This section of the News and Media Services department site tracks stories in print and broadcast media that feature Auggie faculty, students, and staff. The area also is home to material developed for University-related programs, events, and more.
MinnPost recently published an article covering efforts by the City of St. Paul to more strictly enforce crosswalk laws and change a driving culture that places drivers and vehicles ahead of pedestrians. State crosswalk laws dictate that drivers should stop for pedestrians at every crosswalk, marked or unmarked, but drivers in the city rarely comply. This has led to fatalities and, more recently, sting operations designed to ticket drivers who fail to stop for pedestrians.
Lars Christiansen, associate professor of sociology and urban studies at Augsburg College, feels that the problem is larger, and less easily addressed, than simply ticketing individuals. “This isn’t about an individual flouting the law, it’s a very real feeling of pressure from motorists,” he said. “One feels the heat of the other cars around you as you’re moving, so to do something unusual [like stopping for a pedestrian] feels dangerous.”
The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently published an article about the life and career of Phil Adamo, professor of history at Augsburg College and 2015 Minnesota Professor of the Year.
The article focuses on Adamo’s engaging approach to teaching history and his personal history with academia. As a young man, he decided to forgo a college education in favor of a career as a clown with the Ringling Bros. Circus. Eventually, the constant demands of performance wore him down. “I was exhausted by performing so much, and I started to think that I wasn’t funny,” he said. “That’s a bad thing for a clown.”
Returning from the circus, he enrolled as a medieval studies major at Ohio State University, where a senior project involving a summer in a monastery led to an award-winning dissertation and propelled him toward a career in academia.
The article also depicts Adamo as an ardent supporter of having a liberal arts education, which he says “gives the benefit of having a better life, a more interesting life, a better understanding of who you are as a human.”
Read Augsburg professor left circus to bring history to life on the Star Tribune site.
Minnesota Public Radio included an interview with Augsburg College student Mohamud Mohamed ’19 in a recent article about a federal anti-terror program aimed at Somali youth and designed to counter terrorist efforts to radicalize young American Muslims.
While Mohamed respects the stated goals of the program, he disagrees with the approach the government has taken. “For sure, let’s have community programs, let’s have after-school programs, let’s have arts and all of these things, let’s promote these things,” he said. “But the way they’ve gone about it has been inherently disingenuous. … They never once approached Somali youth as a whole, they never called a meeting, or town hall.”
Other community members interviewed in the article oppose the program for its links with the Department of Justice and concerns over potential surveillance abuses the program may allow. Mohamud Nur, of the the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, disagrees. “It is to help the community find better opportunities. I’m confident that the people who are going to be seeking help will get the help that they are seeking,” he said.
Mohamed also has concerns about the alienating effect such a program can have on him and his peers. “I’m being pushed into the margin, as inherently violent, inherently extreme, someone that needs to be saved from their own devices. And that’s deeply troubling. And I can’t ever sign onto that,” he said.
Legendary Minnesota athlete and coach Stan Nelson ’43 will add another honor to his career, having earned the Bud Grant Distinguished Minnesotan Award from the National Football Foundation. The award, named after the former Minnesota Vikings coach, will be given at the ninth Minnesota Football Honors event April 17.
Nelson had a successful athletic career at Augsburg College, having earned letters in football, golf, baseball, and basketball. In 1942, he served as the football team captain and was named all-MIAC. After graduating from Augsburg, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota and began a career as a coach. He held coaching positions in Zumbrota, Farmington, and Anoka, where he coached for 26 years.
Read Award in honor of Bud Grant to go to Anoka legendary coach on the ABC Newspapers site.
MINNEAPOLIS — Patrice Salmeri, director of Augsburg College’s StepUP® Program for students in recovery and President of the Association of Recovery in Higher Education, is a national expert available to talk to media about President Barack Obama’s announcement to bolster medial services for persons in recovery from substance abuse disorders.
When: Salmeri is available until 6:30 p.m., beginning immediately following President Barack Obama’s announcement. (Watch President Obama on the White House live stream at 2:15 p.m. EST at https://www.whitehouse.gov/live.)
What: Salmeri can address the importance of eliminating stigma by:
Shifting language used to describe these disorders. For instance, rather than using the term “addiction,” shifting to “substance abuse disorders” to recognize that addiction is a medical issue.
Treating substance abuse disorders as medical issues, not unlike society responds to diabetes or other chronic medical illnesses.
Ensuring those with substance abuse disorders can access mental health and substance use services as readily as other medical services.
How:Call Stephanie Weiss, director of news and media services, at 612.330.1476.
Full Bio:Patrice Salmeri is the Director of the StepUP® Program at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the largest residential collegiate recovery programs in the nation. She also serves as the President of the Association of Recovery in Higher Education.
She is a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor, holds a Master’s Degree in Human Development specializing in leadership and spirituality, and also serves as an adjunct faculty member at Augsburg teaching courses related to chemical dependency. During Salmeri’s tenure as Director of StepUP, the program has experienced a 250 percent increase in the quantity of young people in recovery pursuing a college education.
In 2011, The U.S. Department of Education appointed Salmeri a Fellow for the United States Department of Education’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention. In 2013, The Association for Recovery in Higher Education presented Patrice with The Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to Collegiate Recovery.
Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Minnesota, recently published an article about Sisterhood Boutique, a secondhand clothing store in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis that serves as a hands-on entrepreneurial experience for young women in the area. The program, which offers four-month internships that help build and develop the business skills of young women aged 16-21, recently celebrated its second anniversary.
Included in the article was an interview with Yasameen Sajady ’11, an Augsburg College alumna who was hired as the social enterprise manager at Pillsbury United Communities, which owns the store and oversees the internship program as the business grows. The internships begin in the classroom, but quickly shift to the storefront. “In the first two weeks, we really hit hard on the skills that you would need to be successful,” Sajady said. “And then they’re put on the job.”
Read A ‘multilayered’ enterprise on the Minnesota Daily site.
Augsburg College alumnus Nic Thomley ’15 MBA was one of 22 entrepreneurs inducted as 2016 Harry Crown Fellows by the Aspen Institute, an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.
Over a two-year period, the fellows explore their leadership, core values, vision for a “Good Society,” and desired legacies by spending four weeks in structured retreat. They then put their learning into action with a new venture designed to stretch them and to have a positive impact on their communities, their country, or the world.
Thomley’s career began in 1999 when he founded Pinnacle Services to provide vocational, residential, and financial management services to seniors and people with disabilities. He was 19. Since then, he has gone on to form Morning Star Financial Services and Summit Fiscal Agency.
Harry Boyte, senior scholar in public work philosophy for the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship, shared in a recent Huffington Post article his experiences working with the Center’s namesake: the late Martin Olav Sabo ’59. Prior to the 2009 merging of the Sabo Center and Augsburg College’s Center for Democracy and Citizenship, Boyte had met Sabo while working for the Reinventing Citizenship initiative in 1993.
Boyte writes of Sabo’s reputation as a respectful, bipartisan advocate for democracy. He states that Sabo exemplified the values of Augsburg College “in extraordinary ways, believing in the positive role of government and also the need for a much bigger environment of civic interaction.” He further notes that “Martin was enthusiastic about our work to… create public discussions on the purpose and future of colleges and universities that can reframe what is now often a polarized and narrow debate.”
The Minnesota chapter of the National Football Foundation recently announced that it will award Missy Strauch, head athletic trainer at Augsburg College, with the Fred Zamberletti Award. The award, named after the famed Minnesota Vikings athletic trainer, will be given in recognition of Strauch’s decades of service across all levels of Minnesota athletics.
Strauch will receive the award at the NFF’s annual Minnesota Football Honors event on April 17.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Augsburg College President Paul Pribbenow participated in a high-level meeting with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., last week focused on highlighting successful strategies for increasing equity in college access and graduation rates for students eligible for the Federal Pell Grant Program.
One recent strategy deployed by Augsburg, in partnership with Minneapolis Community and Technical College and with Saint Paul College, is the Auggie Plan. The thoughtfully and carefully constructed Auggie Plan, which is customized to the student profile of each partner institution, creates a clear, attainable, predictable, and efficient path from an associate’s degree to a liberal arts degree. The Auggie Plan is slated to be in five community and technical colleges by 2017.
“As a college located in one of the most diverse ZIP codes in the region and with a traditional undergraduate population comprised of 40 percent Pell-eligible students, Augsburg is deeply familiar with the work that a commitment to inclusion entails,” Pribbenow said. “We also know how rewarding it is when we get it right — which, admittedly, is not every time and not as often as we’d like. But the fact that there is still work to be done in no way deters our commitment.
“At Augsburg, we do this work because it is both right and necessary. It’s right and necessary for students — enriching our learning community with questions and ideas from a vast array of bright minds. It is right and necessary for businesses and nonprofits — marshaling the talents and perspectives of all our people to address our region’s most pressing needs and opportunities. It is right and necessary for Minnesota as a state that offers a lifestyle we cherish and wish to sustain. “
U.S. President Barack Obama, since the beginning of his administration, has worked to ensure more U.S. residents have the opportunity to earn a quality, affordable higher education.
“For us to thrive as a diverse democracy and for individuals to achieve their dreams of success, higher education must fulfill its promise of providing opportunity to all students, regardless of their race, gender, or income level,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell.
“That opportunity means access, but getting into college is not enough. It’s getting in and getting through that matters. There are remarkable institutions around the country succeeding at making access and success a reality for low income students. We need to learn from their leadership and spread the word about practices that work.
Legendary Minnesota athlete and coach Stan Nelson ’43 will add another honor to his career, having earned the Bud Grant Distinguished Minnesotan Award from the National Football Foundation. The award, named after the former Minnesota Vikings coach, will be given at the ninth Minnesota Football Honors event April 17.
