Paul Pribbenow, the 10th president of Augsburg University, a private liberal arts university associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and located in Minneapolis, is recognized as one of the country’s most engaging commentators and teachers on ethics, philanthropy, and American public life.
Since joining Augsburg in 2006, Pribbenow has enhanced the university’s role as an active community partner in its urban setting. By identifying and embracing initiatives that mutually benefit Augsburg and its neighbors, the university has achieved national recognition for its excellence in service learning and experiential education. Pribbenow also has become a leader among the 27 colleges and universities of the ELCA, helping to articulate the gifts shaping and supporting Lutheran higher education in the 21st century.
Under his leadership, Augsburg has changed its name from Augsburg College to Augsburg University, recognizing its expansive academic mission serving undergraduate and graduate students on campus and at locations around the world. Augsburg’s Board of Regents was awarded the 2017 John W. Nason Award for Board Leadership for efforts including initiating an inclusive, five-year strategic planning effort and leading the institution’s then largest-ever capital campaign. Pribbenow has played a key role in Augsburg’s most successful capital campaigns, including raising more than $55 million to construct the Norman and Evangeline Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion, which opened in January 2018; raising almost $130 million in the Great Returns campaign for endowment and other strategic priorities; and seeking more than $25 million in the current Promising Futures campaign for Augsburg’s academic innovation initiatives and public programs.
In 2019, Pribbenow led Augsburg University in the development of a new strategic plan, Augsburg150, that anchors the institution’s priorities and initiatives. Furthering the university’s top priorities, Augsburg150 is focused on three key areas: strengthening Augsburg’s three-dimensional education (educating students to make a living, make a life, and build community), advancing the public purposes of an Augsburg education, and growing as a sustainable university.
Pribbenow serves on the national boards of the Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) and Campus Compact. He is also active in the Anchor Institutions Task Force. Locally, he chairs the Cedar-Riverside Partnership and serves on the executive committee of the Minnesota Private College Council. In January 2025, he was elected as chair of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities.
Pribbenow was honored to be named the 2019 Outstanding Fundraising Professional by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. The award recognizes effective, creative, and stimulating fundraising leadership as well as the practice and promotion of ethical fundraising.
Pribbenow received the William Burke Award for Presidential Leadership in Experiential Education from the National Society for Experiential Education in 2012. He was named a McCormick Presidential Civic Leader Fellow for 2003–04 and 2005–06. And, under Pribbenow’s leadership, Augsburg University became the first higher education institution in Minnesota to earn the prestigious Presidential Award for Community Service, the highest honor possible for service work.
Before coming to Augsburg, Pribbenow served as president of Rockford College (now Rockford University) in Rockford, Illinois. He also has served as a research fellow for the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College (Indiana), dean for College Advancement and secretary of the Board of Trustees at Wabash College, vice president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and associate dean of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.
Pribbenow holds a bachelor’s degree (1978) from Luther College (Iowa) and a master’s degree (1979) and doctorate (1993) in social ethics from the University of Chicago. He received the Distinguished Service Award at Luther College in 2008. He received an Honorary Fellowship from United International College in Zhuhai, China, in 2015.
Pribbenow is the author of numerous articles on philanthropy, ethics, and not-for-profit management. He is the co-author of Radical Roots: How One Professor Changed a University’s Legacy (Myers Education Press, 2023) and co-editor of Through Truth to Freedom: Reconciling a University’s Past, Present, and Future (Myers Education Press, 2024). He publishes a bimonthly email newsletter titled, “Notes for the Reflective Practitioner.”
Pribbenow lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Abigail Crampton Pribbenow. They have two adult children, Thomas (24) and Maya (21).