Lillie News recently reported that Koua Yang ’99, a human geography and Asian American studies teacher at Harding Senior High School in St. Paul, is one of 114 candidates for Education Minnesota’s 2016 Teacher of the Year Award. The award is one of the most prestigious given to educators in Minnesota and will be awarded May 15.
“I am very, very much humbled by the candidacy,” said Yang. “There are so many great teachers.”
The full list of nominees was published by the Star Tribune. Fellow Auggies Julie Swanson ’85 and Aaron Olson ’11 also have been nominated for the award.
Read Two East Side teachers are candidates for Teacher of the Year on the Lillie News site.
(SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA) — Augsburg College History Department faculty members Kirsten Delegard and Michael Lansing were presented the Alice Smith Prize for best public history project completed in the previous calendar year by the Midwestern History Association.
The Historyapolis Project (historyapolis.com and facebook.com/TheHistoryapolisProject) was created when Delegard, a current scholar-in-residence at Augsburg College, realized that her hometown of Minneapolis was blind to its own tumultuous history, more comfortable planning for the future than confronting the past. Augsburg students are deeply involved with the project, which aims to make the city’s history accessible and helps catalyze community dialogue around challenging aspects of local history.
Delegard holds a doctorate in history from Duke University and is the author of “Battling Miss Bolsheviki: The Origins of Female Conservatism in the United States” (Penn, 2012). Delegard was also the co-editor, with Nancy A. Hewitt, for the two-volume textbook “Women, Families and Communities: Readings in American History“ (Longman Publishing, 2008). As part of the Historyapolis Project, Delegard is at work on a new history of Minneapolis, which is tentatively titled “City of Light and Darkness: The Making of a Progressive Metropolis in Minneapolis.”
$20 million NSF grant goes to UW-Madison, Augsburg College
and collaborators
Z. Vivian Feng, associate professor of chemistry, will use her expertise as an analytical and material chemist in the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology.
Augsburg College is joining a research group tasked with exploring the benefits and potential risks of nanotechnology.
Augsburg has been added as a partner to the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, a multi-institutional research center based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Supported through a nearly $20 million award of National Science Foundation funding over the next five years, the CSN includes 15 innovative faculty members from research institutions across the United States.
Z. Vivian Feng, associate professor of chemistry, is leading Augsburg’s participation in the center.
Nanotechnology involves the use of materials at the smallest scale, including the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules.
Products that use nanoscale materials range from beer bottles and car wax to solar cells and electric and hybrid car batteries. If you read your books on a Kindle, a semiconducting material manufactured at the nanoscale underpins the high-resolution screen.
While there are already hundreds of products that use nanomaterials in various ways, much remains unknown about how these modern materials and the tiny particles they are composed of interact with the environment and living things.
Feng first became involved in the CSN during the final year of its first grant phase, which corresponded with her 2014-15 sabbatical. Her expertise in characterizations of nanomaterials and model membranes, as well as analytical method development will contribute to the understanding of various interactions at the highly complex nano-bio interfaces.
In particular, Feng will lead a team of undergraduate researchers in exploring the various toxicity mechanisms of nanomaterials to environmentally-beneficial bacteria to provide insight to redesign nanomaterials that are benign in the environment. Under Feng’s direction, Augsburg College students Hilena Frew ’17, Lyle Nyberg ’17, and Thu Nguyen ’16 contributed to the CSN’s initial research phase. Frew and Nguyen will continue working as undergraduate researchers with the support of a stipend from the new NSF grant in the coming year. Find additional information about Feng’s research interests and mentorship on her research site.
Along with UW-Madison and Augsburg, research partners on the grant include the University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois, Northwestern University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Tuskegee University, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Iowa, and Georgia Tech.
CSN funding is provided by the NSF Division of Chemistry through the Centers for Chemical Innovation Program (CHE-1240151).
The International Special Events Society has elected Jodi Collen as its new international president for the 2015-16 year.
Collen, director of Event & Conference Planning at Augsburg, is a previous president of the International Special Events Society’s Minneapolis-St. Paul chapter and has been a member of the International Board of Governors for the past five years. She was inaugurated at the association’s Annual General Meeting, which took place in New Orleans.
Collen’s achievement was recognized by the following organizations:
Augsburg College President Paul C. Pribbenow was named the 2015 Outstanding Professional Fundraiser in the National Philanthropy Day Awards presented by the Minnesota chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Pribbenow will be honored at a National Philanthropy Day event held November 20.
UIC President Prof. Ng Ching-Fai shakes hands with Augsburg College President Paul C. Pribbenow at UIC’s commencement ceremonies and following conferring an honorary fellowship on Pribbenow.
Augsburg College President Paul C. Pribbenow was conferred an honorary fellowship at the 7th graduation ceremony of United International College in Zhuhai, China.
UIC Dean and Prof. M.H. Sung, in conferring the fellowship, the equivalent of an honorary degree in the United States, said the award is “in recognition of Dr. Paul C. Pribbenow‘s outstanding accomplishments in promoting liberal arts education and social ethics as well as in appreciation of his support for UIC.”
Augsburg and several other members of the Minnesota Private College Council have been partners with UIC since its founding 10 years ago as the first liberal arts college in mainland China.
Todd Lange ’92 was mentioned in the Albert Lea Tribune as a result of receiving the Albert Lea High School 2015 Teacher of the Year Award.
Lange, who has taught English in the southern-Minnesota school district for 18 years, also heads the English department at Riverland Community College.
Lange holds a master’s degree in teaching from Minnesota State University, Mankato, a bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College, and a teaching license from Augsburg College and the University of Minnesota.
In mid-March, Augsburg College won its 12th NCAA Division III wrestling championship and took home a number of awards from the National Wrestling Coaches Association.
Head coach Jim Moulsoff was named Division III National Coach of the Year and Division III Rookie Coach of the Year. Tony Valek ’12 was named Assistant Coach of the Year, and Mike Fuenffinger ’15 won his second national title and the Outstanding Wrestler honor. Eric Hensel ’16 won Most Falls in Least Time, and Donny Longendyke ’15 earned his first national title.
Media coverage of Augsburg’s NCAA Championship win includes the following:
The Daily News – “Moulsoff puts Augsburg back on top”
KSTP – “Augsburg wrestling wins D-III Championship”
NCAA video recap – “Augsburg wins the 2015 DIII Wrestling Championship”
Star Tribune – “NCAA wrestling: St. Cloud State, Augsburg win national titles”
White Bear Press – “Longendyke pins down national title”
Jordan Independent – “Valek named DIII assistant wrestling coach of the year”
Whitney Restemayer ’10 was featured in the Bemidji Pioneer – a northern-Minnesota newspaper – due to her achievement as the first woman to coach a state hockey champion team in Minnesota.
As head coach, Restemayer led the Thief River Falls Prowlers to the state High School Girls Hockey Tournament Class A Championship and to defeat Blake high school 3-1. The accomplishment, Restemayer affirms, will be the first of many to come.
“I know I’m the first to win, but I enjoy knowing that I won’t be the last,” Restemayer said in an interview.
Restemayer holds a bachelor’s degree in health education from Augsburg College. To learn more about Restemayer and her team, visit the Bemidji Pioneer news site.
Curt Rice ’84 was appointed the new rector of the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, the largest institution of its kind in Norway.
“I’ll work to assure that our institution makes its mark both nationally and internationally. And together we will achieve our goal of becoming a university,” Rice said in an interview.
Rice, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Augsburg and a PhD in general linguistics from the University of Texas, currently leads the Committee on Gender Balance and Diversity in Research and is the Board Head of Current Research Information System in Norway.
Lillie News recently reported that Koua Yang ’99, a human geography and Asian American studies teacher at Harding Senior High School in St. Paul, is one of 114 candidates for Education Minnesota’s 2016 Teacher of the Year Award. The award is one of the most prestigious given to educators in Minnesota and will be awarded May 15.
Augsburg College President Paul C. Pribbenow was named the 2015 Outstanding Professional Fundraiser in the National Philanthropy Day Awards presented by the Minnesota chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Pribbenow will be honored at a National Philanthropy Day event held November 20.
