a wall of 4,900 stenciled blindfolded faces, each representing 3,000 undocumented immigrants. Read, “Rosenblum: Catching up with folks we met in 2014” to learn more.
Augsburg community shines in MPR’s favorite photos of 2014
As part of its year-end coverage, Minnesota Public Radio published a compilation of 45 favorite photos of 2014 — three of which featured the Augsburg College community. The story offered a glimpse into the people, places, and events that helped shape life in Minnesota in 2014, such as the College’s annual Powwow and the Tibetan New Year celebration with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama held in Augsburg’s Si Melby gymnasium. A photo of alumna Rebecca Stewart ’10 MSW also was featured and came from a story on the ways in which yoga can help students control their emotions. To see the images, visit the MPR website.