Relationship Archives - News and Media

Two Auggies Win Prestigious Goldwater Scholarships

Posted on April 9, 2025

Two Augsburg undergraduate students, Ethiopia Kebede ’25 and Mitchel Munzing ’26, have been named 2025–26 Goldwater Scholars. The Goldwater Scholarship, one of the top undergraduate STEM awards in the country, recognizes outstanding students who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering.

Kebede, a physics major, aims to pursue a PhD in astrophysics with a focus in stellar physics and eventually teach at the undergraduate level. In addition to conducting space physics research at Augsburg with Professor Emeritus Mark Engebretson, she creates and shares free math videos via YouTube to address the shortage of STEM educators in remote places.

“One of my memories from grade school is rotating the handle of a generator in a physics lab,” said Kebede. “I remember feeling satisfied when the generator finally lit up the bulb attached to it. From then on, I enjoyed science as a clever way of solving problems. I am excited to pursue a lifelong career in the subject that I love—physics.”

Munzing, a biochemistry major, intends to pursue a PhD to continue research in organic and green chemistry. Outside of the classroom, he is a member and incoming captain of the Augsburg men’s soccer team, where he has been recognized with the Ed Saugestad Award for outstanding student-athlete.

“This past summer I had the opportunity to conduct research in an organic chemistry lab with Dr. Michael Wentzel,” said Munzing. “While at the start the experiments I ran didn’t go as planned, eventually I was able to synthesize biologically significant compounds. Spending the necessary time to [become an expert in a specific field] requires patience, but the reward of discovery makes it worth it.”

This year, Augsburg is one of Minnesota’s top producers of Goldwater Scholars. Applicants for the Goldwater Scholarship are nominated by faculty, sponsored by their academic institutions, and selected by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Kebede and Munzing were chosen from a pool of 1,350 applicants nationwide.

“To have two winners is really terrific,” said Professor Jacqueline deVries, who supports students through the application process as director of major grants and fellowships in Augsburg’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Graduate Opportunity (URGO). “The Goldwater Scholarship is one of the most prestigious scholarships an undergraduate can win in science, engineering, and mathematics.”

Learn more about the Goldwater Scholarship program.

Washington Post Highlights Augsburg’s Experience With Direct Admissions

Posted on March 6, 2025March 6, 2025

On March 6, The Washington Post featured Augsburg second-year Anna Miranda and Stephanie Ruckel, director of strategic enrollment management, in an article exploring the movement towards direct admissions across higher education. Augsburg moved to a direct admissions model as part of its Augsburg Applies to You initiative in 2022, and participates in the state Direct Admissions Minnesota program.

“Getting the [direct admissions] letter kind of knocked down a barrier,” Miranda said in the interview. “It made me feel more confident.” Ruckel noted that direct admissions can be particularly helpful to first-generation students, easing the fear of rejection and encouraging students to ask more probing questions about whether the school is a fit.

Read the full article via The Washington Post: “More state colleges are admitting students — before they apply”

Augsburg Students Chosen for National Interfaith Fellowship

Posted on March 5, 2025March 6, 2025

Augsburg students Theo Coval and Augusta Nepor Sowa traveled to Utah for the first annual gathering of the Interfaith BRAID (Bridgebuilders Relating Across Interfaith Differences) Fellowship at the end of February.

The BRAID Fellowship is an Interfaith America initiative designed in response to increasing prejudice and polarization. This program equips student fellows with skills, training, education, and experiences to collaborate effectively with communities close to home and across the country.

“It is so meaningful to have the opportunity to work with Interfaith America and meet so many passionate campus leaders,” said Coval. “It was a genuine honor to be included amongst the peers I met in Salt Lake City, and I am very excited to be working on a campus project as part of the fellowship.”

Coval and Sowa were selected from a national pool of applicants. The program is designed to help students become interfaith bridgebuilders on their campuses and in their communities. Najeeba Syeed, El-Hibri Endowed chair and executive director of the Interfaith Institute, serves as a BRAID Fellowship mentor and works closely with these students as well.

“Being part of this opportunity means stepping beyond conversation and into connection, where diversity isn’t just acknowledged but engaged with, where differences aren’t just tolerated but honored,” said Sowa. “It’s about choosing pluralism, embracing the richness of perspectives, and discovering unity in diversity. In a world where everyone wants to be heard, this experience has taught me the true power of listening with an open heart.”Learn more about the Interfaith Institute at Augsburg University.

Nia-Symonne Gayle’s Senior Capstone Featured by MPR News, Sahan Journal

Posted on February 12, 2025February 13, 2025

MPR News and Sahan Journal recently highlighted Nia-Symonne Gayle ’24 and her senior exhibition project “GOOD Hair,” currently displayed in the Christensen Gallery through February 19. Gayle graduated as an art and design major in December, and her capstone project recreates her childhood living room where her mom would do her hair—including TV, magazines, and hair products associated with the Afro-nostalgia Gayle incorporates into her work. She says this project “is a love letter to her mother and to Black people and Black culture. It’s a reminder that all hair is good hair.”

Read more about the project from MPR News or Sahan Journal and learn more about Augsburg’s Art & Design Senior Showcase Exhibition.

Augsburg’s Lindsay Starck Among Minnesota Book Award Finalists

Posted on February 3, 2025

Lindsay Starck has been named a Minnesota Book Award finalist for her second novel, “Monsters We Have Made.” Starck is an associate professor of English and director of Augsburg’s MFA program. Published by Vintage Books/Penguin Random House in March 2024, “Monsters We Have Made” is a poignant and evocative novel that explores the bounds of familial love, the high stakes of parenthood, and the tenuous divide between fiction and reality.

The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library organizes the annual Minnesota Book Awards to honor Minnesota writers, illustrators, and artists across 10 different categories. The 2025 Minnesota Book Award winners will be announced on April 22, 2025.

Learn more about Lindsay Starck’s work and “Monsters We Have Made.”

Congratulations to Auggies Named to the 2024 Fall Semester Dean’s List

Posted on January 23, 2025

More than 1,000 Augsburg University undergraduate students were named to the 2024 Fall Semester Dean’s List. The Augsburg University Dean’s List recognizes those full-time students who have achieved a grade point average of 3.50 or higher and those part-time students who have achieved a grade point average of 3.75 or higher in a given term.

View the 2024 Fall Semester Dean’s List.

Students who wish to notify their hometown newspapers of their achievement can do so at their discretion using a news announcement template.

Augsburg Builds Pipeline of School Social Workers and Counselors

Posted on January 21, 2025

Amid an urgent need for more support personnel in K-12 schools, Augsburg University is piloting a new program to train the next generation of school social workers and school-based therapists.

“Lots of social work students want to work in education,” says Associate Professor Erin Sugrue, who chairs Augsburg’s social work department. But the requirement to complete at least one year-long internship in a school setting creates a structural hurdle for students who can’t afford to spend a year or more in an unpaid position. As a result, many internship placements in public schools go unfilled each year.

Augsburg’s new program, developed by Sugrue and led by Assistant Professor Christopher Thyberg, aims to support a cohort of students through the critical internship year and ultimately into careers in education. In its first year, 28 undergraduate and master’s social work students are interning as school social workers and school-based mental health providers. Participants receive a monthly living stipend and reimbursement for transportation and licensure expenses thanks to state grant funding.

In addition to financial support, the students gather multiple times a semester to build community and explore key issue areas in education. These sessions have tapped into the expertise of faculty colleagues in Augsburg’s education department, delving into topics like multilingual learners with Assistant Professor Yacoub Aljaffery and special education with Assistant Professor Sergio Madrid-Aranda during the fall semester. Sugrue hopes that this collaboration will lead to more formal partnerships between the education and social work programs in the future, including co-listed classes.

Augsburg participants in the initial cohort are completing internships in K–12 school districts throughout the metro area, including Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Robbinsdale, Rosemount–Apple Valley–Eagan, Champlin, Brooklyn Park, Anoka–Hennepin, Spring Lake Park, Hopkins, Columbia Heights, and charter schools. After graduation, they will be prepared to pursue careers as either school social workers or school-based mental health providers. Both play a key role in supporting students in K-12 settings.

“School social workers serve as the link between family, home, and school,” said Sugrue, who spent more than a decade as a school social worker herself. “They are concerned with students’ overall emotional, psychological, and social well-being.” Typically employees of the school district, school social workers triage many different issues that may arise in a day, including attendance, conflict resolution, and substance use.

School-based mental health providers focus more specifically on students’ mental health concerns. While they deliver counseling and other therapeutic services on-site at school, they are often employed by an outside agency and can bill insurance.

To date, Augsburg has received $411,000 to develop the new cohort model from the state Student Support Personnel Workforce Pipeline grant program, administered by the Minnesota Department of Education. The grant program aims to support students in completing accredited programs and becoming licensed school psychologists, school nurses, school counselors, and school social workers, and to increase the number of student support personnel providers who identify as people of color or Indigenous. A separate $125,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development supports students in the program with a specific interest in becoming school-based mental health providers.

Learn more about Augsburg’s Master of Social Work and Bachelor of Social Work programs.

Professor Najeeba Syeed Highlights Interfaith Collaboration Following L.A. Fires

Posted on January 13, 2025January 21, 2025

Najeeba Syeed, El-Hibri Endowed Chair and executive director of the Interfaith Institute at Augsburg University, was interviewed by national media about the devastating fires in Southern California, which have destroyed at least a dozen houses of worship in the Los Angeles area.

In a January 11 interview with Religion News Service, Syeed called attention to the long history of interfaith cooperation in Altadena, CA, where religious leaders have banded together to support victims of the fires even as they mourn the loss of sacred spaces.

“They’re helping their own communities, but they’re also stepping up and stepping beyond and helping each other,” she said. “That’s part of the story—faith communities, even when they are damaged, still show up for the broader community.”

Religion News Service published a January 16 column by Syeed highlighting the ways that local youth have led volunteer recovery efforts across faiths, ethnicities, and languages. “[Our teens’] continued service and their steady moral compass make me excited to see the world they will run,” she wrote. “A world in which we don’t need a litmus test on your beliefs before we offer care, where your story is important to share no matter which income bracket you come from. A world in which the measure of our humanity is how much we show up for each other with an embodied empathy that asks, “What do you need, dear friend, who I may not know? Let me be there for you.””

Syeed was also interviewed for a January 17 Sojourners article about calls from local leaders to focus on equity and justice in rebuilding. In it, she lifted up the long-standing interfaith connections in Pasadena and Altadena. “People knew each other in the neighborhood and worked together before the fires,” she said. “What you’re seeing now is an outpouring of those relationships.”

Entrepreneurship Students Compete for Cash Prizes in Auggie Cup

Posted on January 2, 2025January 2, 2025

On a chilly December afternoon, 14 business and graphic design students brought the heat in Augsburg’s signature entrepreneurship challenge.

At stake? Reputation, impact, connections—and $30,000 in cash prizes.

The second annual Augsburg Entrepreneurship Cup—better known on campus as the Auggie Cup—engaged three teams of students in a “Shark Tank”-style competition judged by local business leaders. Their challenge was to design and pitch a business and marketing plan for a promising new industrial or medical technology.

“One of our basic tenets at Augsburg is that experiential learning leads to critical thinking skills,” said George Dierberger, the Thomas ’72 and Karen Howe Professor for Entrepreneurship and chair of Augsburg’s business administration and economics department. “That’s what the Auggie Cup is all about.”

Each team of three or four undergraduates was led by an MBA student coach and assigned to a startup firm with a product on the cusp of commercialization. Ideas were solicited from BETA, a nonprofit early stage accelerator for Minnesota-based technology startups, as well as Augsburg’s Business Advisory Council. This year’s projects included AcQtrac’s non-invasive device to monitor cardiovascular health among pediatric patients, SmartAuger’s portable ground-penetrating radar system, and CorRen Medical’s proprietary ultrasound technology to detect and treat peripheral artery disease.

Over the course of the fall semester, three teams developed and refined a plan to pitch their products to investors, culminating in a competition on December 6. Members of the Business Advisory Council judged each hour-long presentation on the students’ assessment of the market opportunity and competitive environment, the marketing plan and original graphic arts elements, a rigorous financial analysis, and the overall quality of the presentation. More than 120 guests—business leaders, alumni, students’ families, and Augsburg faculty and staff—attended the evening reception and awards ceremony.

The AcQtrac Medical team placed first, with students Jim Schewe, Salma Gelle, Adela Leville, and Kat Chaney sharing a $15,000 prize. The SmartAuger team of Luke Peters, Jakob Mohrlok, Manny Weiss, Nolan Mehle, and Destiny Azonwu won the $10,000 second prize, and the CorRen Medical team of Patrick McMonagle, Danny Ho, Char Waver, Pachia Vang, and Anthonella Laurens took third place and $5,000. The cash prizes were made possible by generous supporters of Augsburg’s business, innovation, and entrepreneurship programs, including Mike Nathan and Sara Armstrong, Tom ’72 and Karen Howe, Big Stone Capital Group, Modulate Capital, Bill Urseth ’71, and Blaze Credit Union.

“This year’s Auggie Cup was an incredible event full of synergy and teamwork,” said Dierberger. “Our MBA, undergrad business, and graphic design students all did a stellar job at presenting their ideas to the panel of judges and we are grateful they could be rewarded in a real way for their significant efforts.”

While the Auggie Cup is targeted towards business, entrepreneurship, and graphic design students, plans are underway for a campus-wide competition this spring. Students from any academic discipline will be invited to deliver a 2–3 minute pitch, with the potential for the winning ideas to become full Auggie Cup projects next fall.