The Augsburg Podcast

Barclay Bates, Augsburg alumn and former intern (now employee) at Midco, has learned what separates leaders from managers. His years as captain of the Augsburg football team as well as intern and career positions at Midco have given him deep insight into what it takes to do great work with a happy, fulfilled, motivated team (be they athletic, academic, or corporate). His mentors in athletics, Augsburg economics, and Midco’s upper leadership have taught him many critical lessons that he pays forward every day. Barclay Bates: I think anytime you have the ability to positively influence a group of people, you have to take full advantage of that and you have to really understand the impact that you're having and the amount of responsibility that comes with that. I certainly don't take that responsibility lightly. It's something that I try to really think through before I make any decisions that could possibly impact the team. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University. It's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast. Today, we speak with Barclay Bates, international business and management major and an Augsburg alum, class of 2018, now an associate in a leadership development program at Midco. We speak also with his family and several of his professional and academic mentors about his path of discovery at Augsburg and beyond. Barclay Bates: I did pretty much all of my growing up in Sauk Rapids-Rice, Minnesota. I went to Sauk Rapids-Rice High School, was actually born in the Metro area, and I know when I was very young, lived with my folks here, but all of my young memories are in Sauk Rapids. I went to a private Lutheran school for elementary school up until sixth grade and then spent my middle school years at Sauk Rapids-Rice Middle School. Barclay Bates: I had a really great childhood, a fantastic family. I have one little brother and very supportive parents, so I think I had a really good childhood and growing up in Sauk Rapids was good and I had a lot of good friends, was very involved in sports. Barclay Bates: I learned about Augsburg, actually, because there was a guy I played football with who was a few years older than me that I knew at the time went to Augsburg, didn't know much about the school, had never really heard of it until I knew that he went here. It was a little bit on my radar as a potential place to come play football. If I was going to play D3 ball, I wanted to play in the MIAC, the Minnesota D3 conference here, one of two. Barclay Bates: I took a tour my junior year. I loved the location. I wanted to be in a city. I wanted to be someplace different than the place I grew up. Minneapolis is very different than Sauk Rapids, Minnesota. That was a big piece of the draw for me. I knew I would have the ability to come play right away, which was important from an athletic perspective. Barclay Bates: I had done some international travel right after high school and really had an interest in studying culture and studying something that was broader than just the US or wanted to study something that would have an international aspect. Augsburg had an international business major, so that was part of what drew me here as well. All of those things combined just seem to be a good fit for me. Cheri Bates: We drove onto campus and we were in the parking lot behind one of the dorms and we literally opened the doors to the car, got out, shut the door. I looked at Barclay, he was about 10 feet in front of us and I looked at Dan and I said, "This is it." Catherine Day: This is Cheri Bates, Barclay's mother, speaking to us from Sauk Rapids, Minnesota. Cheri Bates: I don't know how many schools we had looked at, but I knew immediately that he loved Augsburg before we even basically walked out of the parking lot. I do believe that he was drawn to the big city, the inner city being almost downtown Minneapolis with such a small, very diverse, wonderful campus that was to me, as a mom, seemed very warm and opening. He really, really liked the football program, to be honest. I mean, that really attracted him. Dan Bates: I remember when we walked out of the Oren Gateway on the Riverside. We turned left and you could see the new US Bank Stadium being built when he started. I think it just hit him. I know it hit us. We were like, "Oh, yeah, this is it," like Cheri said. Catherine Day: This is Dan Bates, Barclay's father, joining us long distance from a business trip in the Philippines. Dan Bates: I think it was almost the antithesis of Sauk Rapids where he grew up. It was the diversity, every shape, size, color of human was wonderful to see. The urban setting, I think, is really what put them over the top. Dan Bates: Like Cheri said, there were a lot of schools that were talking to him about football and some of them larger, some of them with bigger programs. Literally, I think he just walked on the campus and felt it. Cheri Bates: The beauty and the uniqueness of Augsburg, especially for our family, was the diversity, not just multi-cultural, but all of the different wonderful, amazing people that you can encounter that are just from such different realms of life all across the board is so accepting, also with the Christian base, having the chapel and that aspect of it, too. Cheri Bates: I know that when Barclay was going to football, I know for sure his freshmen, sophomore year they would go over to the assistant coaches' church and go to church on Sundays. I just thought that was really cool that there was that opportunity there and then to have that home base of a small community right in the heart of Minneapolis. I mean, how can you go wrong? Such an amazing education. I mean, small classes, caring professors, the professors that worked with him. I honestly can't say enough good things about Augsburg. Barclay Bates: I grew up in a predominantly white community. Being a black person in an entirely white family was... it's an interesting position to be in. I think you grow up with the same identity as the people you're surrounded by, so growing up, I didn't have so much of a sense of not fitting in because I think culturally, everything was the same. Barclay Bates: What I did find was just an interesting sense of confusion maybe as to why occasionally there may be a joke thrown my way that was offensive and my friends didn't understand why it was offensive or... There were minor things like that, but it felt, I think, more confusing than exclusive, maybe. Barclay Bates: That was what that was like growing up. Then moving to Minneapolis for school was, I think, pretty eyeopening. I hadn't spent a ton of time here. I hadn't spent a ton of time in urban, more diverse environments. Augsburg being a very diverse environment, all of those things went away and that confusion went away and those little jokes and things went away. Barclay Bates: It was interesting to now be in an environment where there wasn't that piece there. I think it was a really attractive part about moving to the city and going to school at Augsburg was the fact that there would be this melting pot of people that I'm surrounded with all the time. Dan Bates: Both our boys, whether you're African American or whether you're Caucasian, our expectation as parents was always to hold yourself to a higher expectation than everybody else. I think it drove them and it certainly, I think, drove Barclay because he knew that he had that viewpoint. Dan Bates: I remember there were times in high school where he could tell if a teacher wasn't treating him fairly or if someone in the community was treating him differently. He equated that to a fairness thing. Sometimes we talked about, "Hey, that could be fairness or it could be something else. It could be a bias that someone else has." Dan Bates: Even now, we see it as a young adult. His drive and his passion to succeed, whether it's football, basketball, whether it's academically, whether it's in college, whether it's as a captain or now, whether it's a young adult starting his first career, that drive is something that a lot of people didn't understand. I think because he had that viewpoint or he had that experience, it almost drove him more. Jeanne Boeh: Students sometimes have a little extra to them. Barclay was always one who had something a little extra. Now, you have to remember that I teach principles of economics classes, which many students find to be incredibly boring. Barclay probably did, too, but he always did his best. There was just something about him that caught my eye. He has a very sunny effect, he's very personable, and he's quite smart. I just always noticed Barclay. Catherine Day: This is Jeanne Boeh, Sundquist Endowed Chair of Business Administration and professor of economics. Jeanne Boeh: Some students have a quiet confidence about them and I think that he does. Barclay was a student you wanted to help you because he was such a good person and such a great person, a great student in class. You just wanted to work with him. I just knew that I could put Barclay in a group and it would go well. If I had students who were particularly struggling, somehow they ended up in his group. Jeanne Boeh: The Business Department likes to say that we prepare people for practice. We're actually a very large part of Augsburg at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. We're providing over 40% of all the credit hours. Of course, we don't want to prepare students for practice in a bad way. We want our students to be ethical, responsible leaders, so we spend time on that in every class. Jeanne Boeh: We also want them prepared to step into the global market, so one of our core courses that we've added the last couple of years is Global Business. We want students to think about not just the city of Minneapolis, not just the state of Minnesota, but how do they take their place in the world. We want to prepare our students to work with diverse populations in a variety of ways so that wherever they go, they're able to take their place. Barclay Bates: Augsburg does take a more cultural approach to teaching business, especially when studying international business. You spend a lot of time learning about the importance of culture and business and how that changes when you leave the country and specifically the examples or case studies you run through have to do with people in the US going somewhere else and having a deal or some sort of partnership fall apart due to a lack of understanding culture. Barclay Bates: Culture was a big part of me wanting to study business here. I think I was more interested in learning about how culture can make or break an international business deal or how culture plays into international business. Barclay Bates: The culture of the Business Department here, I think is, it's great. We have a ton of really impressive professors here that are really fantastic and do a really great job. They really do embody the traditions of a liberal arts education, so it's not a B school. It's a bit less tactical than that, but you're still getting the skills you need to be able to succeed in the business world as well as a good, well-rounded approach to the knowledge you need to succeed in the business world. Catherine Day: A significant opportunity for Barclay to put his study of business into real-world practice was right around the corner. Barclay Bates: Midco is a telecommunications company, so internet, video, phone services for business and residential customers. Midco sponsors a scholarship program at Augsburg. My junior year would have been the first year they did this program. I saw emails coming through my inbox about this new Midco's scholar program and was interested. Barclay Bates: Knowing that it was new and that it was specifically for business students and even more specifically for underrepresented business students, I was interested and thought I had a good shot to get the scholarship, so I applied and got an interview. Barclay Bates: It actually turned out I interviewed with who is now my current boss, Ben Dold at Midco and Patti Hawkey, the Director of Talent Acquisition at Midco, two people who would have a pretty substantial impact on my future career path post-internship. Had a really great interview and was able to start what became a good relationship with those two. Barclay Bates: Through that process, ended up with the scholarship, was told about some interesting internship opportunities at Midco, did a little more research on my own, applied for the one I thought was potentially the best fit as well as some other internships at other companies. Barclay Bates: Ended up settling on the internship opportunity at Midco. I thought it would be interesting. The internship was located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, so I thought it would be interesting to take an internship in a different city and in a place I hadn't spent much time at all. Barclay Bates: I ended up taking the internship in supply chain and worked the summer in South Dakota and really had a great time, was able to have some impact, and worked with a really great team there in supply chain and procurement. That led to some further career opportunities down the road. Ben Dold: Quickly in the interview process, Patti and I quick realized, "Okay, not only is this someone that's a great candidate for the scholarship, but this would sure be a great person to bring onto the Midco team," first in that capacity as intern, but we could see that there could be a bright future there ahead. Catherine Day: This is Ben Dold, Vice President of Central Operations at Midco, Barclay's current supervisor. Ben Dold: Quickly we could tell that he was a really sharp guy, really understood where he wanted to go in his career, was really thoughtful in his application for the scholarship and his response to our questions. Ben Dold: In his current rotation, he's leading a frontline team of folks that are really operational in nature, very process and task-driven. He's working with a manager that had been leading that team and will continue to do as he rotates out. They've really worked well as co-managers. Ben Dold: He's just talked about how you can have team members that are very proficient in the tasks that they do, but how do you motivate them to continue to want to grow and change and develop. That's something where he really articulated where he's trying to understand personally what does motivate each of the team members and acknowledging the fact that yes, they are very proficient in the task that they're currently doing, but how do we continue to grow in their skills and their development so that when change comes that they're best prepared to handle that. Ben Dold: That can be a difficult conversation with a team member when you're saying, "You know what? Yes, you're doing a great job, but I need you to do something different or something more because change will come and as we grow." I think that's a great way that he's really applied that, to care for what is, while also motivating for what may be and what will come. Barclay Bates: I've always had a passion for leadership and have been in leadership positions mostly in sports throughout my entire life. Now, having the ability to be in leadership positions at work and being in a leadership development program and learn about leadership, leadership is incredibly important to any organization, right? Strong leaders will make or break everything else. You can have a strong strategy, you can have great implementation teams, you can have really great technically focus individual contributors, but if you don't have leaders with buy-in, they can dismantle the entire strategy or everything you're trying to build, right? Barclay Bates: I've always found that very curious and interesting and I think the impact that leaders have is important. It's something that I've thought a lot about for myself. As for my own personal leadership philosophy, I really try to lead by example, primarily. I think that has the highest level of impact. It makes leadership a bit more of a democracy, right? Barclay Bates: I think if you're trying to lead by example as opposed to managing a situation or trying to control a group of people, I think typically, you wind up with better results because it feels like you're, you're in it with the team, right? You're doing the thing alongside the team and I think that's, I've found, to be the most effective way to try to lead. Barclay Bates: Now, there are also, obviously, times and scenarios in which you have to be a manager, right, or you have to manage a situation or make difficult decisions that aren't as, maybe, democratic, but I think if you continue to lead by example, those decisions get easier. Catherine Day: Barclay has also derived leadership insight from other notable figures in the world of business and finance. Barclay Bates: Hank Paulson was the treasury secretary in 2008. He pushed the Troubled Asset Relief Program to Congress when the markets crashed in 2008. I think his ability to stay cool and calm and focused under what I can only imagine is the most intense pressure a person can feel in their job, the fate of the biggest economy in the world was effectively in his hands. Barclay Bates: I know that there's a lot of controversy and debate over whether or not some of the decisions made were right or wrong or good for the country or bad for the country and I'll certainly leave my opinions out on that front, but he's been a bit of an inspiration, I think. You see many businesspeople I think moving from the private sector to more of a public service role over time, so that may be something I'd be interested in further down the road. Pat McAderagh: Barclay, besides having a very agreeable personality, has been able to come in and have that agility to do different things we've asked. Catherine Day: This is Pat McAderagh, CEO of Midco. Pat McAderagh: In the summer program, he focused on supply chain and got really high marks from a supervisor. On the strength of that performance, we offered Barclay a full-time job upon graduation. He became our first-ever management rotational person, that undergrad that we brought into the company and spent two years putting him through different departments, rotating him through, which is just coming upon conclusion of that. So far, he's done well in everything he's done, so we're really impressed. Pat McAderagh: Yeah, I find that students coming out of the liberal arts typically have really good critical thinking skills. Another skillset that we really look for is the ability to articulate your ideas and thoughts well on paper in writing and orally also. Our experience is not 100% hit rate, but that the students coming up through a liberal arts education really are good at critical thinking, logic, use of logic, and their ability to communicate. Barclay Bates: Being ready to work in a culture that's maybe different than the one you went to school in, or just being ready to have to adapt to a new culture is an important skill that you learned at a liberal arts college, right? You develop this skill of being good with people and communicating differently to different groups of people. Those are all really valuable skills when working in an organization as well as collaboration, right? Going to school at a liberal arts college, you end up, there's a lot of group work there. That's what working in the in business is like, right? There's a lot of group projects going on and you have to be a good collaborator in order to be successful. Barclay Bates: I think those things really did prepare me pretty well for the business world and through my internships and in the work I'm doing now, I think I was pretty well-prepared. Those are the things that you'll hear time and time again are the hardest to teach, the intangibles, the EQ skills, people skills. If you know you want to go into business and if you can put yourself in an environment where you'll be able test those skills and build those muscles, you'll be just that much better off when you go to make the leap. Catherine Day: We've been hearing today from Barclay Bates, 2018 Augsburg alum and current associate at Midco. We've also been joined by Cheri and Dan Bates, Barclay's parents, Jeanne Boeh, Sundquist Endowed Chair of Business Administration and professor of economics at Augsburg, Ben Dold, Vice President of Central Operations at Medco, and Pat McAderagh, CEO of Midco. I'm Catherine Reid Day and this is the Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Hannah Dyson discovered a remarkable overlap in her theatre and history interests when interning at the MN Historical Society. Writing stories for MNopedia about fraudulent towns and journalistic assassinations, Hannah developed a passion for storytelling that connects past and present – and her Augsburg and historical society mentors have helped her focus her ambitions. Her storytelling explores justice and freedom of press both historically and in our own future. Hannah Dyson: History is about telling stories and theater is about telling stories. You look at these historic figures and you take them for what they are. And while you don't seek to condone or forgive actions that people have taken, you need to understand it. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast. Today we speak with Hannah Dyson, Augsburg class of 2020 about her discoveries in the overlapping worlds of history and theater. We discuss her internship with the Minnesota Historical Society, and speak with her and several of her academic and professional mentors about how the past can illuminate our present and future. Hannah Dyson: I was always interested in history. I don't think it clicked until my freshman year of college. I always was reading historical nonfiction and fiction books and my mom took me to the Alexander Ramsey House and the James J. Hill House in St. Paul, and I always loved going to that. I had one of my birthdays at, I think it's called Murphy's Landing, it's just a farm that recreates the historical past. Hannah Dyson: I was always fascinated with that but because I had been so active in theater, I always just assumed that that was the main thing that I wanted to do. I guess I never realized in my head that there was also this historical part of me and this interest in history. And so when I was in a class, an art history class, and I think that's what sparked the realization in my head that I could do something with this. Hannah Dyson: I had had it in my head that I wanted to do an internship at the Minnesota Historical Society once I started into the path of history at Augsburg. I assumed that it was too competitive for me, that I wasn't good enough, that I wouldn't be able to do it. And so every semester when I saw that they were posting or asking for interns to apply, I would never apply. I would always stay away from it, just because I was afraid to do it. Hannah Dyson: I think it was last year around this time, maybe a little earlier, I was sitting down with my advisor Jackie DeVries. We were talking about internships and how I needed one because I was a junior, and I mentioned off hand the Minnesota Historical Society's internships. And she was like, "All right, we're going to apply." She didn't give me another option, she was like, "Here's what we need to do, we're going to go through these steps." And so she just was like, "We're going to do this," and I was like, "Okay," and we applied and I got it. Hannah Dyson: I was working with MNopedia, which is the Minnesota Historical Society's online encyclopedia about Minnesota history. I was assigned to the Place Names Project, which is based off this book that was published in the 1920s and has been revised since. It's all of the place names that ever existed in Minnesota, so post offices, towns, rivers, all of that good stuff. And I was assigned to try to find some of these lost place names. Linda Cameron: She's a super sleuth and I think the thrill of the hunt is part of what Hannah lives for. Catherine Day: This is Linda Cameron, Program Manager for the MNopedia Project at the Minnesota Historical Society, and Hannah's supervisor throughout her internship. Linda Cameron: She really had the enthusiasm, I think, that it takes, and the tenacity, to keep going. When she couldn't find it initially she just kept going until she did find something. And eventually we'd have to say, with all of our interns and volunteers, we eventually had to say, "Okay, you've done what you can. Let's just move on to the next one." But she was really good about making that choice herself and knowing when she reached the limit of her ability to find things and then move on. But she did find a number of really obscure locations for us, which was really helpful. Linda Cameron: She came in one day and she said, "You'll never guess what I found." And she found this incredible story about land speculation fraud. And because we try to give our place names interns an opportunity to write as well if they'd like to do that, to give them a more rounded experience with MNopedia, we asked her if she'd to write an article on land speculation. And she had trouble choosing just one example, so we had her write what we call a C-level, which is about a 1200 word article about land speculation in general for a specific period. And she chose the 1850s because that's when a lot of this stuff was happening. Hannah Dyson: I came across this old town called Lafayette and it was around for, it said, only 1857 that it was around. And through further research I discovered that this town, Lafayette, had never actually existed. It had been a scam done by this guy in order to collect money from people and then not actually provide them with what he was saying, lots for this town. And so I brought it to my supervisor, Linda, and I was like, "This is bizarre." What should I do about this? And she was like, "Oh, this is so fascinating." And then through further research, it became apparent that it wasn't just this one town, but it was an epidemic that took place in Minnesota between 1854 to 1857. And so that's how my final article, Land Speculation 1854 to 1857, came about. Linda Cameron: Hannah is also writing a magazine article for the Minnesota History Magazine for our suffrage issue, for fall of 2020. It's not very common for an undergraduate student to write for Minnesota History Magazine, but Hannah's abilities were pretty evident. And I think she really impressed both myself and Laura Weber, the editor for the magazine. She's writing an article, I think on the suffrage research that she did. We have a special suffrage issue that's coming out next fall. Hannah Dyson: It's about anti-suffrage, which is a group of women in Minnesota and beyond who opposed equal suffrage. I came across this particular and the opportunity came to me. I was working through the URGO department at Augsburg, which is undergraduate research over the summer, with Jackie DeVries. And we were at the Hennepin History Museum creating an exhibit about suffrage for the Centennial of suffrage being passed in the 19th amendment. And this topic of anti-suffrage came up and I was very interested in this because the women who opposed the vote, it seems so bizarre and weird to us today. And I wanted to understand that group of women. And so I took that and ran with that. Hannah Dyson: My opening sentence for my article is, "Lavinia Gilfillan, who was one of the anti-suffragists was a modern woman." The way that I conceptualize them is not that they were backwards, retrogressive women who didn't want what was best for women. I think it's easy to jump to the assumption that because they fought against the vote that that means that they were these disconnected society women who were clinging to past era's and not looking forward, not being modern. And that's just not the way that I perceive them. Hannah Dyson: I perceive them as women who are active in their communities and believed in women's education and believed in women in business. But really, they thought that the way that women could best improve society was through nonpartisan power. And certainly they had other arguments as well, and some were more conservative than others. But really, their main belief in Minnesota was that through nonpartisan power, through not being connected to politics, was how they could best improve society. Darcey Engen: Here at Augsburg, my closest colleagues are in the English department and the history department. Catherine Day: This is Darcey Engen, professor and chair in the theater department. Darcey Engen: When you think about historians and what they do is they create a landscape for you to investigate what people were thinking and feeling and doing historically. Theater does the exact same thing, but we have that little extra step of performing it at the end. But the investigation and the curiosity that is required to be a theater artist or a historian are very, very similar. It's about empathy, it's about curiosity. And it's about facts. Darcey Engen: For a student like Hannah and with this amazing internship that she's had, and these opportunities to publish. It's not surprising to me that she's accomplished these things. When she came into the theater department, she's just a vibrant and lovely and funny, good natured person. At the same time as she is deadly serious and on-task and organized. And that is an incredible combination because it's a person that in essence can play and imagine and empathize at the same time as they can organize and be an excellent writer and have all of those professional skills intact. Hannah Dyson: I absolutely got started in the storytelling path through theater. You get on stage and you embody a different person. And you're telling their story through their eyes and seeking to understand them even though they're very different from you and maybe have questionable motives and may be not be a good person. I played in The Crucible here at Augsburg, I played Deputy Governor Danforth who was the person who was leading the trials and going after these people who were innocent but who the character deems guilty and sentences people to death. But, in playing that character, I knew I couldn't play that character as a villain because that doesn't provide a complicated performance on my part. I had to seek to understand that character. Bill Green: She is a storyteller, very, very adept. Catherine Day: This is history professor Bill Green. Bill Green: I think the first time I worked with her in the classroom was when she had my Minnesota history class. And I often allow students the flexibility of doing either a traditional research paper or something dealing with family history, genealogy or history, family history, or something creative. They could write a play, they could tell a story about something, they can make something up. Bill Green: Hannah wrote a story that I still think about. I think I read the thing for the first time about two or three years ago and I still think about it. And the reason why it was so noteworthy to me was, aside from the fact that it was extremely well written, there is a fluidity in the style. There's grace and her writing style. She really had a feel for humanity. So that I find myself, when I think of a story thinking about the characters that she made up. And she was able to bring out the drama and the tensions among the characters in a very realistic way. Bill Green: I actually had a sense of flavor, context, color. The mood was set, all of that captured in her story. And I find that to be a rare talent for a person who is not an English major, which she's not. And I think ever since then, whenever she was interested in talking to me about a project, or doing something, I always said, "I'm completely at your disposal." I had, and have, the good fortune of working with her on a special project she's working on, honors project. She's dealing with a topic on Minneapolis history in the 1930s. And she got involved in this material, it's incredibly interesting. So in trying to figure out what kind of standards she could use to assess what information is important and what information only seems important, we decided for her to do this one thing and that is tell a story. Hannah Dyson: The Twin Cities during the 1920s and 1930s was notoriously corrupt. Walter Liggett was a journalist in Minneapolis and he was looking into connections that Floyd B. Olson, who was the governor of Minnesota, had to organized crime. There were two organized crime groups in Minneapolis. One ran by Isadore Blumenfeld, nickname Kid Cann, and then the Minneapolis Syndicate. And he was looking into these connections between Floyd B. Olson and these criminals, and other organized crime that was taking place and was connected to politics, to the police department. And he was really speaking against this. And he was met with a lot of consequences for that. He was accused of crimes and he went to court a month before his assassination for the charge of sodomy. And this was intended to get him thrown in jail for 20 years, and to essentially shut him up. Hannah Dyson: And then a month later, he was assassinated for speaking out against this. There was a trial, his wife identified Kid Cann as the assassin. And so he went to trial and he was found not guilty because he had an alibi from his barber. It's not necessarily clear if he was the assassin or not. There's some ambiguity to, maybe it was this other guy from Chicago who looked like Kid Cann, maybe it was someone else. There's no resolution, and there isn't for the other assassinations that took place either. Bill Green: History is a way of really understanding human nature. And I think all of that stuff is neatly tied up in a sense, and not so neatly sometimes in the study of history. Because, we're not about coming up with answers per se as much as ways of being in that large world. The central issue is getting people to be able to see, getting students to be able to understand why there's conflict, what are the opposing sides? What is it about a circumstance that brought a person to a different point of view and how was that point of view resolved, if ever? And what do you think about how it was resolved? History allows you to really explore that. Hannah Dyson: If you just look at a historical figure and you say, "That person is evil." and move on, that doesn't really reveal anything about human nature and human understanding. Augsburg is helping me find my calling and supporting me through the incredible environment we have here. I do think it's quite unique. It's this environment of support and reaching out and seeking to help. And genuinely being interested in, all of my professors have took time out of their busy lives to help me find my path moving forward. Hannah Dyson: There are so many mentors that I've come across. All of the professors here, all of the workers, all the staff, they all want to see the students succeed. And they're willing to take time to make that happen. And being exposed to all these different stories helped me be a better performer and a better historian. That's invaluable. Catherine Day: We've heard today from Hannah Dyson, Augsburg Class of 2020. We've also heard from Linda Cameron, program manager for the MNopedia project at the Minnesota Historical Society. Darcey Engen, professor and chair in the theater department. And Bill Green, professor of history. I'm Catherine Reid Day and this is the Augsburg podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Bjorn Melin, intern at Cteq Data Consultants and 3M, is proof that drive and work ethic really do make a difference. Not about to allow his Edina upbringing to afford him any opportunities he didn’t earn, Bjorn tackled a challenging double major in Computer Science and Math and forged his own opportunities in data science at Cteq and 3M by personally undertaking 50 plus informational interviews (over five times his advisor’s recommendation) and networking vigorously in the Twin Cities’ analytics field before acquiring internships in both small and large business environments. Bjorn’s is a story spanning math faculty all the way up to corporate CEOs. He credits his education to both. Transcript Bjorn Melin: There's so many things that resources are being wasted on or that can't happen because it takes too long or it's not possible by humans that if you'd just developed an algorithm or used AI or machine learning, you could handle those tasks so easily. Save people, help people. I want to be able to invent something that's going to help people. That's my ultimate goal. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg podcast. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg podcast. Today we speak with math and computer science, double major Bjorn Melin, class of 2020, about his discoveries in mathematics and data science, both at Augsburg and at multiple internships at companies large and small. We also hear from several of his academic and professional mentors about his passions for math and problem solving, which first took shape years ago on the street in Niagara Falls. Bjorn Melin: Whenever there was money on the street, I was the one who found it, which my whole family thought was hilarious. One time, we were in Niagara Falls and I found, I think it was a $100 bill on the ground and I was just always keeping track of my money, counting it, keeping track of my coins. That's probably the earliest memory I have is just counting coins, honestly. I was always just interested in math, not really directly, but I'd always be interested in money and counting things, doing puzzles. I guess that's why I turned out as a math major, but I didn't realize it at the time. Bjorn Melin: When I started at Augsburg, I originally had no clue at all what I was going to do. I started off taking Calc 1 because I knew that, okay, I took pre-calc last year, I should probably keep going if I can handle it. After first semester freshman year I declared an econ major, which looking back I think that's kind of crazy. Second semester then I took Calculus 2 and microeconomics at the same time and I remember sitting in microeconomics one day and our professor had written just full board equation and in calc we had just learned a single derivative that's seven numbers long and it could solve the entire board equation that she just wrote and I couldn't handle it, so I just went up. I was like, I got to show you this. And showed her this derivative, and that's when I was like, okay, I need to switch to a math major. My advisor convinced me to pick up computer science later on, but that's sort of how I started. Catherine Day: Advising plays a key role for students as they venture into internships. Bjorn tells us where he found guidance. Bjorn Melin: The Strommen Center, our career center here at Augsburg came into math colloquium my sophomore year in the fall, and they do that every year actually to get students thinking about internships, fellowships, anything that they offer, career advising resources. Getting my resume revised and getting cover letters written, prepping for interviews, I was in the Strommen Center pretty much every day my junior year in the fall. Starting about September until beginning to mid October, I was in at least three days a week. They helped me get my resume looking great, got me ready for career fairs, helped me write cover letters. I did a couple mock interviews. Anything possible they made it so honestly I feel like they made it so it was impossible to not get a job just because they had so many resources available and were so willing to help. Bjorn Melin: My parents had a, they were at a cocktail party and met, who is now my old boss, Steve Hartwig, and he said, "Oh, I'm looking for an intern for the summer." And they were telling him that I was a math major looking for a job and he just said that I should reach out. I got very lucky with that first internship over at C-TEQ. Steve Hartwig: Bjorn does stand out as our very best intern, kind of a shining star. Catherine Day: This is Steve Hartwig, CEO and founder of C-TEQ Data Consultants where Bjorn first interned. Steve Hartwig: He was a guy that probably got involved in more things than any other intern, partly because of that motivation that he had. Bjorn really picked up things quickly. I myself had a liberal arts background, thought I was going to go into medicine, fell into this field by accident. I worked with a couple of guys that were about my, what I am today in their mid fifties. I think the advice may have been given to me from the same two gentlemen that I was speaking of. I think the advice is truly believing in yourself, understanding first off who you are and you can't move to the next step if you don't know yourself. Bjorn Melin: He gave me the strength finder book. He really just sat me down and we went over those results after I took it and we just talked about how important it was to set goals for yourself, whether it be tomorrow's goal or a week down the road or a year or five years. Just how important that is and how important it is to keep those in the back of your mind with every decision that you're making. That's the best advice that I've gotten. I hadn't really thought that much about setting goals before and since then I've been very goal driven and goal oriented. If you're having a terrible of studying, if you think five years down the line, it makes it a lot easier I think. Steve Hartwig: I think it took me a long time to appreciate who I was and what I had within me before I could really advance. That's caused me to help people like Bjorn, younger people that are under my tutelage, my authority, et cetera, to help them discover who they are. To know their strengths, to know their gifts, know their potential, know where they want to go, where they can go and help them create a pathway and a vision for doing that. Catherine Day: After interning in the world of small private business, Bjorn also explored the other side of the equation, opportunities with major corporations. 3M in this case. Bjorn Melin: I really started going hard on networking at my internship last summer at 3M. They required us, or not technically required, but highly encouraged us to do 10 informational interviews. I took full advantage of that. I was able to manage my work, get it done, and then still take a ton of time out of my week to go meet with people, network. I think I met with over 65 people this summer, which was incredible. The advice I got was unbelievable. Met a lot of awesome people that I still talk to during the school year. Excited to get back there. Bjorn Melin: I guess my plan right now is to work very technical hands-on like software engineer, data scientist, data engineer. Just get as broad a range of technical skills built up as I can in the next eight to 10 years and once I'm very confident and strong in that in a bunch of different areas technically, I want to try to get into sort of leading groups, management, something along those lines, but I also want to stay technical, which I've heard is hard from a lot of managers I talk to at work. That's my ultimate goal, I think. Catherine Day: Bjorn's extensive internship experiences have informed his future plans, but so has his academic experience at Augsburg. Bjorn Melin: I found vocation at Augsburg really through my professors and I'd say primarily my math major friends because we're all just very interested in a future, we're interested in each other sort of competitive. Yeah, we're just looking for the best out of everyone, trying to all do our best and encourage each other, help each other out. Those groups of people have just made me a better person and I think I'd like to think that I have helped them as well. In HEG for every semester since it's been built, I've been in there probably at least three hours a day, every day just working on math homework, working on my coding projects, talking to friends, just hanging out. Usually doing math homework though. But yeah, we all just get together. We have a lot of homework. Three times a week we have homework assignment. It takes about three or four hours. We all just get together, work through it, help each other out on problems we don't get, just try to make it not so stressful for each other. Sort of goof around a little bit, makes it a lot easier. John Zobitz: I have known Bjorn since I believe he was a first year student here. He was a student in my calculus class. Catherine Day: This is John Zobitz, associate professor of mathematics and statistics. John Zobitz: Right away then I knew sort of his excitement and motivation for and passion for mathematics and also at the time computer science as well. And so he was one of those students that you could give him a problem and he would just take off and work on in a zone, solve it and come together with a couple of different answers and just impressed me with his depth of knowledge. John Zobitz: I think he likes seeing the applications of data and computers and mathematics and sort of the intersectionality between all three of those. It requires a lot of creative problem solving on his behalf. He needs to think about how that computational tools that he's using can and cannot apply to a particular problem at hand. What are some of the mathematics behind it as well? That way he applies the right mathematical tools and to get a better result than if he just pursued one of them in isolation. John Zobitz: Last summer he was at 3M and when the summer ended he came to my office and said, "Wow. All of the stuff that we had learned in my previous classes that was so directly relevant to what I was doing." And so I think he was sort of excited and energized by some of what he was learning in his classes that became relevant to his work experience. Bjorn Melin: For me personally, Augsburg has been 10 out of 10 experience. I can't imagine doing what I've done anywhere else or having the resources or advice given to me. Just the ability to be able to go to office hours every day and get one on one help when I'm confused or just need to talk about something is just so huge. I can't imagine being in a 300 person lecture and having of learned what I've learned in the past four years, which I also saw at work kind of. I sort of understood things more in depth because I was able to get that one on one help. We have bunch of fun events. They always bribe us with candy in the math department. It's been great. John Zobitz: This is a story about one student, but I think here in our department we sort of take that individual student perspective to heart and we really try to differentiate our perspective so that all students have the ability to succeed. And so Bjorn is just one example of many success stories that we've had here and that we are so pleased when students do well and they tell us that too because that gives us meaning and purpose too. Bjorn Melin: I definitely see myself giving back to the school. The school has just done so much for me in terms of my career and just setting me up for the life that I wanted after school. That if I have the money, or have the resources, I'm definitely going to give back or I definitely plan on in the next few years, even just coming back for mathematics colloquium, and just discussing with students, trying to get them ready for their careers, helping out with stuff like that. Anyway I can, I will. It's just been an awesome experience. Catherine Day: We've heard today from Bjorn Melin, math and computer science double major, class of 2020. We've also heard from Steve Hartwig, CEO and founder of C-TEQ Data Consultants and John Zobitz, professor of mathematics and statistics. I'm Catherine Reid Day and this is the Augsburg podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg podcast. I'm president Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Miracle Adebanjo, weathered a challenging transition from his international upbringing moving from London to New Jersey, and Minnesota that was punctuated with homelessness, culture clash, and lack of structure. But business, social work, and internship opportunities introduced Miracle to friends and mentors at Augsburg and beyond who ignited his passionate drive to build a better tomorrow through activism, community engagement, and entrepreneurship. Miracle Adebanjo: I've had so many investments of love that I just feel obligated to give them back. I have no choice but to get them back. I'm really running over. My cup is full of love. I just want to do good. I just want to serve. That's what I want to do. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present The Augsburg Podcast. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg Podcast. Today we speak with Miracle Adebanjo, major in management and marketing, minor in international business and management information systems, class of 2020. He tells us his story of giving back, of having received gifts of generosity from many people in many ways, and his desire to share it back into the world. He celebrates the bright road ahead, but explains that things didn't always feel quite so certain. Miracle Adebanjo: My path to where I'm at currently to this day has not been an easy one, but I am very grateful. I started off born and raised in London, England. I was fortunate enough to have had a magnificent education from Saint Margaret's Church of England School, to Diagon Park Church of England School, to moving to America, the land of opportunity, in 2012. And from there things took a turn. I spent some time homeless. I was living with Mary Jo Copeland in her shelter, Downtown Minneapolis, for about nine months, and that was a very interesting time in my life because I went from having everything to now having nothing, and I didn't have a silver spoon. I didn't have any money. I didn't have consistency. I was going through a lot of change. I was getting $2 every week, and I was sleeping on the train and doing the most I could to support our family, but still feeling that my efforts were not enough. Those humble beginnings helped me to be more grateful. It humbled me really to not take things for granted. Catherine Day: Miracle's path forward began to take shape in high school. Miracle Adebanjo: My high school was South High School, Minneapolis. I was involved in a lot of things on campus, especially on my first year, due to the fact that I didn't want to spend a lot of time in the homeless shelter. I was a three season sport kind of kid. I was in track, basketball, and soccer. I was also involved in student council, and oftentimes you could catch me hanging out after school, talking to teachers. I would also spend some time talking to Sheri Harris, my social worker. She was always there to support me and give me advice, and just make me feel like I had a voice, and I had something worth sharing, something with listening to. And I just feel like when people empower you like that, it gives you hope. It makes you feel like you're destined for greatness, like you can do a lot more than what you're currently doing now. Catherine Day: And the next step in Miracle’s destiny, as it turned out, was Augsburg. Miracle Adebanjo: I know that college isn't for everybody, but in my household, college was an expectation. Currently, I am one of two of the family members who are in college, but there was a period of time where I was the only one, despite being the youngest. During my high school experience, I was in the Upward Bound TRIO program, which is a college prep program to help underrepresented students find a way to get to college, and to prepare them and to help them get scholarships and to help them with being able to comfortably sit in the classroom, and feel like they belong in the classroom setting. Miracle Adebanjo: So with me spending time at Upward Bound, that helped me to prepare for college. Even though it wasn't always something I was interested in, now I am in that position. I'm so grateful for going through that program. Other individuals who helped me in the college application process and from getting from high school to college were my track coach, was my track coach, Emily Hackert. I ran track in high school my first year, quit my first year, came back my senior year after getting a pep talk from Katie McHalen. She was a friend of mine who told me that if you don't use your talent, you lose your talent, and so I thought, "Why not? Why not do it my last year?" I did it my last year, and I got in contact with the track coach of Augsburg, Emily Hackert. She came to my meets, saw me run, saw me jump, and said, "I want you." Miracle Adebanjo: So that made me feel validated. That made me feel once again empowered and that I could really do anything, and that my hard work and my efforts were not going unnoticed, and that they weren't offering nothing. I really do believe that everything in life happens for a reason, and I would say that was one of the reasons I was running track, to get from high school to college, and to really feel like a part of something, to feel like a part of a team. Catherine Day: And he would, in fact, have many opportunities to be part of meaningful teams. A chance encounter with a bank teller propelled him toward his first real job and crystallized his desire to give back to the community. Miracle Adebanjo: After the summer of my freshman year was my first real job, I would say. First real job where I was able to apply what I had learned in the classroom. I worked at TCF Bank on Lake Street, and the Cub Foods, a very popular location in Minneapolis. I was a relationship banker. I was depositing my tax returns, and I was with Onyx Santa Maria. She was my bank teller, and we started talking, as I do with everybody I meet, and she said, "What school do you go to?" I told her I go to Augsburg. She said, "I am an Augsburg student too. What do you have planned for the summer?" I told her I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, and she said, "I think that you would make a magnificent relationship banker here at TCF." Miracle Adebanjo: And I laughed. I told her, "Are you sure? I'm still only ..." How old was I? 18 at the time, and I didn't feel like I was ready to take on such an important position. I had always seen people who dealt with your money to be people who were responsible and mature, and they had something special about them that maybe I didn't have, but she laughed at me and told me that I could do it. She told me that I could be a bank teller at TCF. My time at TCF Bank was quite a blast. I was getting paid to sit down, count money, and talk to people. What a privilege. I loved making new connections. I had many people offering me jobs while I was sitting there, and I had many people come in with problems that I felt honored to help them fix and resolve. Catherine Day: After concluding his time at TCF, Miracle continued to make new connections with important mentors. Jodie Pritchard: I was out minding my own business with several of my favorite neighbors during National Night Out. Catherine Day: This is Jodie Pritchard, a social work unit supervisor with Hennepin County. Jodie Pritchard: Miracle and a bunch of other Augsburg students were canvassing for someone running for City Council, and I just started engaging with him and told them I was a social worker, and he said, "Oh, I'm interested in exploring that." And I said, "Let's meet for coffee," and we did. We spent about two hours chatting. Miracle Adebanjo: We ended up meeting up at a local Caribou and just talked. It was an absolute joy to get to know somebody where there was such a high power distance, but for them to sit down at my level and just hear me out, and to just share some of their insight. It was empowering. Jodie Pritchard: It was a far-ranging conversation. We started talking about food and cooking and Miracle said he didn't know how to cook, and I'm like, "That's crazy. You need to learn how to cook. Come over to my house and I'll teach you." And he invited another friend, and it was just the start of this great relationship. Miracle Adebanjo: I wanted to be a social worker. That was our intention in the meeting. That was what was on the agenda. She told me, "I think you would make a magnificent social worker. However, I think that you would be better in business." Jodie Pritchard: He started to explore other avenues in business, and I think he'll be great there too, because we need compassionate people and thoughtful people in business, who think about the larger world and the impact that corporations and business have in the world, because they're a huge part of our ecosystem, so to speak. So I was actually pretty happy to hear that he was moving in that direction. Miracle Adebanjo: She told me, "Let me connect you with my really successful friend Jeff." Jodie Pritchard: I just love connecting people and saying, "Hey, this would be a good person for you to know." Jeff Aguy: At the time it was like, "Hey, you have to meet this kid. He's brilliant," and all those things. And so I invited Miracle over to my house. At the time I was living in Downtown Minneapolis. Jodie Pritchard: This is Jeff Aguy, Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Investment at NCXT. Jeff Aguy: He was telling me his story, and not that I've faced displacement or any of those things, but I had a number of challenges myself growing up, and so he was talking about how much he wanted to change the world, how much he wanted to help people. And at the time he was really thinking about social work, and I had been in activism helping and all those things, and I asked him, "Have you considered business as a route to change the world?" Jeff Aguy: Because ultimately from my experience, what I learned was you can volunteer as much as you would like, and you're doing a lot of work, but a lot of times those changes aren't long-term, they're not systemic. And I learned that some of the best ways that you could change is having the opportunity to gain wealth and to share that with people, whether that's funding a program, or funding a service, or someone who's late on their bills, and because you're able to do that, because you can afford it, you're able to do those things. And so he's always been someone who service was the most important thing to him, and I know I asked him, "Have you considered business as an option?" Miracle Adebanjo: Jeff is very innovative. And so just seeing a young individual who wasn't too much older than me living a successful life, I saw something that I hadn't really seen before. I saw a future image of me. I wanted to be successful. I was fortunate for that encounter with Jeff, and that made me switch from social work to business. Jeff Aggie: One of the things about Miracle too, is he didn't think about himself a lot. And that's one of the things we talked about too, is a part of being healthy is not only caring about your community, and helping community grow, but if you're not able to sustain yourself, then it becomes much more difficult to do that. So little did I know that first conversation would be transformative for him. Catherine Day: And it was here that Miracle discovered that a career in business was his path to making change. Miracle Adebanjo: I want to end homelessness. It's something I'm very passionate about. I want to help reduce poverty and hunger, and I want to help provide education for individuals who couldn't afford it, like my brother, but these things take money, and so that is what drives my passion in the world of business. Not the cost of money itself, but the concept of giving back to the community, the community that took me in with open arms and helped nurture me and make me into the man I am today. There's a saying that you're a product of your environment, and I have been fortunate enough to not have been at all times in the negative parts of our environment, but to be surrounded and immersed in love in the community. Jeff Aguy: There's very few people who I know that come from the kind of background that I come from that are in the same positions that I'm in today. Catherine Day: Jeff Aguy again. Jeff Aguy: We live in a world that is under-resourced, specifically for people of color, specifically for African Americans, specifically for black people anywhere. And so we know that the environment is so important for growth, but I was one of those kids who the environment was never ripe for growth and creativity. I've always had to make a way. Of course I've had positive people in my life, but I've always had to make a way. And so with Miracle, it's the same thing with him, but at a much different level. When you learn about his story, about how he was homeless, not only homeless but living with different church people, living in hotels, and a student athlete, and being in school and doing all those things at the same time. Jeff Aguy: Like, yeah, I had it tough, but his is way tougher than mine. And so he really continued to strengthen the idea about how important the mindset is. While we're changing government policy and changing all these environmental aspects that do need to be changed, that are systemically unjust and systemically unfair, it's also important to understand that although the reality of our situation seems insurmountable, having a mindset that refuses to quit, there's something special about the human spirit. And so he continued not only to teach me the idea about having mindset as a key aspect of how you grow as a person, and how you grow as a company, but that it's possible. Jodie Pritchard: He just gives me hope that there are people out there who are willing to be engaged in the world and giving and doing it in a really smart, thoughtful way. Catherine Day: Jodie Pritchard, again. Jodie Pritchard: I just love being around him. He's also very peaceful, but we also have a lot of fun, and a lot of laughs, and boy, the days back when we were cooking, we had just a lot of laughter and good times in the kitchen, and then sitting down and sharing a meal. And I so appreciate his openness and showing me, yeah, it's worth starting those conversations with people and making new friends. Miracle Adebanjo: I want to leave this campus better than the way I found it. And I think to do that you have to really show love. Augsburg to me means home. It means community. It means family. It means responsible. It means leader. It means steward. To me Augsburg is an institution that is more than just an institution located in the heart of Minneapolis. It's something special. It is a place to learn beyond just academics, but also every little thing about life. For my graduation, there will be about 100 tickets that I can use. I think I want to use all 100 of them. There will be a lot of people that will be there and I want them all to see that all of the investments of love that they've put into me have paid off. This is where I'm at now. Thank you for helping me get here, and I can't wait until you see what's in store. Catherine Day: Today we've heard from Miracle Adebanjo, major in management and marketing, minor in international business and management information systems, class of 2020. We've also heard from Jodie Pritchard, social work unit supervisor with Hennepin County, and Jeff Aguy, vice president of strategy and corporate investment at NCXT. I'm Catherine Reid Day, and this is The Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to The Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Olivia House, intern at Wingnut Advertising (via Brand Lab), uses design to advance the causes of justice and activism. Through her work, she strives to elevate underrepresented voices, share stories that aren’t told, and promote history that has been erased. Mentors in Augsburg arts and athletics as well as key players in Twin Cities advertising and design have supported her on her journey and helped her crystalize her ambitions to build a brighter future through the power of activist art. Transcript Olivia House: I really want to use graphic design to impact the world around me in a positive way. Especially uplifting people's voices that have been taken away or haven't been heard. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg podcast. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg podcast. Today we speak with Olivia House, graphic design major, class of 2020, as well as some of her academic and professional mentors. She tells us about her path to discovering her calling in design. Olivia House: I was actually homeschooled for high school, so my path to college was very interesting. I didn't have any guidance counselors there to push me to that. So it was really me just like looking around and wanting to figure out what kind of school I wanted to be at. I knew I wanted to play soccer in college, so that was a big part of it. So I was looking at schools that I was being recruited from and there were a lot of them in the MIAC here in Minnesota. And Augsburg, Mike reached out to me. And I didn't know if I wanted to come here, mainly because it was very, very close to home. I reached back out to him and I was like, "I don't really know, but I'll come and visit." And when I got on campus, and I met Mike, and I met the team, I instantly knew that I would be a great fit here. Olivia House: Being on campus and meeting professors, especially in the graphic design department, I knew I'd find a second home at Augsburg, so that really made my decision. Olivia House: When I was a sophomore in high school, my home school, my home city school, was Richfield High School and so I just wanted to maybe take a couple of classes there to get some potential college credit and experience in a classroom setting like that. So I saw a marketing class and I was like, "Oh, that would be interesting. I'm really interested in business." So I took that class and that happened to be the class that was paired with the BrandLab. Catherine Day: BrandLab is a nonprofit organization that works to diversify the marketing and advertising industries by introducing high school students to these industries, and connecting them to internships in relevant fields. More than a pairing program, it's also a mentorship program. Olivia House: They came in for like half of our class and talked about the marketing and advertising industry. And we visited some agencies which was really cool. And then you had the opportunity to apply to their internship at the end of the semester. And so I decided to apply for it and I got accepted. In the beginning they introduce you to different roles in advertising, and one of them was graphic design. I knew that I wanted to do something artistic because I've always been artistic, but my parents did not want me to actively pursue art as a career. So I was looking for ways to be artistic but also be able to make a steady income. And graphic design seemed like the perfect fit. Olivia House: At that first internship, it actually wasn't for a graphic design position. It was on the other side and project management and account services. But I told them that I was really interested in graphic design. So they had me shadow all the designers at the agency, which was really cool. And they even set up a final project that was based in graphic design. And so after that summer I definitely knew that I wanted to pursue graphic design. Jim Cousins: I first met Olivia when I was president of Wingnut Advertising. Catherine Day: This is Jim Cousins now vice president of business development with Augeo. Jim Cousins: She came in the front doors of the Wingnut space, in the lower in the North loop in Minneapolis, and immediately changed us for the better. She came in as a sophomore in high school, which I wasn't quite sure about because that's quite young. But being part of the BrandLab before that, and supported of the BrandLab will support them in whatever they're up to. And if that made sense for them, it made sense for us. She was beyond her years in terms of maturity and in terms of ability. Quickly she just became a member of the team. We're a smaller agency and so it was really, the benefit of a small agency is you get to connect with every department. You really have a, you make a mark on the place and that's how it was for Olivia. Olivia House: Jim was actually the first person I ever had a conversation about getting a raise. And because Jim is so approachable, we talked about it, and yeah, like yeah, he was very helpful. He really gave me confidence in advocating for myself and advocating for the things that I think that I deserve. Jim Cousins: Olivia said, "Hey, can I get a few minutes with you?" And I could tell she was about to ask something. I could tell she was acting a little differently than most and so it was something important to her. We sat down and chatted for a little bit, and she asked for a raise, which we were happy to accommodate. And it was time, so good for her. But also I might have had a slight tinge of, "Oh, we should be ahead of this type of thing. Reward great employees before they ask." But at the same time it's great experience to recognize your own value, and to ask for it, and advocate for yourself. And so she did a wonderful job at it and got the raise. Olivia House: He's been a mentor of mine for, yeah, the past five years. I had lunch with him the other week and just catching up. And he always is helping me network with other people and going to events and things like that. So Jim has been a very influential person in the last five years for me. Olivia House: Honestly, I think the BrandLab was a stepping stone into me getting more involved in activism, and really being a strong proponent of the idea of diversity and inclusion and equity and things like that. And it's been an interesting road because the BrandLab is a huge advocate for those things as well. And I started to do it, you know, like in a different way. They were really big about it in terms of the industry, but I started looking at the industry as a whole and how equitable advertising it is in itself. Olivia House: And so it really opened my eyes to the larger picture, and like the country as a whole, and the city as a whole, and things like that. So I see the BrandLab as a stepping stone into what I'm doing now and what I'm starting to do. Because I think without it, I don't know how I would have started to think about these things in this way, and thinking about equity and inclusion and making sure that everyone has a seat at every table. Olivia House: A few years ago when the Superbowl was here, and a social justice group reached out to me. Seeing if I wanted to help organize a conference around it talking about police brutality and things like that. And so I was like, "Yeah. And I ended up designing all the graphics for it. And so that I saw a tangible way that graphic design and activism could come together. And then that next summer I did a whole research project on the history of black graphic designers in the United States, which isn't talked about at all and you really can't find anywhere. And that was another example of "Wow, like I can create this big exhibit, or this website, this book layout to help tell these stories that aren't being told." And that's super exciting to me. Chris Houltberg: I met Olivia House when she was a sophomore studying here in graphic design. Olivia House: This is Chris Houltberg, associate professor of art and design. Chris Houltberg: She's incredibly motivated, articulate, and a really great student. What was really exciting to see is her development over the course of this program. She has found more and more ways to express and access her own agency. There's this really particular moment when you're teaching that you wait for someone's sense of identity to meet a creative outlet. Sometimes we're fortunate to see that while they're in the program. Other times we see that very last thing as they're walking out the door, but that's a really exciting moment. For Olivia that experience happened in her sophomore year. She found a sense of agency that she could share the things that were important to her through the vehicle of design. And when those two things intersect, that's when something incredible happens. That's when the unexpected happens. And that's when true change happens. Olivia House: One of my first interactions with Chris, I was very nervous. I was signing up for design class that was... I didn't meet the prerequisites for it, but it was the only one that fit in my schedule. So I emailed him and I was just like, "Hey, can I get into this class?" And he said, "You know, I think we need to meet and I need to review your resume and portfolio." And so I was very nervous and yeah, but he did. And he was just like, "Wow, like yes, I think you should be a part of this class." And I never really talked to him about this interaction until like a year ago. And he was just, he was like, "I knew. I knew that you needed to be in this and that you had so much growth that could happen." Olivia House: And that's been a huge part of our relationship. He pushes me harder than anyone else does. He knows my potential and what I can do. And he doesn't let me turn in or show him any work that does not reflect that. Which is, I'm very thankful for it. And everything that I do I show Chris because I know he's going to be honest and I know he's going to push it to be better and better. Even just the other day, as I'm finishing up my show, he sends me an article and some things. And he's like, "How? Have you thought about this for it? Have fun printing today." And it's just, and I take it all into consideration because I know he cares. He cares a lot. So I'm really thankful for him. Chris Houltberg: So Olivia took on this project to ask the question where are all the black designers. And she focused specifically from 1945 to 1975. The end product of that project was merely a presentation that was supposed to happen at the end of summer research. But the type of person that Olivia is, she doesn't stop at the bare minimum of what's expected. She has expanded this project well past any of those expectations to an exhibit that's traveled. It's been in at least four places, installed in four different places. And then she designed an online catalog so that everyone could have access to this information. And even since then she's gone to continue her research by going to some libraries in Chicago to look, have a deeper dive into the archives of these really incredible designers that are not mentioned in any graphic design books. So I think that as she continues to push this, I won't to be surprised to pick up the book by Olivia House someday. Catherine Day: One of Olivia's favorite designers and certainly one of the most influential for her is Emory Douglas. Olivia House: He was the Minister of Culture or the graphic designer for the Black Panther party. And his work is just phenomenal. Mainly because an important part of his work was being able to depict emotion and message without using a lot of words. Because then the community that he was reaching was largely illiterate. And so he had to create these really powerful graphics with very limited use of words. And that's one that I really connect to because I love that about the graphic design that I do. Is that, that's what I want to do, be able to depict what I want with very limited description or things like that. Olivia House: Good activism and you can see this in the Black Panther party and even things happening now is the community aspect of it and I don't think a lot of people see that. Because in order to be effective you have to really be ingrained in the community because those are going to be the people behind these movements. That led me into what I'm doing for my senior show, which is a very personal project, which I'm not really used to. It's very vulnerable. Olivia House: Basically it's a project that explorers my evolution of identity and my struggle with identity, through the lens of the relationship I've had with my hair. And a lot of black women go through a very hard struggle with their relationship with hair. It's very personal, very vulnerable. We really don't like to talk about it, but it's something that has been a huge part of my life. And so I wanted to create this exhibit to both show this, and also kind of bring that community of black women together and show that... You know, like we're all, we're all going through this and kind of uplift in that kind of way. So everyone else just sees what's on the surface and it's just like, "Oh, like I changed my hair." This, you know. To anyone else it's like, "Oh. Like she changed her hair." Or "Oh, she changed her hair again." Or now she has long hair. Now she has short hair. Like what's the deal? But underneath so much is happening. Jen Larrick: Olivia is immensely talented and in many ways. And I think what I've seen in her trajectory of time being here is that she's sharpened or narrowed in on the specific ways that she can intentionally use those talents to impact community, make commentary on society at large. Catherine Day: This is Jen Larrick, assistant women's soccer coach. Jen Larrick: As a first year she went to the head coach and said, "Hey, I want to kneel during the National Anthem." And to his credit he said, "Okay, let's do it." And together they came up with a plan of how can we respect everybody's individual choice of whether they want to kneel or not and still portray that we are a United team. Jen Larrick: So they decided that anybody who wants to kneel would kneel. Anybody who wants to stand would stand. But that we would all put our, certainly our right hand on our heart and our left hand on our teammates shoulder in front of us. And so Olivia, as a first year, she's 18 years old, brought to the whole team why she was kneeling, why it was important to her, and how she wanted to feel supported. And so in that moment, I saw this transition from her own personal viewpoints about the world and how she wants to be in it, translate to how she's impacting a larger group. Olivia House: Playing sports my whole life has just helped me be a great teammate, not only on the field but also at work, and at these internships, and self determination, and motivation and things like that. I've learned a lot, a lot from sports. Jen Larrick: I went to her taking the nation event that she like co-created, co-organized, she did all of the design work for, and I was coaching that day and walked in a little bit late. And I got there and Olivia's at the podium making a really cool speech or introducing other speakers. And she just was so thoroughly in control and so present. Yeah, it's almost getting me a little emotional. She's so deeply caring about these real world challenging problems and she does it in this like really beautiful inclusive way. Olivia House: Activism is very vulnerable work. You put yourself out there. Your face, your voice, what you believe. I don't think you can be 100% authentic if you're not putting your most authentic self forward. And part of that is knowing and seeing who you are, and who you've come from is a big part of that too. And so anyone who's had anything in them repressed. History, or repressing their own identity, or themselves, it takes a toll on you. We have a lot of misunderstandings, and a lot of conflict, and so this kind of journey within myself has really helped me too. Being able to put my most authentic self out there has made me more confident and helped me pursue what I want to pursue. It's given me a lot of confidence and a lot of self worth that I think I can do anything. Catherine Day: Olivia House is a graphic design major graduating with the Class of 2020. We've also heard from Jim Cousins, Vice President of Business Development at Augeo; Chris Houltberg, associate professor of Art and Design; and Jen Larrick, assistant women's soccer coach. I'm Catherine Reid Day, and this is the Augsburg podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg podcast. I'm president Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Ethan Quezada, 1st year class president and intern with Senator Tina Smith, tells a story of purpose and belonging. He grew up in an environment where Ethan struggled to make his dreams of public service a reality. At Augsburg, his rapid rise through student government, encounters with meaningful faculty and professional mentors, and internships with Senator Smith led him on a path of self-actualization culminating in discoveries of self-confidence, hope, and service to his community. Transcript: Ethan Quezada: When you have a vocation, when you've found a vocation, you'll know that it is a vocation, in fact, because you have aligned your goals with helping others. You can make sure that your daily goal is to do everything that it takes for you to accomplish another step towards your longterm goal, but you just have to orient your longterm goal to service. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg Podcast. Today we speak with Ethan Quezada, Class of 2022, as well as with several of his academic and professional mentors, about Ethan's path to discovering his calling to public service. It's a journey that took shape at Augsburg and during Ethan's internship with Minnesota Senator Tina Smith, but its beginnings are much earlier and more formative. Ethan Quezada: Honestly, I could tie it back to fifth grade. That was the time period where I was essentially suffering the most at pretty much the hands of the government. And what that would look like for me is the '08 recession caused a lot of financial difficulties for my family. I mean, Minnesota is one of the ... actually, I'm pretty sure it's the worst state for students of color, and I grew up in the Minneapolis public school system at a school that was pretty terrible, and when I say terrible, I don't just mean that we got bad grades. I mean, there was violence, there was a lot of sad stuff. And I recall feeling back then just straight up powerless. And it was so interesting because I knew that it wasn't the system making me powerless. I knew it was the people. I knew it was that the people that were making these policy choices. I knew it was the people that were teaching or administering or anything like that. It always came down to the people. Ethan Quezada: And when I was younger, I got frustrated because I thought that you can't change other people. You can't do anything like that. I mean, especially when you're young and especially when you're a person of color. But whether it was never being able to have a bike because every time I got a new one it was stolen or whether it was having the water shut off or the power shut off for a couple days because we couldn't afford to have utilities or whether it was having my childhood home foreclosed upon and then having to uproot my life and move to a different city away from all the things that I have known and loved. Countless things. Ethan Quezada: And I guess the important thing to take away here is that the stories are not unique, and that's the problem. It's not like what I'm saying is new news, something surprising. I mean, it's something that millions and millions and millions of Americans are going through. We've got a problem. And in that problem we also have a solution because I honestly believe that people who go through struggles and people who have been exposed to difficult situations have a lot better handle on how to deal with the difficulties that life brings you. Ethan Quezada: Religion 100 was one of the first classes that I had at Augsburg, and I had it with Professor Russell Kleckley, and he was kind of the introduction for me into what it means to have a vocation and what it means to have a calling. I know that I'll be fulfilling my vocation of making sure that I'm doing public service, that I'm serving others. I was just talking to a friend yesterday who was really struggling with trying to find a balance between taking care of themselves and also serving others, and I said, "Well, you can do both. You can make sure that your daily goal is to do everything that it takes for you to accomplish another step towards your longterm goal, and that way you can be self interested and selfless at the same time." And that's something that really started to be established as something that I identify as a core value, and I learned that in Religion 100. Mike Grewe: Ethan applied when he came as a first year student last year in 2018 as part of our Emerging Leaders program. Catherine Day: This is Mike Grewe, director of campus life. Mike Grewe: He also at the same time, his first week of class, ran for first year class Senator and won, and he was also part of student government, which I advise, so on top of being in the emerging leaders program, got to know him really well in student government. Ethan is a very hardworking, very dedicated student. He is really passionate about changing Augsburg for the better and changing his community for the better. Mike Grewe: For Ethan, I think the way that I see vocation living out is a passion for changing the world to be a better place, and the way that he's enacting that right now is really thinking about how can he change Augsburg to be a better place both for students, but he also sees that for staff and faculty as well. He really loves the faculty and staff here. He really loves the students here, and I think he really by the time he graduates in a couple of years, wants to see Augsburg in in a better place than it is now. He wants to see it grow. He wants to see it flourish. He wants to see it be vibrant. And so his vocation is really lived out through his passion in serving and working with others. Catherine Day: In his time advising student government at Augsburg, Mike has had ample to observe firsthand how Augsburg students are driven to make change. Mike Grewe: I work with students here at Augsburg who say that they want to be US Senators, that they want to be CEOs, that they want to run their own nonprofits, that they want to run a youth center or just make change in their community, whether that's in their place of worship or whether that's in their local communities. Leadership takes on so many different forms. You don't have to be in a position of authority to have leadership. You can inspire and drive leadership in any role that you have, and I see students who graduate from Augsburg realizing that and taking control and taking their own agency to drive that change in whatever place they end up after they graduate from Augsburg. Bob Groven: We're taking a class. It's the liberating letters. And the class has a structure where the students stage a trial. Actually, they stage four trials, and so Ethan was, how shall I say, highly engaged in those trials. Catherine Day: This is Bob Groven, professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Film, and New Media, and co-chair of that department. Mike Grewe: After class, then, Ethan would start asking me questions about what work I did. He was interested in being a lawyer. I'm also a lawyer. He was interested in argument and debate, and I coach debate and I teach debate and argumentation, and then I would say it was really wasn't until the last third of the class where he started to realize that I was also interested in political work. I also did political campaign work and I've done coaching of political candidates. He was highly motivated, and it's always interesting to see a student that's so interested in politics and has such a sincere interest in politics for the right reasons. Mike Grewe: He cares about the issues more than he just cares about winning. He cares about serving the state, the community more than he cares about just serving himself, and that's an unusual combination and it's really a wonderful thing to see. And so that's when he and I started talking about political work, and now we've had many conversations in classes, out of classes. He's also started to ask me a lot of really practical questions about how do you get into politics, what are the base entrance vehicles, how do you become part of a campaign, and was very clear that this is a student who both has the skill and the ambition to really try to do something in whatever world he wanted to enter. Ethan Quezada: I got an internship in Senator Tina Smith's office, and that blew my mind because first of all, I'm a first year at this point and that's kind of unreal. My boss, Lexi Byler, she took a chance. She took a risk. She saw a resume that honestly wasn't comparable to probably some of the other top resumes in the group, but saw potential and she decided to take a risk and she decided to put her faith in me even though she didn't know who I was. That kind of belief from somebody else being put in you, it gave me such a boost of confidence that led me to acknowledge that I can do it. I can do the things that I didn't previously think were possible for me. Honestly, it was a huge stepping stone in my life. It basically got me from being this high school student that I mentioned to, transitioning into making real change. Ethan Quezada: When I started the internship I did basic Congressional intern stuff ... or not, yeah, I guess, Senator's office, essentially answering phone calls, going through constituent mail, doing research, writing memos, the basic stuff. I did a presentation and presented it in front of the staff and that was fun. Bob Groven: When people contact a senator's office, 80% of the time they're just complaining. Catherine Day: Bob Groven again. Bob Groven: That's what they want to do. They want to complain and it's very hard for a person to deal with that hour after hour, day after day, and so I thought, "Oh, this is going to be ... Ethan's going to get turned off by lists." I've seen so many students that get turned off, but he didn't. He was super energized by it. He loved it. He loved the feeling in the office. He was super impressed by Senator Smith herself and he just had such a good attitude about the complaints that people had. He really viewed it as an opportunity to try to convince them or if you couldn't convince them, at least to let them be heard. They really just want to know that somebody in the Senator's office listened to them and cared about what they said, and Ethan loved that. Ethan was really good at that, and that's a rare and difficult skill. Catherine Day: Ethan's successful first term interning with the Senator brought him to the attention of the Senator's team and afforded him the opportunity to work with the Senator's office for a second term. Ethan Quezada: I had actually applied to five internships in DC and gotten none of them, and then my boss found out that I wasn't going to be doing anything this summer, and so she went and talked to her boss, Miranda Morgan Lilla, and was like, "Hey, we could get him on for another term. He's got an opening and he's done well for us." And I'm not exactly sure what went down in that conversation, but all I know is that I was being called into Miranda's office and I was nervous because I was like, "Uh-oh. I have never been called into Miranda's office. I must've done something wrong." And I get in there and I'm just like, "I didn't get these internships and now I'm going to mess this one up," and then she was like, "I want you to stay on for another term." And I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I can't believe it." Because that was the first time they'd ever asked anyone. And I was so, so proud of myself and also so gracious that people were giving me these opportunities. Ethan Quezada: And so my second term I got to train in the new interns, which was awesome, honestly. I have a bond with them now that is really, really beneficial for me. And I also got to start doing a little bit of case work for Social Security and healthcare, and that was really, really interesting because I got to see what actually happens when you're having an issue with a federal agency. Prior to this internship, I had never been into the Fed. I've never talked to the people who are "higher ups." It's always been that 1-800 number or something like that, so being able to interact and see what the system works like at a personal level helped me understand things that I'm going to need to do in order to be successful in the future. Catherine Day: "I'm so thankful for all of my interns, hard work and service to Minnesota," Senator Smith wrote to us. "It was great to have Ethan in my St. Paul office where he helped constituents on the phone and in person, assisted my staff, and managed the front desk. You know, when I was a Senate intern, I literally fell down the Capitol steps in a hurry, papers flying. Fortunately, I don't think anything like that happened to Ethan during his internship or has happened to any of my other interns. It's great to hear that Ethan enjoyed his internship at my office, and I encourage other Augsburg students who are interested in getting an up close look at the inner workings of a Senator office to apply for an internship as well. You can find information about this opportunity on my website, www.smith.senate.gov." Ethan Quezada: The first time that I met Senator Smith, I was expecting somebody very, very technical, somebody very, very clearly well-educated, very composed, and very, I suppose cold because that was my impression of what a Senator was like at the time. I remember first walking into the conference room and seeing her, and I recall that she just gave me this huge smile, and as I looked to my right and I see that there's pizza, and I am like, "Wait. This is a Senator and we're just eating pizza. That's kind of unreal." And I remember in my conversations with her, she just straight up asked me what I think about some of the real-life situations that are going on in the Senate. Just a regular kid, just an intern, just at the time I think I was 18, and she valued the opinion that I gave her. We had a discussion back and forth, me and some of the other interns and Senator Smith and we were talking for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and it was an experience that led me to realize that it's just possible. Ethan Quezada: You grow up and you hit so many roadblocks and barriers, whether it's homelessness, whether it's being a violent and aggressive youth, whether it's poverty or parents' separation. You go through all these things and you start to feel like the world isn't really for you. You start to feel like you don't really have the same level of capability or opportunities of most other people, and sitting in that room and sitting across from somebody who spoke so humbly, who maintained their moral integrity, maintained the person that they are, did not compromise and still was able to achieve success, it's a huge inspiration because it shows that being good does get you far. Working hard does get you far. Being humble does get you far. You don't have to be this vision that most people have, Senators, that they're backstabbing, that they're very cunning or clever, and that they are very self interested. It really changed my perspective as to what kind of things I would be able to accomplish in my career. Catherine Day: Today we've heard from Ethan Quezada, Class of 2022. We've heard also from Mike Grewe, Director of Campus Life, Bob Groven, professor and co-chair in the Department of Communication Studies, Film and New Media, and Minnesota. Senator Tina Smith. I'm Catherine Reid Day and this is The Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to The Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Barclay Bates: I think anytime you have the ability to positively influence a group of people, you have to take full advantage of that. Olivia House: I really want to use graphic design to impact the world around me in a positive way. Uplifting people's voices that have been taken away or haven't been heard. Bjorn Melin: I want to be able to invent something that's going to save people. Help people. That's my ultimate goal. Miracle Adebanjo: I just want to do good. I just want to serve. That’s what I want to do. Ethan Quezada: When you have a vocation, when you've found a vocation, you'll know that it is a vocation, in fact, because you have aligned your goals with helping others Hannah Dyson: History is about telling stories and theater is about telling stories. Catherine Day: We invite you to season 3 of the Augsburg Podcast in which we explore the journeys of six Augsburg students on their way to discovering their vocation and calling.

Lamont Slater: I always keep track of my students when the semester ends, and a lot of times, they say that it has transformed them in a way that now they're able to confront wrong information or biased information or racist information in a way that is constructive and academic and leads to global change. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reed Day, host of the Augsburg podcast, and today, I'm speaking with Lamont Slater, program coordinator and lecturer for the Center of Global Education, and I'm speaking with him today long distance. He's in Windhoek, Namibia. Lamont Slater: Thank you for having me on the podcast. Catherine Day: As we begin, it would be wonderful, Lamont, if you could tell us briefly first of all to ground us in why you're there and the work that you're doing, Augsburg has a strong commitment to international and global education, and you are one of three locations for that work, is that correct? Lamont Slater: That is correct. We have southern African location and then we have the Mexico location and then central America. Catherine Day: Maybe you could give us an overview about Augsburg's focus on global education. How long has that been a tradition to the best of your knowledge, and what is the focus of that? Lamont Slater: One of the ways I'm going to go ahead and get started is to present the position of the Center for Global Education and its mission in southern Africa. Part of the mission is to promote study abroad from a experiential learning basis, which is based off of the Kolb's learning cycle of learning, and the way that it's presented here in southern Africa, one of the key points of this programming is that it has a theme of de-colonizing the mind, and so de-colonizing the mind is a reference from the works of Frantz Fanon in his book, Wretched of the Earth, in which he talks about mind de-colonization as a result of events that happened in Algeria during the 1950s. We borrow that philosophy and that theme, a thematic approach in what we do here, to de-colonize our minds and de-colonize student minds towards information that they previously have been familiar with possibly, but then we're enacting the learning process in a different way. For example, recently we were in the Eastern Cape. South Africa has different provinces, and the Eastern Cape is one of those provinces. We challenged students to read about Steve Biko's I Write What I Like, which is a book that has several excerpts of his writings of black consciousness during the life of Biko, and this book is pretty much standard reading in a lot of classes, literature, especially African-American literature, Africana studies, and so students were able to not only read his work, but we took students to engage in dialogue with a friend of Steve Biko's recently. And we went to his home, his former home. We went to the grave site of Biko. We went to the Biko Center, which talked all about Biko and gave comparative analysis between Steve Biko and other members of the black conscious movement, including W.E.B. DuBois, and so in short, the Center for Global Education really enacts these references, not just for learning purposes, but on a broader scale, to push forward the agenda of fair and just society and learning about multiple figures that have tried to really bridge the gap between different ethnicities, races, et cetera. It really speaks to what the mission of Augsburg University's Center for Global Education is. Catherine Day: You've mentioned several things that I'm going to want to follow up on here. First of all, I thought it would be helpful if we paint a little picture of where you are, a little bit about why you are in that particular place, how many students are there, how long do they stay in this program? And maybe just start with just a couple of those details, please. Lamont Slater: We're in Windhoek, Namibia. Just a little quickie about Windhoek, Windhoek is the capital of Namibia. Namibia is a country that is one of the, if not the, least populated countries, especially for the size of the land, and Namibia only has two point five million people in the entire country. It's a beautiful country. It has a desert landscape. It has savannas. It has parts of the country that has a lot of green space, so it has a very geographic spacing. From a optical point of view, it's a great place to be. It has a history of colonialism, which pretty much has dictated the future of the country in several different ways. We don't have a lot of time to talk about those ways, but it's definitely shaped the country as they move forward after independence. Students are usually here in Namibia for about three and a half months, and then prior to coming to Namibia, they're in South Africa for about three weeks, and so they get the true southern Africa experience, and at the same time, they're able to use a comparative approach to dealings that's happening in South Africa and also Namibia because they have a shared history. Our students go from South Africa to Namibia, and then they return back to the U.S. in this case, for this semester, they'll be returning back on June 8th, so that's where the students are. With regards to myself, how I ended up here, I applied for the position while I was teaching at Quinsigamond Community College. I was about to go on sabbatical, believe it or not. I was already approved for my sabbatical. After seven years, you're able to apply for sabbatical, and that's what I did. I was in the process of completing my PhD work and wanted to be on the ground in Namibia. My whole body of work has been on the Namibian genocide, which was the focus of my dissertation. It just so happened that there was a position available in Namibia that I applied for. It was perfect for me, and I ended up getting the job, and so I was very grateful for that and still am grateful for that, and I am able to kind of use the expertise that I have in the Namibian genocide and apply it to my job, which is beautiful. In fact, going from the experiential lens, we're able to go over different aspects of my dissertation and actually take students to those places that these events happened. For example, during Nazi Germany, you had Auschwitz and different concentration camps there, which happened approximately 25 years later than the events that happened in Namibia. Keep in mind that Namibia is a German colony, and those events that happened in Nazi Germany happened in Namibia almost 25 years earlier. And so to actually be able to take students to these places, the actual locations, is just a once in a lifetime type of position to have, and I'm happy to share that with the students. Catherine Day: Let's take a minute and talk about how you found your path to this research. You were in New York, I believe? Lamont Slater: I'm a New Yorker, so I started off in New York and going to high school there, and I wanted to go to college. I was born in the Bronx, New York before I moved to Long Island, and we used to always see Fordham University. This university was in our neighborhood, and at the time, we didn't have anyone in the family that went to college, so there was no first generation. I didn't have anybody to kind of lean on about how to even go about going to college, and I had a relative that just came back from the military. He told me that you can go to the military and get funding for college. And at the time, I was a high school student. I was a senior in high school. I was 16 when I was about to graduate and decided that's what I was going to do. I'm going to go to the military, and I'm going to get the G.I. bill and fund my way to college. Of course, I didn't have a lot of support. But that's all I had, because no one knew anything about financial aid, FAFSA forms, fellowships. I had no resources to use to my advantage, and so I signed up and went to the military. My mother had to actually sign the waiver because I was 16 when I graduated, and I went to the military a week after I graduated from high school. I did my basic and AIT in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then I went to Kitzingen, Germany for my duty station, and while I was in Germany, that's when I learned about not only the Namibian genocide from somebody that I just randomly met in Auschwitz when I was there, but also the positionality of black Americans and also other black Africans that were caught up in the German holocaust as well. It was a total awakening, because all I knew about the holocaust was what was taught in school and Anne Frank and all of those stories about the horrors of the genocide, but being in Germany, it enlightened me to a new history almost. It just let me know that history is contingent upon the one who writes it. It inspired me to be a historian and look at Africana history in a way that created a holistic approach to research. That was my path to research, teaching in the field, and eventually getting my PhD in genocide, specifically the Namibian genocide, and more specifically focusing on retelling the story of genocide in Namibia from an inter-cultural lens and also focusing on really pointing out the need for correct memorialization when it comes to representation of genocide, especially with the local African culture. Catherine Day: I presume that you take the time to share your personal discovery, how you found out this information and how it led you down this path. Do you share this with your students? Lamont Slater: I do. I mean, because it's very important. I mean, our students are in a experiential learning program. They have to get out their comfort zone in order to really maximize this experience, just like I did. Prior to me going to Germany, nobody ever traveled overseas or even out of New York for that matter. Catherine Day: Nobody in your family, you mean? Lamont Slater: No, I mean it was like basic trips every now and then. Every now and then, you had somebody that would go out of state on a road trip to Florida or something like that, which I remember growing up, we went to Florida. On a whole, hardly anybody was able to even travel out of New York and get different experiences from different people. With regards to international travel, that was zero. One of the things that it opened my eyes to is that it dispelled a lot of stereotypes of ways that I thought about people. For example, when I think about Germany, back then as a 16 year old, all I thought about was skinheads and neo-Nazi and fascism and Hitler and just bad things that surrounded Germany and its people, but when I got there, what I found out was something totally different. What I found out was that people there want the same things that people in America want, or they want the same things that people all over the world want: safety, security, freedom of movement, and to live their lives in a fair and just way, creating a society that everybody will be proud of. When I was there, you still couldn't really go to Berlin. They had Checkpoint Charlie and all of that was in place. The wall was still up. Actually being there just created a whole different world for me. I was able to literally pop the bubble that I was in and experience the world in a different way, learn different methods to approaching life. In part, it led me to where I am today, to be part of that worldview. Catherine Day: You have, what, 12 students with you? Lamont Slater: We have 12 students. They use critical thought. They're very engaging, and they come from all parts of the U.S. We have three Augsburg students, and then we have students from Saint Thomas as well that's in the local area, one student from there, and then we have students from Clark university in Worcester, Massachusetts. We have a student from the Evergreen State College, and we have students from Valparaiso as well, and then also we have two students from Sienna College that's in Albany, New York as well, so we have students represented from great colleges, and they bring together thought that is very engaging. I'm very proud of these students. Catherine Day: As you're with these 12 students, and you're sharing this personal experience, how you found your particular path into this research, can you tell us any examples of how the students have responded, and what kind of transformations are you seeing in them? Lamont Slater: Being a part of the global education experience, you don't shed your colonized mind overnight, so it's a transformative process, and sometimes, it takes a while. What I tell my students is that great leaders all have some type of transformative process in which it takes a while to get to that point of understanding. If you look at LBJ, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, everybody has started from one point and ended up to another point. Students really connect with that, and they understand, and with regards to previous semesters, like last semester, I had one student, actually, three students from Valparaiso University that we brought on an excursion, and by the way, I mean, part of our program, just very quickly, our program covers classwork, so you're in a class, but it's not a traditional class. It's a experiential learning class in which the instructor kind of facilitates it using his knowledge as a backdrop while the local expert comes in and gives really dictation on how things are going in the region. It's kind of co-taught in a way to provide the local experience, to really focus on that. Then, you have the home stay part of the program in which you have urban and rural home stays in which our students then apply what they learned in the classroom, taking classes on political development, politics of Namibia, history, local history, environment, if they're taking these classes, then once you put them into local people's homes, then they can see how it actually plays out so that it goes from the theoretical process to, how do people actually live their lives? It transforms itself from theory to the practical, and students actually see it, so that's part of the program. And then we have the excursions as well in which we take them to different parts of Namibia. We go to Lüderitz Namibia, which is where from 1884 to 1885, you had the Scramble for Africa, and you had the Berlin conference in which the lines were drawn and Africa was divided up, and in the process of that, where we are now was carved into German southwest Africa, and Lüderitz was the entry point to that vision of Germany, and so we take students to that portion of the country. We also go to Swakopmund. We go to the north where the north is a very unique place, the northern sector of Namibia, which is very unique because most of the current population comes from the north, because that population was not affected by the genocide. And so as a result, that group is dominant within the culture of Namibia, the political landscape, and even the arts world that's here in Namibia, so because of that one event, that singular event, it has shaped the landscape of the country, and students go around to all of these experiences, and it shapes them in a way that along the way, during the four months, because they're experiencing the living experience, the practical experience, I teach the religion and social change course, and so we talk about how the Lutheran church has shaped the way people see things in Namibia. Then, we talk about people that weren't affected by colonization, like for example, when Namibia is spoken about, if you put Namibia in Google, a lot of times, the Himba tribe will come up. And this is a tribe that wears their traditional outfit, but what it actually represents is a people that refused to be colonized in a way that religion forced people to colonize themselves or impose colonization on a group of people that otherwise would not have done that, so the whole process is transformative from how the people are transformed to how they will transform themselves. And then finally, the students also do an internship class in which they have a class, and then they have the actual internship in which we have one of our professors here, professor Alex [inaudible 00:16:49], my colleague here, what he does is he teaches the internship class, and then he places students in internships that are in their major, and so that attributes to the transformation. Catherine Day: Do you have a specific example you could give us, a short vignette you could give us, of a student that gives us a window into that process that you just described? Lamont Slater: Last semester, we had a student that came from Valparaiso, and this student, because of where Valparaiso is located, they have a very low percentage of minority groups that live in the area in Indiana, and we took the student to a location called Kolmanskop. It was an old diamond town in which this town was built on the wealth of the diamond industry. This took place in the beginning of the semester, and what happened in this case is that we ran into a tour guide, mind you that Kolmanskop is privately owned. It's not state owned, so it's privately owned, and because it's privately owned, the message is going to be presented in a certain way to kind of favor the German population in that history. While we were there, I noticed that only one side of the history was presented, and in the distance, they had places where it wasn't slavery, but it was close to indentured servitude. We're talking about having people of color in a diamond mine in the middle of a desert with nowhere to go. They were segregated in an area that was not where the affluent community was. And so the student really came equipped with a view of really not talking about race relations at all, but however, as the semester continued and she started to see inequity, we had to raise an issue about equity in presenting historical information, and it led to some confrontational banter in which the student was not accustomed to part of the Center for Global Education's philosophy is that after we go to an event, we reflect on it, and the student was puzzled by what she saw. She didn't really know how to express herself. However, later in the semester, the student started to understand that apartheid, which was both in South Africa and Namibia, was still present, and she started to understand that even though that she was in a country in Africa that apartheid was there, and so this student went through a major transformation. From the beginning of the semester to when she left, had a total transformation of her understanding of race, not only in southern Africa but in America as well, and went back to her home institution, and I'm sure she's making a difference at Valpo. Catherine Day: There are a couple of terms that I wanted to give you the opportunity to unpack a little bit for us, and I think the one that I want to be sure we talk about is what you mean by de-colonizing a mind. To some extent, that story you just told describes what I think may be the process where a person comes in with one history and understanding, as you pointed out, your own teachings. You grew up without these things being revealed to you, but maybe you can give us some of the definition of that for us? Lamont Slater: Well, when we think about de-colonizing in a Frantz Fanon point of view, he's talking about the experience in Algeria in which a colony becomes self-governing or independent, right, from a point of physicality, but when we talk about de-colonizing of the mind, now we're talking about freeing oneself from a colonial way of thinking and moving forward to a more progressive way of thinking. How does that happen, and how are things colonized? What's really interesting is that we had a speaker named Allan Story, and he gave a talk to our students about living in a fish bowl as a white person. And he said that when you're white, and you're in America, and you're in the fish bowl, you don't even know what water is until you get out of it, so this is a similar example that to de-colonize oneself, you have to be out of your comfort zone, and you have to see it from a different perspective to know that there's inequity there, that histories have been erased or misrepresented. You have to be out of that fish tank to know that the legal system is not equitable to all peoples, and it goes back to the establishment of the colony. If you look at, from a historical point of view, how colonies were established, they had systems in place that prevented movement of people of color. Once colonization occurred, there was legal processes in place that prevented pretty much everything, in the case of America, prevented African Americans the right to own a weapon, have freedom of movement, marry inter-racially, right to vote, I mean, you name it. And so to de-colonize the thinking presents it in a different way. Instead of talking about African Americans beginning at slavery, then you talk about what they were doing prior to slavery, great civilizations that they had. Great Zimbabwe was a great civilization, and the things that happened in Great Zimbabwe, the leadership that was established, the architecture that was established, and so forth and so on. All the great things that happened prior to the so-called European bringing forth ideas that many say are civilized, right? And so to unpack that, you have to de-colonize a person's mind to know that there's an alternative history that's there, but it's not being moved forward because of either some political agenda or some other hidden agenda why minds still need to be colonized. When we talk about de-colonize, we're not just talking about the mind, but we're talking about languages have been colonized. Reason why I'm speaking English is because the colonization process, and to de-colonize our minds, we have to understand that people of color, especially people that came from African countries, they are used to speaking a different language. And the beauty of this language is that students, when they come here, they start learning the language. Here, we have many different languages. When students come, even though they speak English here, part of the de-colonization process is not to continue to focus on Western way and speaking English, but to also connect with local society and at least attempt to de-colonize ourselves and speak the local language. That's part of the process and part of the journey, and so de-colonization is an ongoing process, because it just didn't start overnight. It started almost in every place we can think of in the global south, and it takes a lot to undo, and so that's where we're at. Catherine Day: How long are the students staying in the home stays? Did you say it was three weeks? Lamont Slater: It depends. Students stay in both a urban and rural home stay, so when they're staying in the urban home stay, it's a week. When they come here, they stay overnight for a week in a urban setting, and then later on in the semester, then they go to the rural setting, and then they stay there for the same amount of time, for a week. They also had a home stay in South Africa where they stayed pretty much over the weekend. Catherine Day: What are a couple examples of stories that you hear from the students about their experience in the home stay? What do they discover? Lamont Slater: Some of the things that they discover, which is different than their own personal experience, let's say if it's a young female student, they may describe a household that's unlike theirs, and for example, they may be in a household where there's a patriarchal figure that has headed his household in a way that they're not used to. For example, we had a student that we placed her in a home stay, and she wasn't used to the male figure just giving dictation of what to do in that household to the women that's in there as far as things that he needed, like dinner and different things like that. Now, I always put students in the context of the south because in some cases, you see this same type of patriarchal systems in places in the deep south, so these are some of the things that the students experience, and many are not used to roles, gender roles. Sometimes students will go into a house, and it'll be strict gender roles. For example, washing dishes. There's some houses that young men wash dishes, but for the most part, you're not going to find a lot of men doing that type of role because of the culture that we're in. And so it becomes a shock for students to see that. We let students know that you're not coming with a solution. You're just there to understand how these households work and how you can be a part of this household temporarily without thinking that you're going to bring the solution in. These are some of the things that the students see while they're there, and also, they hear a lot of things as well. There's a listening project in which we have students sit back and listen to some of the things that's going on and use critical thought and critical questioning to really attach the classroom arm of the program to some of the things that they see actually in the home. We're talking about local politics, and we have a big land issue and a big election coming up in South Africa, and students were very curious as to how this repatriation of land will possibly affect the entire nation, and it's just not students extracting information from the people that they're living with. The people that they're living with also would like to know about life under a Trump presidency and living in America and race relations because in a Facebook world, things go viral. You know about how people of color are treated in America, and so it's the sharing of information that makes this a beautiful experience. There's been several different great stories about post-graduation things that happened to our students. We have a student that, after going through the program, went to the fifth year. He graduated from Clark, got his master's at Clark, and then went to Harvard after that, and his focus is on education, a de-colonized education. This student is at Harvard right now going through this program. We also have two students that joined the Peace Corps, two different years as well, and ended up in Sierra Leon together. They were in two different semesters, two different schools in its entirety, yet they ended up in Sierra Leon, partially as a result of the experience that they had with Center for Global Education. It does transform during the semester, after the semester, and then there's also long-term transformation. We have two students right now that's in the VISTA Corps in Montana together going through that program, really getting different experiential learning experiences even after they both graduated. One graduated from University of Puget Sound, and the other graduated from Valpo. And I could go on forever about the different experiences that students are getting and the benefit of the Center for Global Education. Catherine Day: Do you have a dream that you would like to continue to work on in this program and through your work for Augsburg? Lamont Slater: Absolutely. Part of my dream that I would like to see in this continued effort to de-colonize minds is like I said earlier, that study abroad in general, not just with the Center for Global Education, but study abroad in general, making a generalization, has a reputation for just the continued extraction of information and some will say usury with regards to study abroad, to have students come and just get a great experience, and then the actual people that are here are left kind of holding the bag, not really getting a lot of out of the presence of these study abroad centers that are positioned worldwide. And part of this as well is that when we talk about study abroad, historically, people of color have not came to study abroad in greater numbers for many reasons. Part of that is financial, part of it is exposure to information in which one will be able to go and participate in these great experiences, and so taking those two examples that I mentioned, part of the dream that I have, which honestly is becoming a reality as we speak, is to address both of these issues. The first issue would be to talk about lack of minority involvement in study abroad. One of the things that I'm doing now, we have recruitment on the campus of Augsburg, but I also do recruitment when I'm in the states to go to different colleges, and I started to go to historically black colleges, and I will tell you that it is a total eye-opener for many because in many of these cases, they don't even have a study abroad program, or they're in the beginning stages of getting a study abroad program, or even if they have a study abroad program, the focus of going to Africa is not even there. And so when I'm at these institutions and bringing this information and also bringing my personal research to people of color as well, because I also went to a historically black college, it motivates folks to really get involved with study abroad to the point that next semester, I just went to Mississippi Valley State University to give a talk and to talk about study abroad, well, for the first time, we have a student from Mississippi Valley State University that may be going to the Center for Global Education, the Augsburg University program, next semester as a result of that trip. And so that's the dream coming to reality. The second part I wanted to make sure that I convey is that with regards to extraction. Everywhere I go here, people come up to me, and they always say, "Hey, can a Namibian go to the Center for Global Education? Can they go to Augsburg University in Minneapolis?" And the answer often times is no, because even though we have articulation agreements and MOUs in place, the reality of it is that many students can't afford to go. It's very complex for universities to get students for a semester basis back to the home institution, et cetera. One of the things that I'm working on and the international resident advisor that's here, what we're both working on, is to come up with ways ... Her name by the way is Lulama Moyo. We're working on ways that we can get students that are local to participate more with the Center for Global Education. For example, in my classes, I work with a lot of professors from the University of Namibia, and a lot of times, they come and speak to our classes. Well, one of the things that I'm working on this semester is to do some joint teaching, and so one week, I'll have the professor's class come to the center, and we'll participate in a joint class. Then, another week, we'll have our students go to University of Namibia and become part of that class, so then we're expanding the campus environment so when students come, they don't have to just feel constricted to the CGE house. They start building a global village, and at the same time, students that are local become exposed to our classroom instruction and possibly that student can be on the road to bigger things. I'm trying to come up with a way that we can have a student come back to America for a conference that's Namibian, and so we have to continue to come up with ways to really connect with the local student as well so it can be a true study abroad global exchange and partnership whereas we can create this just and global society that we envision and that we talk about, that we actually put it into the practical realm. Catherine Day: It's been a real pleasure to learn about the work of the Center for Global Education and your specific focus. We thank you so much for taking time to share your story with us today. Lamont Slater: Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Catherine Day: This has been Catherine Reed Day, host of the Augsburg podcast, speaking with Lamont Slater, program coordinator and lecturer for the Center for Global Education speaking with us today from Windhoek, Namibia. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg podcast. I'm president Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit Augsburg.edu.

Stacy Freiheit: The value that I want to impart is that people become aware of their own values so that students are able to articulate what their values are. Once they know what their values are, that can help them in their interactions with other people, to recognize that not everybody is going to have the same values, they're not going to rank-order their values, I guess, in the same way and, yet, how to still be open to other value systems, other ideas and how to work with other people come to consensus and figure out how to be effective together. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast, and, today, I'm speaking with Stacy Freiheit, associate professor of psychology at Augsburg, and we're going to focus a bit on some research and how it connects to students' learning and their direction. Welcome, Stacy. Stacy Freiheit: Thank you. Catherine Day: When did you come to Augsburg? What was your path here? Stacy Freiheit: I started at Augsburg full time in 2005, and this came after a period of time when I was working as a part-time professor at some institutions in the Twin Cities. I had young children at home, and so I was a stay-at-home mom for a little bit of time after I'd earned my Ph.D. and loved teaching, loved research, so I continued part time and knew that, at some point, I wanted to go into full-time teaching and research, and so it was in 2005, when my youngest was in kindergarten, that I was very fortunate that Augsburg had an opening, and I started in a limited-term position and I was hired for a tenure track position in 2006, and I've been here ever since. Catherine Day: Where did you first discover your passion for the field of psychology? Stacy Freiheit: The first time I took a psychology course was at junior in high school, and I really loved the course and, at that time in my life, that wasn't saying much because I loved just about every course I was taking in high school, and then same in college, but when I was a senior in high school, one of my friends was having a challenge, and so we talked about it, and she came back to me a few days later and said, "One of the things that you said I really thought about," and she said it was very helpful, and that's just a moment that I still remember today, that sometimes the things that we say, things that we do when we listen to other people could be really impactful and helpful. When I was a sophomore in my undergraduate years, I had to literally sit myself down and decide what it was I wanted to major in and what I wanted to do. It was a time to declare a major, and so that was one of the moments in my life that I turn back to and realize I'm one of those stereotypical people in mental health, the people that friends come and talk to, and you're known as the listener in the group. That, combined with that moment with my friend, with my interest in psychology classes and with just this belief at the time, which has not been disproven since, that people are fascinating, there are always be things to learn, there will never be anything stagnant about psychology and the study of psychology and helping people that I decided I would declare psychology as my major and do what I needed to do to earn my doctorate in clinical psychology. I was fortunate and able to do that. Catherine Day: I think Augsburg as a university tends to embrace things that not everyone embraces, and so when I think about our culture around mental health and that there's a great deal of activism right now to make it normal to address mental health issues, to look at our human operating system, what's the position you take if you will? As you are a leader in the field of psychology, how do see it? Stacy Freiheit: I think that there are some really wonderful moments and opportunities to learn again from people across a variety of cultures and traditions in terms of understanding mental health. One of the things that's really fascinating about being a professor at Augsburg is we do have students from a variety of cultures who will talk about in an abnormal psychology class, "People in my community, we don't think about mental health this way. We don't think about mental treatment this way," and yet they're sometimes in these courses recognizing that there might be some value to the mental health system as it's constructed right now and that maybe this is something that they would like to bring to their community, a recognition that some of these things maybe are concerns for an individual and that there are some interventions other than maybe traditional interventions that could be helpful, so it just expands the range of potential opportunities for someone who might be struggling, again, with recognition that some of those interventions may work and some may not. Catherine Day: Is the field of psychology popular here at the university? Is it a high demand? Stacy Freiheit: It is one of the more popular majors, and I don't know exactly where we rank, but I think we're second or third maybe in terms of students who are majoring in psychology. We do have a number of students who will go into the field and will go on to graduate school, so, in particular, the students I tend to work with in my lab, about 40% of them go on to graduate school and earn a master's and work in mental health or a few of them will also go on to earn their doctorate and typically work in a counseling or a clinical capacity, and then are a wide range of things that students do outside of that, so there are a number of things you can do with a psychology degree. We have students who go into business and to management, into lots of human service capacities, but just a wide range of things. Catherine Day: I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what you have found that you are learning from your students, what do they bring to you? Stacy Freiheit: They bring a lot. One of the things that's really exciting in my research lab and the students I work with on research projects is sometimes they have an idea that they want to pursue, and so they bring these ideas that I never would have thought to study, and I let them know I don't have expertise in this area. I'm certainly willing to do this project, but if you're looking for an expert, I'm not going to be that person right now, and so, together, we pursue the projects. I can certainly help with the research skills and what needs to happen as far as the project goes, but we learn the content together, so I've learned about things like spiritual struggles. I've learned about sexual assault disclosure and factors related to reporting sexual assaults. I've learned about emotion regulation and substance use. That's just a sampling of some of the topics of late, but it's really interesting to see what excites and energizes the students and just follow some of those questions in addition to the ones that I'm interested in. I have two main areas that I'm interested in, and one is this area called evidence-based practices for anxiety, and so one of the things I take a look at is how well the lab-based interventions, those that are shown to be effective in university lab settings. How are often are those being used in practice outside of the university setting, so, in clinics and in private practice, is the science reaching the practice of psychology? Just this summer, we surveyed a random sample of Minnesota psychologists and we asked them what sorts of interventions they'd used to help people with a variety of anxiety disorders, and we gathered a sense for half, and they're using what I refer to as cognitive interventions, where it's examining how a person thinks about things and the impact of their thoughts on their mood, and we also looked at how often they were using generally what I refer to as behavioral exposure-based interventions, so, essentially, one thing that can be helpful with anxiety is doing exactly what it is your anxiety is asking you not to do, and we found that a lot of practitioners, the majority, vast majority use the cognitive interventions, but far fewer practitioners use the behavioral exposure interventions. Oftentimes, with anxiety, there is a sense of very strong, impending danger in some way, potential for harm, and that's a very loud thought in the person's mind and, it makes a lot of sense, what they would want to do is to avoid that harm or that potential danger, so, the behavioral response or what they might do is to avoid whatever it is their thoughts are telling them as dangerous. Catherine Day: If they're afraid to literally go out the front door of their home, which is a common anxiety, I believe, if they were to let that rule them, they might never go out again. Stacy Freiheit: Exactly. Catherine Day: Applying the behavioral, which you said, as I heard it, encouraged them to go and do the thing that they're most frightened of. What did you learn in that research then if they... you were studying this combination or lack thereof? Stacy Freiheit: What we learned is that practitioners are more likely, when they have a client who would be describing an anxiety like that, be more likely to exam the thoughts with the client to consider other ways of thinking about the situation, but would not necessarily be encouraging their client to actually practice going outside of that door, though there certainly are practitioners who do that, that there are fewer practitioners who would use that as part of the helping intervention. Catherine Day: Were students involved in this survey you did? Stacy Freiheit: Yeah, there was as a student involved in the survey this summer. Catherine Day: Yeah, and what was your experience? Can you tell us a little bit about what it's like to have a student working with you? Stacy Freiheit: The student was just phenomenal. We worked together over the summer. She was a McNair scholar, and so she worked for full time, 40 hours a week for 10 weeks on the project, and we met on a regular basis to discuss the progress on the project. She adeptly managed the actual surveying of the psychologists she was involved in, the randomization, so we obtained the lists from the Minnesota Board of Psychology and randomly got a list of psychologists. She then was actively engaged in entering the data, and we analyzed the data together, and she brought all this together in a presentation that she then brought to a McNair conference in Buffalo, New York. Catherine Day: As part of the McNair scholars that's a prestigious funding, as I understand, that... Stacy Freiheit: It is. Catherine Day: ... allows that person to be paid, and then it also paid for the presentation. Stacy Freiheit: It did, yeah, and she has currently applied for Ph.D. programs and will probably be hearing back soon about those, so, yeah. Catherine Day: She's motivated? Stacy Freiheit: She is. She's very motivated. She's fantastic. Catherine Day: Some of the other research you've done, I believe you mentioned a couple of things, the field of gratitude and some work in kindness, how do people respond to that as research questions? Stacy Freiheit: One of the things that is really wonderful about gratitude is that it costs very little and yet can be very impactful in the person's life. Some of the research on gratitude suggests that spending some time gratitude journaling can be related to well-being several months later, and, again, this isn't something where I'm spending several hours a day. It could be just coming up with a short list of things each day, just a couple of minutes, and even the search for something that you're grateful for can improve mood, so you don't even have to come up with an answer. Just asking yourself to consider it can boost a person's mood at least for a short time, and, again, some studies would indicate even for a longer period of time. I've worked with a couple of students on some different gratitude projects, and there's an emerging literature about gratitude and its impact on depressed moods, so sadness, and we were interested in whether or not this applied to anxiety as well, so he, in his project, asked students to journal for a week on gratitude and on something neutral to see if the gratitude journaling impacted their anxiety a week later, and we found it was... It did have an impact on both anxiety and sadness. Another student compared different types of gratitude practice, so what if I read something about gratitude versus write down something about... something that I'm grateful for to see if there was a difference. Do you have to be active in thinking about your gratitude? What he found in his project is that the active listing of things I'm grateful for had a stronger impact than reading about what somebody else was grateful for. Catherine Day: Was he studying other Augsburg students or how... Yeah. Stacy Freiheit: Yeah. Yeah. Catherine Day: He was in relationship to his community? Stacy Freiheit: He was. Catherine Day: What did he find in that process? I realize you just report the data, but... Stacy Freiheit: Right. Catherine Day: ... I mean, what was that experience like for him? It's an intimate conversation. Stacy Freiheit: What he ended up doing is actually he's now in a master's program where he's studying positive psychology, so I think, in some ways, he came in with an interest, and it was just confirmed. He came in with an interest about how do we impact students, maybe not necessarily in college, I think he was interested in younger students, in younger years in school, but the impact of these positive psychological interventions on the individual, and I think, just in his experience with the project, it confirmed that interest and that it can be helpful. I have had students who recognized that I was the adviser for either of these projects in a class that they were taking with me and mentioned that, "I kept doing that. It was really helpful to be a participant in that project," so it's interesting, the responses, the general positive responses that people have on both sides of those projects. Positive psychology I would say started to make a mark about the turn of the century, and it was an interest in- Catherine Day: Of which century? Stacy Freiheit: Oh, sorry, 2000. Catherine Day: Okay. Stacy Freiheit: Yeah. Yeah. Catherine Day: The brand new century, so... Stacy Freiheit: Right. Catherine Day: ... less than 20 years ago. Stacy Freiheit: I think it extended, it certainly started earlier than that. I know there's been research about how do people feel. They're doing well-being since the 1980s, but it seemed that it really started to gain some traction, and I think given the new, the turn of the new century in 2000, it seemed a good time to consider another direction in psychology. At least in clinical psychology, there was an emphasis in the past on how do we solve problems, and it was very problem-focused, and that makes a lot of sense because, when people are hurting, absolutely, we need to address that, and then, at some point along the way, a recognition came along that, at the same time, we could also be looking at what are people's strengths, so that's one of the foci of the positive psychology movement or that area of research is what are people's strengths, how is it that they constructed good life, how to be happy, I think in part, too, how to feel good about life, and it's really interesting to see that in roughly the last, again, couple of decade-ish that it seems something that there's a lot of intuitive appeal. It's gained traction in a relatively short amount of time that even some countries are highlighting the importance of well-being in their citizens and how to go about promoting well-being in their citizens and that psychology is impacting broader society in those ways at least in some nations and some countries, so there's something that is hard for me to articulate, but I'm drawn by those questions. Catherine Day: One of the things that I think people don't always recognize about an Augsburg education is the degree to which excellence actually informs the curriculum here and is an aspiration. How would you talk about the approach here to excellence and standards of learning and achievement if you will? Stacy Freiheit: I can speak in particular about the psychology department and our commitment to really educating our students in the knowledge and attitudes and skills around a particular scholarly work at research, and we have a strong commitment to working with our students on projects that they then bring to on-campus research conferences, to statewide undergraduate conferences. Many of us also travel with students to regional and professional conferences, and we hear from our alums when the come back that they really feel well-prepared, they really understand research, which is core to psychology, and for those who on to graduate school will talk about like they're oftentimes mentoring other students in their graduate program, say had a lot of experience, had a lot of opportunity to learn the skills of conducting a solid research project. That's one of the things I think I can point to specifically in our department where that's a highly valued activity in our department, and whether or not a student wants to go on in research, it's important, the critical thinking skills and how to bring a lot of critical thinking, thinking through numbers, understanding how to use numbers, what numbers can tell you, what they may be misleading about, so evaluating numbers, how to ask the question and go attempt to answer it and then synthesize all that information. Catherine Day: You mentioned alumni. I'm just curious, you don't need to name names, but are there some alumni who come to mind as particularly involved and engaged with the campus who make a contribution back by bringing their skills and knowledge, and what does that look like when they come back? Who are they interacting with? Stacy Freiheit: We have recently over the last few years had an annual alumni panel event where we connect Auggie alums with the current psychology majors to get a sense for what sorts of things do people do when they're done at Augsburg, and so we try to bring alums from a variety of different professional backgrounds. When our alums come back, oftentimes, they're meeting with students. Sometimes, we have alums who happen to be in town and want to stop by and say hi. In particular, with our new Hagfors Center, they're super excited about our new spaces, and we have a lot of alums who come back, so it's really nice to see this connection. Initially, to me, when I started Augsburg, it was surprising to me that students will come back. They come back. They're excited to see you. They want to let you know what they're up to and that they maintain that connection. It probably shouldn't have been surprising, but it was. Catherine Day: When you think about any dream you have for this next phase of your teaching and research, what might it be? Stacy Freiheit: I would love for all of our psych majors to have a conference experience, so, to work on some faculty, student project or student-led projects that they then bring to a regional conference. I think it's really there that the connection between their education and what they do afterward becomes really apparent. It becomes really clear to them why they've been asked to do all the things they've been asked to do as a psychology major and see how it can make a difference, see how this does advance the science of psychology, see how these science conversations are happening, and I think, in those moments, it clicks. It is one of those transformative experiences where that light bulb goes on and you go, "Aha, this is why I had to take those methods and stats courses. This is why I had to take these particular content courses. This is why I needed to learn that knowledge." I also think it's, as part of that, one of the things we already do is we require all of our students to an internship off-campus, and we figured out how to do that. We have a lot of students who are engaged in research. I'd love to get to a point where all of them could. Catherine Day: What would help to make that happen? What would fulfill those dreams? Is it exclusively resources? Is that the main component? Stacy Freiheit: I think that is, yeah. I think it's resources. It's time, faculty, student projects in particular. Those that would be potentially competitive for regional and national professional conferences take a lot of time on the students' part and on the faculty's part, so part of it is time, and then it's travel cost. It's conference costs. That would be another, I think, opportunity for growth and support in that activity. Whether a student, again, is interested in pursuing that in the future, it's just a really wonderful summative experience. We've been bringing a handful of students over the last couple of years to Midwest Psychological Association conference in Chicago, and it's just a really fun experience for them to be also at a conference with their fellow students. There's a nice sense of camaraderie there. They're wonderfully supportive of each other, so it's a really nice capstone experience. Catherine Day: Is there something else you wanted to tell us about Augsburg and its psychology program as you look to the celebration of the Sesquicentennial? Stacy Freiheit: There are lots of wonderful opportunities I think for psychology students at Augsburg. Whether they're interested in bringing their skills to the community directly and working in human service positions, again, a variety of other careers or going on into graduate school, conducting research, we really do support all these potential outcomes for students. We prepare them for both, again, with our course work, with their internship opportunities, with service learning projects where, as part of their course, they volunteer off-campus and make connections between their education, what they're learning in class and what they're doing off-campus, how does that apply and, again, also the research experience, so all these things prepare them really well for whatever next step it might be. Catherine Day: Thank you, Stacy, for sharing your story with us today and for taking time for the Augsburg Podcast. Stacy Freiheit: Thank you. Catherine Day: We've been speaking with Stacy Freiheit from the psychology department. This is Catherine Reid Day, and this has been the Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Sarah Riveros: I cannot teach Spanish for tourism. So many times, I take a critical eye to the textbook and recognize that I'm not preparing students for future vacations. We learn Spanish from our neighbors, and being bilingual makes us more able to listen and believe that there isn't one way of living in the world. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educated students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: Hello. I'm Catherine Reed Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast, and today, I'm speaking with Sarah Degner Riveros, lecturer in Spanish. Welcome, Sarah. Sarah Riveros: Thank you so much. Catherine Day: Could you start of us off by sharing how you ended up being a lecturer in Spanish? You are not from a Spanish country. You're not from a Spanish-speaking family. How did that happen? Sarah Riveros: I grew up in Chicago and in Texas and started learning Spanish at a recreation center, Spanish and French, six weeks each from a Brazilian teacher. And also, as a homeschooled child, had a friend of our family from church came over and told fairytales in Spanish. Her husband was from Spain. I was a Suzuki violin student, starting at age three, and so I developed a good ear. My mom is a musician. As a rebel, at age 12, when I decided to go to public school, I told my parents I was gonna call the truant officer if they didn't let me try public school. I had to pick two electives, and my dad thought that, if I learned Spanish, I would be employable, and he was right. I've always been able to find a job that I loved. And I grew up in the border lands. I grew up in Texas, in a community where there were a lot of latino families, Mexican families. The border moved. Texas was Mexico for a long time and some folks say still is. And so, people in the community took me under wing, took me along to travel, and practiced with me in the community. So, I had teachers everywhere from a young age. In eighth grade, one of my electives was choir and the other was Spanish, and so, in public school, I took five years of Spanish and moved back to Chicago when I was 17. Catherine Day: I'm interested in this little statement that you made in that answer that the border moved, and I would like to linger on that for just a minute. I'd like to unpack what you mean by that, historically, obviously, but also maybe a little bit about is there maybe something about that experience of a moved border that informs your teaching now? Sarah Riveros: Well, Texas is a place that has lived under six flags, and so perhaps, Texas breeds some anarchists in believing in self governance. We create our own worlds. We create our own communities. We co-create our own families. I don't really consider myself a Texan anymore, but I think that borders are scars on the plan, written through history and by war, often through violence, and borders also mark our bodies and our families. Living in Chicago, in Indiana, and now in Minnesota, I speak Spanish a lot of the time, and I send my youngest to pre-K at Rondo, a community that was split by highway 94 that I take to work every day. But that split also divided a community and knocked out businesses and separated families from each other. I recognize the privilege that borders provide ease to some folks and also create great heartache and terror for a lot of people. Catherine Day: Just a minute ago, before we started talking, you read me a poem, a couple of poems. You read them, first, in Spanish, and then you actually read one to me and you translated it yourself for me, and then you checked the translation in the book, and I found that just a fabulous experience because just when you told me what the other word... the word choice of the translator was versus the word you used, I so preferred the word you had chosen. In each of the cases, it made me wish I had that fluidity. I wish I had that agency that you're talking about. I would love for you to just touch a little bit on what you mean by not teaching for tourism. What does that look like here? Sarah Riveros: I think there's a great risk of thinking of ourselves as consumers, being content to live in an empire, exploiting other parts of the world through capitalism. The world doesn't exist as our backyard. The world doesn't exist to provide goods and services at a low cost for us. And yet, sometimes we don't know how the food gets onto our plates that we enjoy. We don't know who made our clothing, where did our socks come from. And making connections in Central America, in mexico, through Augsburg Center for Education and Experience and through the Nobel Peace Prize forum through Witness for Peace, an organization that brings testimony from Latin American countries. I've learned to listen differently and to teach differently, to look at the world through a human rights lens, and that means living smaller and thinking critically about what I need, what I deserve. Catherine Day: What are the topics that you're addressing in your classes? Sarah Riveros: I teach Spanish language, first year, Spanish 111, 112, every semester, and I also teach Spanish composition using a textbook; Spanish Composition Through Literature, where students have the chance to try different genres and registers in writing, but we also read Sandra Cisneros in that course. [Spanish 00:06:34], The House on Mango Street. And Francisco Jiménez [Spanish 00:06:39], the memoirs of [Spanish 00:06:42], a child who grew up in a family of migrant workers in California. And so, we read these fictionalized memoirs and students explore their own childhoods to mine their memories for stories. That's my favorite class. That's Spanish 311, and it's the gateway course to the upper division courses for majors and minors. I also teach Spanish conversation course, Oral Expression, Spanish 312. In that course, this semester, we're doing podcasts, modeling ourselves on the example of podcasts by Radio Ambulante, which was recently acquired by NPR. Radio Ambulante does interviews and tells stories around Latin America, and so, my students are telling their stories through interviews. Catherine Day: Who's the host of that podcast? Sarah Riveros: Camila Segura is a colleague of mine from graduate school, and she founded it when it was very small. Now Daniel Alarcón is her co-host, and there are others, I think, also working on that podcast. Catherine Day: Our listeners could find that podcast- Sarah Riveros: Oh, sure. Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's online. Radio, like Radio, Ambulante, like walking radio or ambulatory, ambulance. Catherine Day: Let's go back to the students exploring these stories and these fictionalized memoirs. I see the connection back to some of the things you were saying earlier that your invitation to the students is to question some things about their experience, to perhaps even take the time to think about this tomato on their plate and who picked it, who grew it, who watered it, who was necessary. What happens in that process? Sarah Riveros: We read the stories together in class, by Francisco Jiménez, and also explore the online archive of the Farm Workers Movement. And so, we're looking at archival materials from history, as well as stories from a childhood in the 1940s and 50s, before Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta were organization farm workers. There are themes in those stories about, for example, a Christmas gift, a Christmas that was unexpectedly painful, a disappointment. And so, I ask students to take those general themes and think of their own stories and tell a story, in their own words, that they can then share with the class. Without meaning to, as we tell our stories, we do examine privilege. We examine obstacles that we've had to overcome, and the material benefits that have been present supporting us in our lives. I think storytelling is a safe way to do that because we own our stories. We believe them. We know they're true. When an author shares a story with us, it's a gift that opens a window into a world that otherwise we might not have known, and it's an invitation for us to do the same, to take a lens and look at our lives carefully, critically, and to believe ourselves. Students gain a lot of confidence by writing, and then, in workshop, in small groups, in groups of two or three to share their stories and echo back words that resonate. And then, by the end of the semester, we can have a literary reading where have a party. We enjoy sharing food and taking turns, taking the mic and sharing stories in Spanish. There's a lot of confidence in having a collection, a story collection and saying, "This is me. This is where I came from." Catherine Day: You are inviting the students to bring their whole self into the classroom when they visit their own story. I'd like you to talk a little bit about the fact that you also are planning to share with your colleagues in a speech you're gonna give later today, as it turns out, that this is a place that you can bring your whole self. What does that mean? What does it mean to bring your whole self, and what do you see when your students are bringing their whole selves here? Sarah Riveros: I have felt, since the first time I stepped foot on this campus, that Augsburg is a safe place for taking risks. I came to the interview with a baby and a three year old wearing a Spider-Man costume, and- Catherine Day: They were in the interview you, those two? Sarah Riveros: No, they were on campus. Catherine Day: They were on campus. Okay. Sarah Riveros: On the first sunny day in March, when the weather turned nice and students started wearing shorts and enjoying the sunshine, and I recognized immediately that this a place where people can be creative. I saw bright colors of clothing and hair, and people dressed in unique ways, as the city invites us to do, and I could tell, in the classroom that this is a place where people do show up with their whole selves, imperfections and all. This is a safe place for making mistakes. It's a safe place for exploring possibility. It's a safe place for figuring out who we are and what our calling is, and I needed that badly. I had experienced domestic violence and was wearing borrowed clothes from my sister at that interview. I hadn't been home in a number of weeks and was surviving with five kids by spending my savings to stay in a motel, and Augsburg took a risk, took a chance on me, and I took a risk, too. I really felt and feel called to this place, to this time. Catherine Day: Let's talk about the time, because again, you have some thoughts about memory and the moment that the institutions [inaudible 00:12:33] to, say, look back on 150 years as it thinks about moving forward. What does that mean to you? Sarah Riveros: May I quote a poem? Catherine Day: Sure. Sarah Riveros: This past summer, I visited Augsburg's study campus in [inaudible 00:12:48] Guatemala, and the director, Fidel [Chinico 00:12:51], took a group of students to visit the museum of memory in Guatemala city, and at the entryway to that Museum of Memory is a poem by Humberto Ak'abal, a Mayan Kʼicheʼ poet who became an ancestor and passed on last week. His words really resonated with me. [Spanish 00:13:12] A rough translation would be "From time to time, I walk backwards. It is my way of remembering. If I only walk forwards, I will be able to tell you what it is like to forget." I think, without that piece of reflection, without looking back, looking inward, looking at our history where we've come from, it's easy to forget to be grateful for who we are and for those who have held doors open for us and made a place for us and called us to be who we are at this time and this place. And so, I think it's very important to acknowledge and look back with gratitude. None of us got here alone. Catherine Day: And so, that's a reference to privilege, which is one of the things you said earlier, is something you want the students to look at that... if I can put words in your mouth, it implies to me that you're suggesting every one of us on this campus has some form of privilege. Sarah Riveros: Yes. Catherine Day: That we've experienced. Some door has been held open for us. Probably would not be on this campus had that not happened over and over again. And I also hear in what you're saying something about reflecting on our flaws, our imperfections, some of the difficult things that our a part of our memory and our history. What are a few things that are surfacing right now with students and with you in the classroom as you explore what's coming up because of that reflection, this moment, looking back and looking forward? Sarah Riveros: I suffer from imposter syndrome, but maybe that's not the right word for it. I recognize that I learn more from my students than they learn from me and that they're investing in an education for a world that I don't always feel prepared to get them ready for. A college education isn't a beginning of lifelong learning, and the world is changing. My PhD did not prepare me for the world that I live in now, bilingual, multiracial family that I'm raising. Single motherhood in a big city and the 60 or so students per semester who trust me to decolonize the curriculum. I am coming to the painful awareness, as an academic, that white supremacy is alive and well in the ivory tower, and as a white woman teaching Spanish, that's a terrible thing to realize. Realizing that comes with responsibility for changing myself and getting out of the way. I look forward to seeing the future at this place and to seeing the students who are studying now in roles of leadership and for their voices to leave a legacy here, for some of them to come back and teach here in years to come, to teach my children. Catherine Day: One of the interesting things, I think, about an Augsburg education is that it has a lot of humility. Sometimes, it's so humble that it doesn't let the world know how great things are here. I think these opportunities to talk gives us a window into what is great here. Let's dive a little deeper. Maybe you have a couple of student stories, a couple of illustrations. You don't have to use their names, but you can just characterize some experiences. What kinds of leadership are you seeing as you get out of the way and they step forward to show you what the future could look like for us? Sarah Riveros: I've seen students recently modeling a culture that's not punitive but restorative. I've had the opportunity here at Augsburg to teach Spanish I and II in a prison setting, in a college in prison program, a collaboration among a number of Twin Cities colleges. That has confirmed for me that punishment doesn't get us anywhere. And to see student leaders not just calling injustices that they see but working to build relationships. And to learn together, collaboratively. That's very powerful. That takes an awful lot of spirit, a lot of faith, a lot of courage and hope in the future, and that's contagious. That's a gift that our students bring to us because they have... many of our students live in more than one world. They code switch. They know how to speak three languages. By the time they get to campus, they've spoken three languages every morning. The way they speak with their families and in the community and on social media and during the commute and in the classroom. They switch registers and sometimes literally switch languages and sometimes switch ways of communicating within English. That ability to be that resilient is what invites older people, like me, to a place at the table, to say, "There's room for you, too. You can still learn a lot and you have a lot to learn. That degree is not an invitation to sit on your laurels, but rather, it does give a position of power to facilitate dialogue through which we all learn a lot." Catherine Day: The institution is preparing itself for some major investments. It's inviting major investment in itself, which in itself is a bold and exciting leap of faith. As you think about those investments, what dreams do you hope they will fuel? Sarah Riveros: Well, selfishly, I would say in languages and cultures. I would really enjoy seeing us create more teaching materials and teaching opportunities for teaching and practicing justice through language and culture. I think we also have amazing campuses in Cuernavaca, Mexico and in Chela, Guatemala, and what a privilege for our students and staff and faculty to experience Augsburg in those places and to do home stays and feel a sense of calling to our bigger human family by making really strong connections in those communities that are part of Augsburg. I would love to see investment and growth in study abroad. This city is a classroom. This city is a learning environment that's so rich with culture, and so, to have students practicing activism, learning leadership in the laboratory that is the city, making art, leaving a lasting legacy as murals on the walls of this city, I would love to see that sort of investment. Catherine Day: What's caught my ear, Sarah, is that you spoke about the story of Mary and you've kind of brought it up to a connection to music and to a story that's been empowering. I wonder if we can dive into that a little bit. Sarah Riveros: I'm part of a faith community called Tapestry, and in December, when we read the story of the incarnation at church, I met our pastor and musicians here in chapel service and that's how I became part of faith community. It's a bilingual worshiping community in Richfield. My family has been there for a couple of years now. We sing in the salsa band. My four-year-old son likes to play rhythm, and I sing. That community has become like family to us. This past December, when we celebrated the incarnation, we sang three versions of the Magnificat, and they really stuck with me, especially one in Latin that I've been signing as I walked across the walking bridge from Steward to campus. Mary's words are so powerful, as she gives consent. I grew up Lutheran, and so this brave, optimistic, 12-year-old feminist was missing from my childhood and that voice of a young woman saying yes to the impossible and being willing to lend her body to the incarnation of hope is a model of courage for me. The Magnificat is Mary's conversation with the angel Gabriel, and she's speaking to the Lord. She says, "The Lord has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich, he has sent away empty." And I live in this juxtaposition, as a single mother of five children, with the privilege of a job as a professor in an amazing big city, as someone who struggles to have faith in the government sometimes, as someone uncomfortable with a position of power. In the classroom, I want my classroom to be a democracy. I want students to have their needs met and their voices heard, and yet, I can't... I'm the one who holds the grade book and I have to recognize that. As I recognize the problem of white supremacy in academia and the way that privilege benefits me for labor I haven't done, this prayer gives a lot of hope to see suppressed voices empowered, to hear heritage speakers of Spanish gain confidence in speaking the language of their family, of their childhood, that they've heard spoken at home perfectly and yet, and not had the self confidence to claim. To see that process happening in the classroom before my eyes is such a privilege. Catherine Day: Sarah Degner Riveros, thank you for sharing with us the courage of your voice and the idea that you have found a welcoming place to work and connect in community. Sarah Riveros: Thank you. Catherine Day: This is Catherine Reed Day, and this has been the Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Ankita Deka: My goal is to create these critical pedagogical experiences for the students where they master these concepts and learn to develop skills, but more importantly, where there is also some critical consciousness raising, where they're able to question how normative values around institutions of hegemony, how they have framed these knowledge bases. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast, and today I'm speaking with Ankita Deka, associate professor of social work at Augsburg University, and we're going to explore a little bit of her historical roots in her work in social work here today. Welcome, Ankita. Ankita Deka: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Catherine Day: It would be wonderful to hear a little bit of the path you took to find your way to your field of interest, as well as your place here at Augsburg, and that's kind of a long journey, but maybe we can take it in a couple of parts. Where did you grow up? Ankita Deka: It certainly is a very long journey, and I think it all started where I was growing up, but more importantly, I think even when I was born. I was born in 1979, in a small state called Assam in the northeastern part of India, and Assam, for those that are geographically unfamiliar, we border Bangladesh. We are very close to Myanmar, and we're also in general very close to Southeast Asia. I was born in the year when the Assam Movement, which was basically a student led movement that were fighting against immigrants in Assam, which included people from other parts of India as well as mostly from Bangladesh. Well, it resonates with our times right now for sure. This was at its peak, and so in some way I think from my initial years, my primary years were formative in the way that the civic unrest informed who I was going to be or who I was becoming. My parents were relatively financially secure. We were middle class. Of course, the notion of middle class has its own cultural context. In my case, I come from a three generation of educators. My great grandfather was a primary school, what we would call elementary school here teacher. My grandfather gave up his law career to be a headmaster or principal. He set up the first high school in post-independent India in the village that he grew up in. And then I am the third generation educator in my family. So we had a lot of social class, social class that did not necessarily resonate the same way as it does here in the US. We had social class that came from education, not necessarily from money, and to a lot of degree, that shielded me from some of the precariousness that my generation of folks otherwise felt in that generation where there was a lot of civic unrest. The state was sort of falling apart, multiple secessionist movements both from India and both sort of again from the state of Assam. So to some degree, I think it's fair to characterize that all of that were pretty formidable in ways that they shaped me as an individual. Catherine Day: When did you begin to transition to a different place that you were going to grow up and learn? Ankita Deka: I think that is where I perhaps have to underscore the fact that even as I feel that each of us that arrived here in the United States, we have a unique story to tell, we have an immigrant story, and yet we are not a monolithic imagination. We also carry, besides the fact that we're all immigrants, we have other intersectional identities such as nation of origin, race, class, gender. All of that frames sort of our contemporary experiences here in the US, and I say that only because sometimes this whole idea of resiliency around certain groups of immigrants is overplayed in the public narrative to pit us against each other. That framing allows me to answer that question a little bit better, because despite sort of all of these complexities and really volatile times that I was growing up in, I had the comfort of family. I had the comfort of steadiness in socioeconomic class, and I was one of the fortunate ones that actually had an opportunity to leave, because I eventually did when I was 17. The state was almost at the crossroads, and my generation in particular, we felt a sense of dejection and hopelessness and there weren't very many opportunities left in the state of Assam, which is when I turned 17, my parents sent me to New Delhi to pursue my university degree or as is often known in India, to study college. I went to Delhi University and I earned my undergraduate degree in English literature, and beyond that I went to one of India's top schools of social work, in fact, social science. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. I got my master's degree from there with a specialization in urban and rural development. I had really never thought about becoming a social worker because I think one of the urgency that you have when you grew up under those circumstances is that there's a certain sense of complacency that builds around you. You feel the dejection, you feel the hopelessness, but you do not feel the urgency to be engaged in that change. And I was perhaps one among that in the generation where I was taught that the only way you can help the circumstance is not being another liability. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to find opportunities where I could better my personal self, personal professional self, and where I could do something with my life, simply put. So when I went to Tata Institute of Social Sciences, I quite didn't understand in all honesty what social work really meant. I perhaps went there seeking better opportunities for myself, because it was just such a well reputed place, and I felt fortunate that I was able to get a place there. I arrived in Mumbai naive, and much of my naivety, again, wasn't just framed by ignorance, but it was also framed I believe by my own set of privileges. And in this case, most importantly my caste, which is not the exact proxy for race, but in this case let's just kind of make that the equivalent, and my social class. But while being at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, not just pedagogically, but the up close and center interactions that I had with issues such as poverty, homelessness, child welfare, mental health, I think really went on to have pretty significant life changing impact on me, and cliched as it seems, there was that moment of reckoning where I of course had to deal with my own sense of guilt, which isn't a very helpful place to be, because guilt doesn't further it, but it started there. It started with this sense of guilt that I see, I saw this every day and yet hadn't approached it quite in the same way. And so really my unlearning of my own experiences and my worldview and my lens, that shaped the way I experienced my world. I tried taking those pillars off, and those two years that I spent at my master's at Tata Institute of Social Sciences and doing rural and urban placements, I worked in some of the biggest slums in South Asia, including Dharavi. That really began to change me as an individual, and I was fairly young then. I was only about 21 years old at that time. Catherine Day: When you did that searching and after you got your degree, what was the path to getting here to Augsburg? Ankita Deka: I met my husband in a very Bollywood style. Again, very cliched, but I had known my husband approximately or had met him in person probably for three days, and on the fourth day we were married on paper, followed by a big fat Indian wedding. And then a month later I was here in the United States. My husband at that time was a student, and he was at Indiana University, and although I was equipped with a master's degree from one of the best institutes in South Asia, if not in the world, I was incapable of working here because of the visa restrictions. And it was hard to live, frankly, on the $1,300 that my husband was making off his scholarship. So then the rational question to ask was, besides the fact that I didn't want to just sit in that cold apartment in Bloomington by myself, what was I going to do? I knew that at some point I wanted to pursue beyond a master's degree, but it wasn't sort of in my immediate plan and yet it quickly became one after I arrived in the United States, and so I picked up my GRE book, I wrote an exam, and within two months I had secured a place for a fully funded PhD Program at the Indiana University School of Social Work. Catherine Day: My goodness. Ankita Deka: That was my foray into sort of the professional world of social work, but I could certainly build on that. Again, I think in the scheme of life, Augsburg sort of just worked out. I was about to finish my dissertation but hadn't quite wrapped up, and we were wrestling with the idea of spending the rest of our life here in Minnesota because my husband had moved here for a job, and I found this job at Augsburg and I applied, and long story short, I eventually was offered the job, but here's what had happened in the intervening years that I of course have to contextualize to build on this narrative. I went to a school of social work in India that was very radical in nature, and I may have said this while they interviewed me here at Augsburg, was that I went to become a social worker to raise hell. I wasn't going to be a conformist, and my PhD years and experience, although I got a lot out of the program in itself, I learned how to do research, which was very important, but the process also left me very disappointed because the year was 2004, and this was again a seminal moment, I think, in social work history in the US. At that decade, social work was really trying to gain legitimacy as a profession with some of the other helping professions, and we were at the peak of, or quickly to be peaking moment of the evidence based movement. So the way I approached the world, the way I saw structures as being problematic, the way I approach social work as being part of this gamut of the status quo wasn't really an accepted viewpoint at that time, and so I was quite disillusioned by what we were teaching our students to do. Mostly trying to conform without really questioning the very structures that sustain and nurture the many inequities that our service users find themselves in. I was actually wrestling with the idea of whether or not social work was even the right fit for me when Augsburg happened. And then here I am here at Augsburg, and I was really happily surprised to see that this was an entirely different universe, that the faculty here in the Social Work Department had long embraced a social justice pedagogy that tried to address social inequities in a very intentional way, and in a very globally informed way. And there was that moment, I was like, "What? How did this just happen?" We were also the pioneers. My colleagues of course were the pioneers of the intergroup dialogue in social work, which really was avant garde and perhaps still is now for many social work programs in the country. In the end, I was really surprised that after being dejected for almost five, six years about the state of social work and what we were doing in the profession, here I am at Augsburg, really at the front end of trying to teach, or teach to social justice pedagogy, so that's how I landed up here. Catherine Day: You're teaching at the master's level. Ankita Deka: Mostly. Catherine Day: Mostly, and so what's the age range of your students? Ankita Deka: I think it quite varies, which is really a wonderful problem. When I first came to Augsburg, 2008, I do have to ... And this is, again, not statistically based, although this is purely sort of anecdotal, but my experience was then there were a lot of students who were coming back to school to get an advanced degree, perhaps because that was something they wanted to do after years of practice, or because that was going to help them get a step up in their job. But I think the scenario changed after the recession. Now we do see a lot of students that are coming through the pipeline straight after undergraduate degree, but I also have students who are grandmothers and they are getting this degree because this was on their plan. So we have a range of students and that makes the classroom, I think, very dynamic. Catherine Day: What kinds of issues do your students come and ask you to help them navigate? Ankita Deka: My whole approach to teaching is really about creating pedagogical experiences where students are able to have complex understanding of concepts, theoretical or otherwise, and then apply them into tangible skills as they engage to do this work, because we are a skill space profession. It would be wonderful if our students could just study social problems, but meanwhile they have to do something with it. So while they're learning, they're also questioning. They're questioning the theories. Who created them and why? Who were these research studies done on and to serve what interest? So that critical inquiry is really important. That's how I define both sort of the pedagogy as well as the curriculum that ski to my teaching. One of the things that I strive to do in my classroom, not always extremely successfully, which is maybe, again, not a bad problem, because that keeps me on my feet, is to really dissenter what we assume to be knowledge and to incorporate marginal voices. So an example of that would be, it could be the same theory that we're studying, but maybe from the lens of the other. Maybe lens of a woman, or a woman of color, and not just another white male theorist, which they also have to learn about, but then it's always really wonderful when they can criticize the same theory, taking another theoretical lens. So that's the work that I most love to do, and I think Augsburg has allowed me the space to continuously do that, which is the charm of being here in this place. Catherine Day: What do you learn from your students? Ankita Deka: I learn so much from my students. I actually learn more from them than perhaps they learn from me, because our students are diverse, not just in terms of race and ethnicity, but also in terms of, as you had earlier alluded to, generational identity, urban versus rural. Their practice experiences, where they have worked, and how that has informed the work that they do or the work that they aspire to do. But the one common thread I think that our program distinguishes itself in is the draw of the students, who chooses to come to Augsburg, and I think students self select themselves because of the wonderful reputation that we have, not just as a program of exceptional academic standards, but more importantly also because of the diversity and inclusion work, which our department has been at the forefront of. Really sort of combining that, and I think the magic really happens both within the classroom, but actually more after they have left, so a few years after they have graduated. And because I also teach field courses where my current students are placed, I go back and I find our alums who are doing wonderful things on the field, really changing the world. Students that have gone on to become state legislators. Students that are community activists in policy think tanks, and leading psychotherapy institutes and whatnot, so a range of interests and range of work that they're really successful at, but that back and forth about how they inform me and have allowed me to sort of be more adaptive in my teaching, I think has been really wonderful. Catherine Day: Where else might we typically have the opportunity to really connect with the work of a social worker, and what kinds of things might it do for us to improve our connectivity maybe, or some of the issues we're facing? Ankita Deka: I think the role of a social worker has become extremely dynamic. As I said, it is perhaps not accidental that Augsburg certainly was probably at the front end of this game of trying to approach shift social work. I have to, of course, go back a little bit and frame this perhaps differently, that the roots of the profession are very radical. We, as a profession, we started in the mid-20th century, and one of the reasons that we organized as a profession was to fight back against the inequity, both the structural systemic inequity, but over a period of time it seemed, and in other books, I'm not the first one to claim that there's enough work that has happened in the intervening time that somehow social work discarded their radical roots and started conforming more with some of the other allied clinical professions. But then that reclaiming is happening back again, because we're not able to address all of the worst problems just by doing therapy. Because the roots of many of our social issues are very, very structural. And so the place of social workers, I think, are universal. We are seeing that increasingly social workers doing a lot of work now in healthcare settings, and addressing health disparities, not just being clinical social workers that provides counseling or grief counseling, but being at the front end of, "How do we create systems that are not disparate?" And we handle equity in the healthcare system. We see social workers in education, not just your traditional social workers placed in school settings, but policy advocates for that matter, advocating for equitable public policy around education, around public education. So really again that space is very dynamic. Catherine Day: Who has inspired and mentored you in your teaching? Ankita Deka: I was very lucky or fortunate that when I first arrived here at Augsburg, there were resources and supports that allowed new faculty, particularly for someone like me who had just come out of the pipeline straight from school into teaching, and there were a lot of formal supports at that time where I could get that necessary sort of in way into teaching in the classroom. Dr. Frankie Shackelford, who was here on campus, she's now retired, was very helpful. Catherine Day: She's legendary, isn't she? Ankita Deka: She's legendary. She's truly an Augsburg legend, and we spent so many hours just chatting and talking about teaching, and the art of teaching, and the love of teaching. I also did have very many departmental mentors. Dr. Annette Garten, who has now since passed. Colleague of mine in the social work department, mentored me quite a bit. And of course there were other informal supports that I could lean on. I think this is the wonderful thing about being here at Augsburg. It is this humanness space where people come together to lift each other when they can, because ultimately we're all committed to one thing, the wellbeing of our students. I think that's what brings us together, which we haven't even talked about Augsburg. It is indeed a really luminous space. I'm perhaps repeating myself, but I was again surprised, in terms of sort of this symbiotic relationship or the visionary symbiosis between social work's vision and Augsburg's vision, and while it might seem very intuitive in this place at Augsburg, it's just like that, "Isn't that the way to be?" It really isn't. There are a lot of other places where that disconnect can be huge. In our program in particular, the social work program, everything we do is very intentional because we're social justice focused, but it certainly helps that the institution in itself, Augsburg, has been for a long time like the settlement house or is aspiring to be a settlement house, as President Pribbenow often characterizes it. We have been at the forefront of doing this work very intentionally, because it is the right thing to do. We've been at the beginning of sort of the lane when we embarked on this vision of making this place diverse and inclusive. When I came here in 2008, the undergraduate student body, and again, my statistics could be a little off here and there, but I believe for the undergraduate student body, the diversity was sitting roughly around 13%, and this year's incoming class is closer to 57%, if I understand, and that didn't happen by accident. It happened by intentionality. That doesn't mean we're perfect. We have our failings, and I think that's what makes us better, because we haven't arrived. We have work to do and we're cognizant about it, but this is truly a place that allows you to do your work with meaning. When I first heard the word "vocation," I was actually very apprehensive about it because there are some theological connotations attested to that word, and as someone that hasn't for the longest time identified with any specific organized religion, I had my own qualms around it. I had my qualms about coming to a Lutheran institution with a cross sticking out of a church, because I had spent the first 16 years of my life going to a Catholic school, and if anything, at the end of the experience, which I got a wonderful education, but I knew that this was the closest I would ever be to an organized religion. My parents raised me Hindu, but not very much of a practicing Hindu. So for me, I was actually worried without really understanding, because for me, again, naively speaking, I associated Christianity as one monolithic whole. So when I came to Augsburg, I still struggled with that idea that in not knowing very much about what shaped Augsburg and how the Lutheran values sort of interfaced in this place, to some degree I was sort of, I think, very cautious. But then quickly I found out that this place is all about meaning building. This is a place where each of us, I think, live out the mission in very intentional ways. If they were to do such a study, I'm sure they would find the kind of identification with mission. I don't know of another place that would perhaps put the centrality of the mission with such prime focus, and so that just allows you to do the work that you want to do. In my case, doing social justice work, and diversity and inclusion. It just seems like a natural here at Augsburg. Again, as I said, we're not perfect, but we aspire to be, and most importantly to meet the needs of all of our learners. Catherine Day: What are your dreams for this next phase of your teaching and research? Ankita Deka: That is a good question. I haven't so much thought of it as a dream, as much as a plan. I am really optimistic. I am an eternal pragmatist, and I have to be that, considering the many life experiences that I have had. I had to have a plan, I'll tell you that ,or I wouldn't be here today. I feel very pragmatic that Augsburg, if we continue to engage in this work thoughtfully, that we will really be at the front end of delivering an education that is truly equitable in teaching the next generation of leaders. People who will not just get degrees, but who will meanwhile also go and do active work to engage in their community and change the world, and engage with all the pressing problems, from climate change to poverty to displacement, all of the issues that we wrestle with today. In terms of my own teaching, I think it's a lifelong learning. I don't want to feel settled. I never have. I like to learn about new teaching methodologies. Of course, our learners are very diverse and dynamic in the ways they learn, so there's constant engagement with, "How do I teach them better?" Or, "How do I create the space where students take charge of their learning and use it meaningfully?" It should also be self directed to some to some degree. And so that's the continuous work that I will have to do, and I aspire to do as long as I remain an educator. In terms of my research interest, I am a health disparity researcher, and I have studied sort of how institutional discrimination impacts health outcomes in African American communities. I have studied it within the context of South Asian communities, but more recently my research has also been beginning to focus on South Asian immigrants, particularly because South Asians are a significant number when it comes to immigrant groups here in Minnesota, and really understanding some of the embedded issues, both within the context of domestic violence, mental health, and some of the other issues. So my research informs my teaching and vice versa, and so that's sort of the plan that I have, not so much a dream. Catherine Day: Are there some students who you particularly find challenging you to think in new ways right now? That have brought issues to the table that maybe surprised you? Ankita Deka: I am continuously challenged by my students. First off, I think I do a little bit of self disclosure to my students that here I am, trying to teach our curriculum to help prepare students to build skills so that they can practice, and yet I am disconnected from practice because I'm not a practicing social worker. So while I approach the things very theoretically, I do have a missing element in this, which is practice. And that's where my students, I think, really inform me, because they're the ones at the front line doing the work. They also challenge me, I think, in ways that I had mentioned before. Students with diverse social identities. Our graduate classrooms are perhaps not as diverse as the undergraduate classrooms are, but their life experiences, the life experiences students bring, the multiple roles that they have, which I didn't as a master student, my education was all paid for by the state. Catherine Day: When you say "multiple roles," you mean like they're parenting- Ankita Deka: They're parenting. Catherine Day: ... they're working. Ankita Deka: They're working. We have a exclusively weekend-based master's program. Most of our students, if not all of our students work full or part time, and then they wear multiple hats and more importantly, they have educational debts, right? So they are navigating all of these complex systems and their experiences really shape the way I approach the material and the way I approach teaching. Catherine Day: Well, if there were one thing you would like to leave us with as you think about your trajectory, what's important here at Augsburg, what might it be? Ankita Deka: I think, as I had alluded to earlier, I want us to engage with this complexity of the times that we're in and not rush to finding easy answers or short fixes, because the work that we're trying to do, I think, is pivotal in higher ed, in trying to truly make education inclusive and equitable and accessible in all its dynamic forms. And here, I'm not just alluding to students who bring in life experiences because of their race and ethnicity, but students who have disability, both overt and covert, visible and invisible. Students who are first generation, who have no orientation to higher ed or college experiences. Students who are first generation immigrants. Students who are, they are recovering while in college. So really dynamic group of learners, right? In order to serve them well and to best meet their needs, but more importantly to prepare them for what we don't know what it's going to be like. We don't know the kind of jobs that we are preparing our students to interface given sort of this sea shift in technology. No one knows the jobs that we have today, "Well, what forms of it will exist?" So how do we prepare them while also sort of upholding the basics of what keeps us going as a society? How do we teach simultaneously teach kindness? How do we teach stewardship? How do we teach our students to be leaders? Not just in the context of the work they do, but in their communities and all of that? So both engaging in that kind of work to develop pedagogical practices and curriculum, all of this requires hard work and engagement, and also requires diverse representative voices, which I think Augsburg is reckoning with, because we have a diverse student body, but we do not have a diverse faculty. We do not have diverse staff. So we have a systemic problem here. We are in that moment where we have to creatively engage with, "How do we do this despite all of the challenges? Not just find the easy shortcuts out, but find the answers that are sustainable?" Catherine Day: Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I've been speaking with Ankita Deka, associate professor of social work. This is Catherine Reid Day, and this has been the Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

  Lori Brandt Hale: Pay attention is one of those phrases in my class, so by the end of the semester people start to roll their eyes just a little bit because I've said so many times, "Pay attention," or, "Look at this story, this person was paying attention." We talk a lot about vocation and finding purpose and looking for these opportunities, and yet a lot of what needs to happen, a lot of what can be very meaningful in our lives is right in front of us, and we have to pay attention and then take the steps to do the next thing. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and stuff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast, and today I'm speaking with Lori Brandt Hale, associate professor of religion, and we're going to talk about the intersection of research and teaching in the Religion Department here at Augsburg University. Welcome, Lori. Lori Brandt Hale: It's really nice to be here. Catherine Day: What led you down the path of being interested in religion as a field of study? Lori Brandt Hale: That's an interesting question. I grew up in a family that went to church, grew up in a small town in Iowa, and my dad sang in the choir, I went to every week. It was part of what I took for granted, I think. Although, I grew up in the United Methodist tradition, and that's a tradition that welcomes questions, so I didn't feel locked into one way of thinking about what it meant to be a Christian or what it meant to be a person of faith. But I would say I wasn't really that interested in studying religion until I got into high school and I had a chemistry teacher who set aside Fridays to pose ethical conundrums to us. There was one week in particular that I remember very vividly. He asks us to imagine a scenario where... Without going into a lot of detail, we were forced to make a decision about whether to survive we would sacrifice a person who was in a vegetative state, or sacrifice a chimpanzee who had a 300-word American sign language vocabulary, and everyone tried to think about ways to get around this decision and he gave us no way out. We had to decide and none of us were willing to make the call. So again, this was a small town where he could make the presumption with a lot of accuracy that most everybody in the classroom attended church of some kind, and so he asked us what our church leaders would say, and there were four of us there who went to the same church. And while everyone else in the room seemed to think they knew what their pastor or priest would say, whether they were right or not is a different question, they seem to know. We still didn't know. It became really clear to me that I had some really big questions about faith, about the tradition, about sort of existential questions too about life and death. And so when I went off to college, I decided I would take a few religion courses, and within the first semester, actually before the first semester, decided, well, if I was going to take a few classes, I'd just major in it as well. So that's how I ended up studying religion. Catherine Day: And how did this intersection of an ethical dilemma and your interest in religion, how has that continued to play out in your interests, in your teaching, in your work? Lori Brandt Hale: Really, I can't separate those things out. So most of my work in research is on the life and the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a Lutheran theologian and pastor living in Nazi Germany. And because of the atrocities of what was in front of him, he became part of the conspiracy whose main goal was to take out Hitler, and he was executed for his role in that conspiracy. So he was only 39 years old when he died, but he wrote profoundly and prolifically about community and ethics, and what it means to be in relationship with other human beings, and how we should live our lives in the world. And so everything I do, both in my research and then how that translates into the classroom, I think it still ties back to some of those basic questions that I started asking as an undergraduate student. Catherine Day: Every once in a while it seems like we get handed a question that we discover may be the question of our lifetime. For me, I've struggled with the tension between creativity in the critic or the creativity in authority, which just plays out for me over and over again in how I address it. Do you think that you're still chewing on that question from high school, or has it transformed? Lori Brandt Hale: Well, I think it's transformed. I mean, I think from that question and from those initial classes, I landed on three questions: who am I? Who are we collectively? And how are we supposed to live together? And those are questions that guided my work as an undergraduate and still guide my work now. I haven't strayed too far from those questions. I certainly have looked at them from different points of view and I've tried to incorporate different ways of thinking about those questions, but those have been central to my work and really also central to this way of thinking about the connection between thought and action. So if I'm asking questions about who am I, and who are we, and how are we supposed to live together, then that leads to questions about what does that look like in practice, and what does it mean to be a community? And it's interesting for me to go back and see the threads from those early days, all the way 20 years into my teaching career. Catherine Day: Because those are quite relevant questions for Augsburg, too. Did you find that coming to Augsburg helped you articulate those in a new way, or help you refine those questions? Lori Brandt Hale: What I find over and over again is that Augsburg is the right place for me to ask those questions, that were a good fit. So I feel really fortunate to be here because the mission of this place that is really alive. I mean, I've actually spent time through various other organizations and work that I've done on other campuses, and I've never found a place where the mission statement is so present, and so authentic, and so much a part of how people talk about what's happening on campus and in the classrooms, faculty, staff and students. And so when I think about those commitments to engaged citizenship and responsible leadership and thoughtful stewardship and critical thinking, they're part and parcel with the questions that I've been asking in my own work. Catherine Day: What has been like to be at an institution that has deliberately engaged business and science and religion all in one place? Its physical co-location in the new Hagfors center, it goes beyond that as I understand it. How do you see that? Lori Brandt Hale: Part of it is recognizing and helping students recognize that they live whole lives, and that problems that face us are interdisciplinary and complex. And so being really intentional about bringing together these three particular really large disciplines, but ways of thinking or disciplines honors that and gives people some room to explore and to, I don't want to sound cliche, but to pursue their vocation in ways that are authentic. So they don't have to divorce their thinking about what it means to live a meaningful life from their interest in chemistry for example, or their interest in physics, or... Actually, I had a student, he probably graduated about 10 years ago, but he came in... He was actually a double major, a finance and religion double major, not a very common pairing, I don't think. And he was the kind of student who had started doing tax returns for his family members when he was in high school because he really enjoyed it, he was really good at it, but he had the strong sense of faith and a strong sense of calling, and so had been seriously considering going to seminary, feeling like if he was going to answer a call of some kind, that that was the path he needed to take. When he got here, he was in several classes with me, actually was his religion adviser, he realized that he could do the work that was best suited for him, that he could live a meaningful life, a vocational life doing work as an accountant. And so, that's what he did. He finished his religion degree, but he went on and got a master's degree in taxation of all things, and he's found a way to merge those interests and those commitments, I think, right? So that it's not... We don't have to compartmentalize our lives or our thinking about what matters. Catherine Day: You presumably do teach a Bonhoeffers here, is that correct? Lori Brandt Hale: I do. Catherine Day: Yeah. Why don't you describe for us a little bit about how the students experience that content and to what degree they're applying some current issues to the questions that Bonhoeffer was raising. Lori Brandt Hale: So it's really fun to talk to students about Bonhoeffer and about his story. He decided to study religion when he was a teenager, and he came from a family where his father was a scientist, his older brothers were scientists, and they weren't all that excited about his choice. There were some personal experiences I think that led him to this decision. One of his older brothers was killed in World War I and that had a deep impact on him. So when he was 11, he had a twin sister, when they were 11, they started talking about these sort of existential questions that drove this interest I think for him in studying theology. And so he got the blessing of his family, he went off to study. And he's the kind of person who he could do in two hours, what took most people 10 hours to do. So he finished his doctoral dissertation at the age of 21, which... that's crazy. So he wrote this amazing dissertation on the Church, it's called Sanctorum Communio, the communion of saints, and he was really interested in thinking about questions about community. One of the ideas that come comes out in that dissertation that resonates with me, it's his understanding that when you encounter another person, that person places an ethical demand on you and you're called to respond. And this is the thread that's going to get played out and developed in his theology over time. So when I talk to students about him, I talk about his story, I talk about his beginnings, his studies, but then I talk about him going to New York City in 1930-31, and he went to Union Theological Seminary and he made these incredible friendships, and it was an incredible transformative year. One of his best friends that was an African-American student, and through that friendship and through connection with the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, Bonhoeffer had, I would call it a transformation of consciousness, where he started to recognize his own privilege, he started to recognize ways that people in America, in particular, African Americans were disenfranchised, and it changed everything he did from that point on. As the story unfolds, I sort of introduce his biography, I introduce his theology that's emerging, and then we put him in context because he gets back to Germany, and within two years of his return to Germany, Adolph Hitler comes to power, and of course that changes everything and he is able to see so early the dangers of the national socialist, and he's unique in that and he was speaking out from the beginning. So we talk about those moves that he makes, the ways that he understands ethics to be concrete, that you have to take account of what's in front of you and who's in front of you, and you have to respond accordingly. We talk about his understanding of vocation as responsibility, and we talk a lot about vocation here at Augsburg, and I think it's a new way for most students when we start talking about responsibility, and it gives them a way of thinking about responsibility that is not locked into a single activity or a single idea, because I think sometimes people think they have to find their vocation, and if they can't sort of find that magic intersection of what the world needs and what they're good at, that somehow they're lost and it's not static. It's a dynamic concept. And so Bonhoeffer gives us a different way of talking about vocation, sort of a hermeneutical lens, thinking about all the situations we're in in our lives, all the relationships we have. Sometimes I get the chance to do a whole semester on Bonhoeffer. That's not all that often, but I usually do at least a couple of days talking about Bonhoeffer in my general education classes where we are talking about vocation and searching for meaning and what does that look like? And so, he becomes a really powerful example. One thing that's interesting about Bonhoeffer, in addition to his own story, is the way he's been received, and his legacy is now quite controversial in so far as people all across the religious and political spectrum understand and interpret him differently. So that's another thing that I talk about with my students, and we talk about what some of those interpretations are, and how we start to unpack them, and think about which ones are legitimate, where there's room for people to disagree and stay true to a sort of an authentic reading of Bonhoeffer, and where people kind of stray outside those lines of appropriate readings. Catherine Day: So he's not a simple good guy, bad guy. Lori Brandt Hale: He's not a simple good guy, bad guy. Catherine Day: And I would think that for the students, that's challenging to put their heads around. Could you maybe give us a few examples of how students have wrestled with those questions? Anyone come to mind in particular? Lori Brandt Hale: If I push that question a little bit further in terms of how people both in the academic conversations and in public discourse, we're talking about Bonhoeffer, there's a question on the table right now, is this a Bonhoeffer moment, and what does that mean? Catherine Day: It means societally. Lori Brandt Hale: Yeah, we, as a society, or are we as individuals facing things that are in society presented with what would be a Bonhoeffer moment? And then- Catherine Day: Do I need to become like Bonhoeffer? Or do I need to respond as an individual more significantly? Lori Brandt Hale: Significantly, right. But that, too, was a complicated question because, again, what does that mean? And for some people that actually is a question about, because Bonhoeffer was involved in a conspiracy, an anti-Nazi conspiracy. And so is that what that means? And I would argue, and colleagues of mine would argue that that's not the right question, right? That Bonhoeffer's life is on a template that you can just transpose into another situation, that Bonhoeffer would call us to ask the question, who is Christ for us today? Or I have a lot of students who are not part of the Christian tradition and they might not be comfortable with that articulation of the question, so we would say, who is suffering when we look around? Because Bonhoeffer talked a lot about seeing the world, the events of the world from the perspective of those who suffered, from the view from below. And so in terms of my students then interacting with that, I have a project that I do every semester with my religion 200 students in religion vocation in the search for meaning that we call the lived theology project. It doesn't have to be about theology, it doesn't have to be a religious project, but it's a project where students can think deeply about their own commitments and values, and then seek a way to act on those commitments in the world in some way, in some public way. And so I think there's a connection here with the way Bonhoeffer talks about faith as being lived out in this world, making this world a better place, that it's in the midst of life, right? That faith happens, that faith is lived out in sufferings and joys and perplexities and sorrows and the messiness of life. And so students get to engage in this project where they get to identify what's important to them. And for some it comes from a religious identity or perspective, and for some it comes from humanist values, and for some it comes from some other deep place, and then what does that look like? So how might they serve the campus community or the neighborhood? And it doesn't have to be a service project. It can also be a public art installation, or it can be a public service announcement, or it can be something. And so I've got all sorts of examples of what students have done, but I would say we can connect the dots between Bonhoeffer and the way he lived his life, and then students having the opportunity to do the same kind of thinking at least about what matters to them. Catherine Day: And so this idea of who is suffering, do they include themselves in that question, or are they more focused on the community when they're trying to respond to that question? Lori Brandt Hale: That's an interesting question. So I think in some cases, the topics that they choose to work on come out of their own experience. So I've had students create events to address mental health issues, and that is both serving the community, but at the same time, sometimes the folks in that group are dealing with their own set of issues around that particular topic, or I had another group one time create a series at an event, and then a series of informational kinds of activities around eating disorders. And so, again, I think there's kind of both. And if you asked me the question in that way, there's both an outward move and an inward impulse at the same time. I ask students now as they're thinking about their projects, as they're choosing their topics, as they're putting their projects together, I use a model that was actually developed by a cohort of teachers from across the country, including one of my own colleagues in the religion department, Hans [inaudible 00:18:18], on doing civic engagement. And so, in this model, students are asked to first recognize the complexity of their problem, so that when you're looking at any particular issue, it goes back to the things we were talking about before, it's interdisciplinary, it's complex. There's just lots of layers. So that's the first thing. The second piece is to recognize their own social locations and the social locations of the people who might be impacted by their work or people they might be serving, and to take into account who has privilege, who has power, what does that dynamic look like, how can they be sensitive to all of those intersections of locations. The third move is to think empathetically, so how are they approaching, again, approaching their work in ways that create or require empathy, and then finally to take action and to make something happen. Catherine Day: I'm wondering if there is somebody who comes to mind that had a particularly startling transformation in the process of asking some of those questions and taking that apart for themselves. Lori Brandt Hale: Now, I can think of... A couple of students come to mind who have had... they would have to answer which part of the class, which part of the experience was transformative, and whether it was my classes or their entire experience at Augsburg. But I can think of one student, a very recent student who came in as a self-described militant atheist and was very irritated, and irritated might be too soft of a word, about having to take two required religion courses, but came nonetheless and had a very good experience in his first course and with one of my colleagues, and then came to me for the second course. In the course I teach, we talk a lot about only vocation, but civil rights and interfaith dialogue and pluralism, and we look at a variety of traditions across the world, religious traditions spectrum. And I would say he had a transformative experience and would still call himself an atheist, but is now interested in religion and interested in dialogue with people from a variety of religious traditions and expressions, has gone on to take seven religion courses and get a minor, and is one of the strongest proponents for maintaining the religion requirement in the general education, and recognizing the power of this kind of reflection, this kind of self reflection. He said if he had taken the classes just a little bit earlier, he would have actually double majored and gotten... but he couldn't quite work out the class requirements to do that. But I think it speaks to the power of a transformative dialogue of being open to the other and recognizing that you can learn a lot about someone else and about yourself when you open up to the kinds of experiences that both I and my colleagues in my department try to create in our classes. Catherine Day: When you focused on those, I think it was four parts, the idea that they have to take action after they go through the other pieces, what are some examples of the ways in which they take action? Lori Brandt Hale: So I had a group a couple of years ago. They happen to be a group of athletes who wanted to work together and they started thinking about their own experiences in high school, participating in athletics and recognizing that there were a whole lot of students in their communities in their high schools who wanted to participate and could not afford the equipment. And so they worked together with one of the local high schools and created what they called a sports shelf, so kind of like a food shelf but with sports equipment. And so they did a drive where they got friends and teammates and others to donate old equipment. And a lot of them were single sport athletes here at Augsburg, but had been multi-sport athletes in high school. And so they had all this equipment sort of hanging around that they didn't use anymore. And then they worked with a local sporting goods store to get some donations. I haven't followed up with them. Like I said, this was a couple of years ago. Their goal was to start this during the semester that they had my class, but that it would be an ongoing thing. They had made a contact appoint person at the high school, and they had a designated space where they would have cleats, and helmets, and rackets, and hockey sticks and whatever. And so if there were students in the school who wanted to participate and couldn't get the materials any other way, they could go and access them that way. So that's one example that comes to mind where they were able to use the things that they love, their own passions to make a difference, right? It didn't have to be something super complicated. I think of another group that partnered with an organization at the University of Minnesota hospitals. It's a house... It's not the Ronald McDonald House. It's another organization that has a house where families with children who are in the hospital can come, and they work to put together these little bags of necessity. So the families are coming, they're under a lot of stress, they're trying to care for their children. And so they had bags that had things like hand sanitizer, and chapstick, and tissues, and granola bars, and they actually all worked with Thrivent Lutheran and got a small grant to buy all the materials and some really nice reusable bags. And so I think they got a $400 grant to do that kind of work. Catherine Day: Both of those are so pragmatic, and I'm kind of interested in going back to that question of who was suffering. So they somehow also... I'm struck with the first group where they recognized that they're privileged, that they were able to afford something, and they somehow got conscious that not everyone could. How did that happen? Lori Brandt Hale: In that particular case, one of the students in the group was a student who had struggled in high school to afford the equipment, and I think was able to share his own experiences with his group members in a way that, talk about transformation, transformed their consciousness and gave them that perspective that they didn't have before. I think there's so many times when we're having conversations about whether it's about who's suffering or whether it's about recognizing that we, in our classrooms, which are so diverse now in so many different ways, that we have these identities that are different. And so students are learning how to not take a lot of things for granted. And part of it has to do with learning how to ask questions, learning how to see the other and not get so sort of locked in their own lane of checking off their to-do list, or whatever that might be that they stop and pay attention. Catherine Day: If I may, I want to bring it back a little to Bonhoeffer and is this a Bonhoeffer moment, because whether we talk about climate change or the effects of other issues that are surrounding us, there's that tendency to say it's so big, I can't do anything. And I'm curious how it goes to your point of paying attention. So in what ways do they learn, in a Bonhoeffer moment, that possibly he could see things in a different way than they can see things and acted differently, but maybe could contribute to a shift that's important? Lori Brandt Hale: Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the challenges in teaching Bonhoeffer is he's living in this very difficult time, and he made really big decisions that cost him his life. And so there's a point at which we read his story and say, well, that's fantastic, but I can't and I am not ready to do that. I'm not willing to do that. I'm not able to act in that way. And it can be really overwhelming. Even his idea of vocation as responsibility can be overwhelming because then we can just feel burdened by everything that we're supposed to do or have to do or have these responsibilities, especially when so many students now have so many responsibilities outside school. So they have jobs, and they have family commitments, and they have... And so on one hand, there's no easy answer. On one hand we can continue to sort of make it a bigger problem by saying, well, in some ways, every moment is a Bonhoeffer moment, I mean, which is true if you take him seriously, but I try to help students step back, and this is where going back and recognizing that we all just have to play a part. And so we do have to figure out what it is we're good at, and what it is we like to do, and where our passions lie, and you do that thing, and you can't do all the things. And so, part of saying yes to a passion or a vocation is also saying no. I mean, that's a hard lesson. Catherine Day: One of my favorite quotes, I've forgotten, haven't used for a long time, is the world is filled with need. Choose a path that speaks to you. If you want to change the world, create a beautiful model. And that was said, I believe by Ewing Kauffman of the Kauffman Foundation. But what has struck me about that is that it's intended, like you said, to go back to the individual and say, what is it that speaks to you, and also suggest or trust that someone else will be following a path that speaks to them, that will also contribute to the change you want to make. And so I'm wondering, in what ways do you think that an Augsburg education contributes to a shift in systems, addresses some of the changes to the systems that may... the structure, if you will, of the issues that we're talking about, whether it's racial disparities and ways in which we've treated one another that go deeper than just the individual? Lori Brandt Hale: I would lean back into the mission statement and say that all four parts of the key, the- Catherine Day: The Augsburg mission statement. Lori Brandt Hale: The Augsburg mission statement, the call to be engaged citizens and thoughtful stewards and critical thinkers and responsible leaders, that those aren't just words. So when I go back to these [inaudible 00:28:32] theology projects with my students, a lot of them, the first inkling, the first inclination is to do a service project. And in fact, the two that I described, in some ways fit that bill. Whether you're providing meals or clothing or athletic equipment, you are serving a direct need, but you're not changing the cause of why those needs are in place. And so, one of the things that I've encouraged my students to do is to always, even if they're doing that kind of project, is to take a look in their research, at least to understand the bigger systems in place that create those needs, and in some cases, encouraging them then don't work on the direct service end of it, work on the systemic change end of it. So I had a group last semester who was doing some work on climate change. They were focusing specifically on the boundary waters, and they were writing lots of letters to Congress and they were doing kind of policy work instead of other groups who go down and pick up trash by the river, right? You need all of it, but trying to help students recognize that it all goes together and that just the service doesn't get the kind of systemic change that we need. Catherine Day: Do you have some dreams for the next phase of your work at Augsburg? Lori Brandt Hale: Teaching is one of those endeavors that is never done. I always feel like I can get better and can do better. And sometimes when I see students that I've had a long time ago, I say, "You should come back now because I'm doing it way better than when you were a student." I've learned a whole lot. So on one hand, there's always room to think more creatively and more critically about what I'm doing in the classroom. So that's kind of an ongoing goal, if you will, but I have some things I'd like to write that have grown out of my teaching and have grown out of my engagement with our students, and the things that I... I'm so amazed by our students every day. I've learned so much from them about determination and perseverance. Some of them have stories I can't begin to kind of imagine in terms of the hardships they faced, and how they've gotten here, and how they managed to come and do the work, and they ask really good questions. In fact, I had a student just... I had class earlier this afternoon. I had a student ask a question that I just had never thought about, and I'm still thinking about that question. And so- Catherine Day: Will you tell us what it is? Lori Brandt Hale: So I'm teaching a class this semester called religion at the movies. And over the last week, the students have watched Cloud Atlas, which is a very complicated, interesting movie. We were talking about it in class today, and it operates under a cosmology and understanding of the world where the time is cyclical and there is life and death and rebirth. And so we were talking about ideas of liberation in Hindu and Buddhist thought around Moksha and Nirvana and the sort of the desire, again, as the Hindu tradition describes, as wanting something more, hitting a point in your life where you feel like there's something more and you're seeking that liberation from that cycle, from [inaudible 00:31:51] cycle of life and death and rebirth. One of my students, if I may, one of my Muslim students asked a question about the relationship between Hindu liberation and Lutheran ideas of vocation and purpose, and- Catherine Day: Wow. Lori Brandt Hale: It's a fabulous question. Catherine Day: It is, it's fascinating. Lori Brandt Hale: And it raises all kinds of interesting questions about individual searches for meaning, communal commitments to ideas of justice and vocation, and where someone's, in their life cycle, where do these things land? And it's something we'll keep talking about. Catherine Day: What would help you fulfill some of those dreams? Lori Brandt Hale: The thing that I would like to write about, if I may sort of finish that thought, is this idea about the relationship of liminality and vocation. Liminality is this idea of being betwixt in between. We can talk about liminal spaces, so- Catherine Day: We talk about the transition from winter to spring as liminal. Lori Brandt Hale: Exactly, or the transition from childhood to adulthood. And I think about this a lot in my classes. We'd read some things that express this idea. We have a lot of students here who are bicultural, so they have liminal experiences. They might have one sort of set of expectations and rules and language and practices at home, and a different set of those same things at school. Or we have students who are very strongly committed to the LGBTQIA community, so students who are in gender transition have very powerful liminal experiences. We have the step up program here, students in recovery, drug and alcohol recovery. Those students describe some of their experiences as liminal experiences. And so I'm fascinated by the ways that the experience of liminality both enhances and impedes thinking about vocation, and I would like to be able to explore that in some more detail. I've done some thinking about it over the years, but I think it's time to write something down about that. So I don't know what would make that possible. Having sabbaticals more than every seven years, that would be great. Catherine Day: Who has inspired and mentored you in your teaching and research? Lori Brandt Hale: There are so many names that come to my mind when I think about that question, and I'm really lucky that I had great mentors and teachers all the way through, high school, college, and beyond. So in high school I had a social studies teacher who ended up mentoring me for a summer research project that I did right before I went to college and really taught me how to write a thesis statement and how to defend an argument, and I'm ever grateful to him. When I got to college, I worked as an undergraduate research assistant for a history professor, and he recognized... So I'm first generation college, and I grew up in a small town, and my parents are lovely and smart, hardworking people, but they didn't go to college, and he recognized right away that I had a lot of potential, but I was fairly provincial. So starting my freshman year of college, every time I went to see him, I worked for him about 10 hours a week, he quizzed me on a vocabulary word in preparation for the graduate record exams knowing that I would go to graduate school. And that was such a gift. And so when I think about him, I think about my other undergraduate advisor, and I just hope that I'm doing something even close to what they did for me for the students that I have. I can name a lot of names, but those are some of the stories. When I got to graduate school, when I did my master's degree at one institution and then I left and did my PhD at the University of Virginia, I actually went with a fellowship. So I wasn't eligible for a teaching assistantship position, which on one hand was a gift, I had more time to do my coursework. On the other hand, I was going to come out with no teaching experience and not be as qualified to get a job. So my dissertation advisor, who was kind of an odd bird, I'll just say that, brilliant but a little bit odd, invited me to be his teaching assistant, but he had a really small class. This was at a big university. And so a lot of the teaching assistants had sections of a big lecture classes, but he just had a class that was 30 people. He said, "I'll lecture on Monday and Wednesday and you can come lead a discussion on Friday." So this is how we set it up, Fridays I will lead a discussion. Well, it turns out he came to every discussion, which was very unnerving at first. I got used to it. He would sit in the back. He wouldn't say a word. He had no facial expression. I never knew how... So I stopped looking at him or worrying about him, I just focused on the students. But one day we'd been discussing this book, I'd been leading this discussion and I felt like it was just a train wreck. It was all over the place. The students were asking questions, I didn't know how to answer them. I was sort of prompting them. We just kept going down, kind of dead ends. And so I left class fairly disheartened and finally later in the afternoon, mustered up the courage to go talk to my professor. I walked in and I said, "I'd like to talk about this morning. He said, "Okay." And I said, "Well, it was horrible." He's like, "What are you talking about?" I said, "You were there. You heard all the students just struggling with these questions and the discussion not having any neat conclusions." And he said, "Yeah, it's called learning. That's exactly how it's supposed to be." And he said, "I thought what you did this morning was just right." And that was so liberating to recognize that sometimes learning is messy and we don't always tie things up with a neat, tidy bow, that we have to let things hang and we have to think about them. Now the advantage was he came back in on Monday and kind of did all that tidying up, but I've had to learn how to do that for myself, but I was really grateful for that experience. Catherine Day: Well, it sounds like it put you in the perfect position to do what you're doing here at Augsburg. So thank you so much, Lori, for joining us today. Lori Brandt Hale: Thank you. Catherine Day: This has been the Augsburg Podcast. I'm Catherine Reid Day. We've been speaking with Lori Brandt Hale, associate professor of religion. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.  

Jill Dawe: I seem to still go back to this idea that there is a simple way to connect with people and to believe in the multifaceted dimensions of individuals and their creative possibility and their talent and their experience, and to build out from that. And I am incredibly honored and privileged, I feel, to be able to connect with the world and with Augsburg students through music. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present The Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg Podcast. And today I'm speaking with Jill Dawe, associate professor of music, and we're going to explore her experience with learning in multiple forms. Welcome Jill. Jill Dawe: Thank you. Catherine Day: I wanted to begin with a memory. And music seems to be such a powerful form of triggering memory. And you shared with me a story from when you were four years old and how you learned... who you learned from, how you learned music and where that happened. Jill Dawe: My mother was working as a teacher, so my grandmother would take care of me. She had a piano, and my uncle still lived at home. We didn't have a piano. So the piano, first of all, was this sort of fabulous toy or this piece of... it sort of sparked my curiosity. And my uncle could sit down and he could play things. It would just sound magical. I was mesmerized. And of course then I would go... When he was finished, I would go over to this toy, and I would sit down and I would do exactly what he did, and mine sounded terrible. So, I think my earliest inspirations were Love Is Blue and Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, which I really, really tried to play as a four year old. He had learned by ear. He could just sit down and play, so I thought I should be able to too. And my grandmother would make offhand comments, something to the effect of, "Gosh, he has a lot of talent. It's too bad he never did anything with it." And it's an interesting thing when you think about what children hear and learn. So I think in my mind, I thought, "Oh my gosh, in order to do something with it, you have to be in formal lessons." Catherine Day: You initially started to play and learn by ear, and then you made a transition to a different form of music. Jill Dawe: When I was eight, my next door neighbor's got a piano, and they would teach me what they learned. So I was still learning by route. I don't know about by ear, but certainly without notation. Eventually when we got a piano, it came with a system of stickers that were color coded so you could learn by reading the notes. But the notes were, Play the blue one four times and then play the orange one twice. And so I learned that way and then eventually I switched over to piano lessons where I learned actual music notation when I was maybe nine-ish. Catherine Day: And so each of those forms of learning, I'm interested in how that might actually show up today as you are teaching students music and they come to you with a lot of different experiences. So I'm just wondering, have you been able to apply these maybe three systems that I heard you just describe? One was without notation, one was color coded, which intrigues me. I have a kid who has synesthesia and- Jill Dawe: Oh, interesting. Sure. You hear color? Catherine Day: Yeah, you hear color, and you... So she associates colors with notes, with words, with the alphabet. Numbers, actually. For her, it shows up in numbers. Anyway, it's an interesting- Jill Dawe: Sure. Catherine Day: So when I hear you describe the color piece, I'm thinking, "Well, that might have worked for some people with synesthesia because we have..." Augsburg has this embrace of all kinds of learners, so I'm just curious how it shows up as you teach. Jill Dawe: That's a really interesting. I've not put these three pieces together necessarily this way, but I've been teaching since I was 10, actually. I started taking my piano teachers waiting list because there just weren't that many teachers, so she was teaching me how to teach. So that whole sort of being a student or being the teacher, I think, is a little bit... mixes together. So it's kind of a co-creating or Cole learning experience for me, I think. And Yeah, I think that I try to figure out what connects. And usually, it's driven by what music a student really deeply wants to play. Just like I would've done anything to learn Love Is Blue when I was four, it's something that... that spark, and you just figure out. Once you can figure out that spark, then you figure out how to get a student there. And if it's not by notation, it could be by ear, it could be by improvising, it could be by coming up with visual imagery. That's the thing about music. There's so many paths in, and there's so many ways to connect, I think, to the world and to people with music or through music. Catherine Day: That's pretty exciting. Jill Dawe: Yeah, and it's fascinating. For your brain, it's endlessly creative trying to figure out, Okay, if not this path, then this path, or if not... The connection doesn't go this way, it could go this way or that way or another way. They all work. Catherine Day: And so music, as you see it then, has something to do with unlocking more learning for people? Jill Dawe: I'm hesitating because I'm sure there's science. We learn all about the brain as one way to answer it, and I think now that we can color code the brain and the different learning centers and such, we do see, for example, if somebody is reading music, singing and playing an instrument, say the piano, that when you study the brain, the brain's many different areas, don't ask me what they are, they all light up, and that there's some kind of an integrated system across languages and imagination, emotional experience, intellectual capacity, pattern discernment. All these different areas somehow work together with music, plus physical coordination, sense of time. So I think that that makes sense then that there would be... you could enter through any of these angles, and all in service to connecting. It's all about just connecting. Catherine Day: People would all say that the power of music is connection. Jill Dawe: I think so. Catherine Day: I think that's universally accepted, that when you can't reach people any other way, you can through music. And what I was just thinking about as you were talking about the different parts of the brain, I did see a photograph of how music does still reach people with dementia, and that that part of the brain does not atrophy or it still feels, it experiences it. And so music is an extremely important tool for people with dementia. As the student body, population has changed. What has been your experience of what we're just talking about, about the forms of inviting students in to learn the entry points for learning music? Jill Dawe: That's so interesting. We say that the students have changed. And I guess for me, they have, and they haven't, maybe because I've had this privileged opportunity to work one on one with people. And so always at Augsburg, people have had the opportunity to study piano who are music majors, who want to be piano performers, who are science majors and who are doing it for fun or a biology major who... all different kinds of learners with different kinds of goals for music. So from that sense, I don't know that it's changed for me because again, it's... you have melody, you have rhythm and you have the instrument, and you work to figure out how the student's brain works, and then also what kinds of musical interests really get the students motivated. And you just start there and then together, you figure out how to make music. Maybe that's making it simplistic, but in a way it's not. That works with beginners. I teach children. It works with beginners, and it works with really advanced people who are looking to do, I don't know, graduate study or performance degrees. It's pretty much the same. How does your mind work? What really, really drives you in terms of your musical passion, and then how do we learn together given all the different components that come together in making music? What are the buttons that we press? What are the strengths that we build on? What are the weaknesses that we can firm up? Because there's so many ways to learn. Catherine Day: It sounds really fun. Jill Dawe: It's totally fun. It's sort of a creativity upon creativity. The teaching of it is, in some ways, as creative as the making of the music. Catherine Day: That's what I was picking up. It sounds very co-creative. I guess, a collaborative, that what you're describing as an approach to teaching is to sit side by side with the student to some extent. Not to say you don't have a position across the table from them, but it sounds like you go both ways in the relationship. Jill Dawe: That's actually flattering. Now, I don't know that I would have thought of that, but I would like to think that that's true. And I've learned too from different kinds of musicians. So I've been working with Somalis musicians and Oxford students, especially last year and learning about [inaudible 00:09:48] styles and then learning about Somali history and refugee experiences again, via music and working across language barriers and et cetera, et cetera. And in that situation, although I was the teacher, I really was a learner. I was able to bring people together into a room, so that Somali music and Augsburg students could learn and co-create. But I wasn't necessarily the teacher. I would say maybe I was the facilitator or I was the experienced collaborator that could make sure all the parts can move together. But yeah. You learn as you teach. Catherine Day: Right. I think we tend to give a lot of power to the expert, that form of expert power... It's not to say you don't have expert power, because clearly you do, you've mastered a form of learning and performing. But this other kind of learning does strike me as being really valuable for a rapidly changing world, that if we see ourselves as facilitators as well as experts, what does that open for us, and what does that teach the students at Augsburg as they go forth and go to the next level, if you will, into work? Jill Dawe: So, one of my explorations this year during my sabbatical has been this idea of who holds knowledge. And so if you flip around the model and you assume that everybody's an expert, it makes it even more interesting. As I'm teaching somebody who is... Well, and it gets more interesting the further outside of your experience that you are the process and the collaboration gets more interesting. So the further you're able to go outside your own box or parameters or assumptions, the more creative and adventurous the learning begins. So yeah, I think flipping that model around, again, is an interesting thing. So if we consider that at the get go, everybody is an expert. And what exact experience and unique perspective is that expert going to bring? I think in some ways, it brings me back to my Newfoundland roots again where folk song and folk traditions are really strong and was just part of what I've always been in. So I think that led me really naturally to the Cedar Cultural Center, which looks at global traditions. However, we defined those and... or folk traditions or things that are not classical traditions necessarily. So I think my interest might have started with that, with my interest in folk traditions, things that are done by ear, oral traditions. But again, it was also my interest in connection. This was through music. It was a way for me to connect with my neighborhood across language barriers. It was just shared space. You experience this music together. The opportunity was formalized through a grant by Doris Duke Foundation, which partnered Augsburg College with the Cedar Cultural Center in programming that would bring awareness and sharing of knowledge around Islamic identities and Muslim art makers. So in our world, that meant that Somali singers and artists from around the world and also locally were able to bring their knowledge to campus. In one of our... Just to make this a really short story, there were lots and lots of things that happened, but in one AugSem so first year experience, we did a little song teaching session that brought Somali artists, local Somali artists, people from the Cedar Cultural Center in the community into the AugSem classroom. And one of the videographers, I guess, from the Cedar was documenting the experience. They made a little four minute video, which has 128,000 views, the last time I looked. I have no idea why. It's just our classroom doing this song with a very famous international Somali artists, but also local and 128,000 people are interested in that. So again, it makes me think about, who holds knowledge and how you share knowledge. Catherine Day: That's really exciting. I think we forget how things travel now. Jill Dawe: Wait. Catherine Day: And so if you hashtag something and you... or however it's being distributed, it's on YouTube. And so presumably, that person's name brings people, brings audience to what you're doing. Jill Dawe: To my classroom. To our AugSem classroom. Catherine Day: Right. It's fascinating. And again, this idea of who holds knowledge and who's the expert. And maybe if you don't mind, just bringing people into... Many people, again know, but we are a location with the... I think it's the second largest population of Somalis outside of country. I don't know the facts, but it's a significant center. Jill Dawe: It's a significant Somali community or Somali American community. And of course we are also located in Cedar Riverside neighborhood, which historically has always been a neighborhood where waves of immigrants have called home over the years. So it used to be Danish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and then Korean. I think when I first got here it was a little bit Korean, a little bit East African, Eritreans. And now, the neighborhood is almost completely Somali communities. So we're in a really rich area for a sharing of cultural perspectives and artistic traditions. Catherine Day: I'm really interested too in this connection you made to oral tradition. So in some of our other conversations, we might have talked about... let's say we talk about native American culture or we talk about spiritual tradition. The notion of the spirituals as a form of communication. We are a culture that tends to privilege written word, things carry forward in that particular way and we are less sophisticated about the oral tradition. As I recall, there was something you've been exploring around that false dichotomy, maybe, of those separations, the ability to notate and the power of the unnoticed on notated work. So I'm just... I don't know. Oh my gosh. Jill Dawe: That is a huge fascinating question. I feel like I could do a whole semester course on notation. How do I begin? Okay. So I'll just speak for me. What I think is fascinating about Western notation is that we have this system of ink dots on a page that allow us to hear what music people were playing or singing in the 1600s. That's just incredible to me. A, that we can even translate sound into a visual map, and then that that visual map can be... it can travel across countries and continents and centuries, and that we can still recreate, to some degree, the sounds that were composed hundreds of years ago. It's incredible. So that's one thing. The other thing is that we also know since the beginning of humans, I think, although again, outside my content area, that humans make music, and that it's also true that tons and tons of music has been lost because it wasn't written down, but we know it existed. And that lots of musical traditions around the globe continue to be passed from generation to generation via oral traditions. For example, Indian classical music, which is passed from masters experts to apprentices over many, many years of study. And it's also integrated with understanding of history and spirituality. And so those traditions are preserved. They're just not notated. So this idea... So on the one hand, I think notation is fantastic. On the other hand, and especially now in the 21st century where we have YouTube and cell phones that can record our music, I'm not sure if the written page has exactly the same... if it holds all the information. So I've had my first handful of students at Augsburg who are self-taught from YouTube videos. Catherine Day: Oh wow. Jill Dawe: Which is awesome. [crosstalk 00:18:35]. There's incredible piano lessons out there on YouTube. And people who have learned from video games, they know the music, they learn it by ear from video games, and then the video game composers are smart and put lessons and notation out there. So these kinds of alternative forms of transmitting knowledge are also fascinating. Catherine Day: It makes me think I'm going to apply it to my own experience becoming an artist in a different form than I'd expected. And it was really interesting to me. I was learning how to draw and I found it very stressful, and there was something I wanted to draw. It was a very complex photograph I'd taken in Yellowstone Park. And I had made up my mind that I couldn't visually project that photograph onto paper and draw onto the paper. I had decided that that was against the rules, but it was purely my decision because... I don't know if you see the leap of the point, but it's saying, what is drawing? Well, I had made up my mind drawing had to be that. I looked at something and drew it while I actually was looking at something and drawing it. I was just tracing over a photograph that was my photograph of something, but it was interesting to me how the rules got in the way. And I'm just wondering, how often does that come into play in your classroom? Are there rules that are imposed by the culture of music? Are there rules that are imposed by the students? How does that affect your teaching? Jill Dawe: Oh my gosh. That's another huge question. The answer's yes. So on a personal level, I think we all work with assumptions and frames and assumptions that we don't even know we have that could be limiting or could be freeing. I think that we as humans, we create all kinds of agreements. We have political systems and educational systems and we have syllabi with rules and outcomes and goals, which are in, some ways, agreements between us because we have to communicate. On the other hand, they can also be... they can keep us in boxes too. So I think one of the things that the arts brings, perhaps, is we're supposed to be able to be creative thinkers and to be able to look outside the box or to flip the frames back on themselves. To go back to your visual analogy, to look for the resonance, the connection, the center pieces that bring these systems together. I don't know. That's a tough question. That sounded like a really vague answer. Catherine Day: No, I'm really interested in that idea of... I think oftentimes when people talk about teams, they might go back to an experience they had. Maybe it was in childhood, maybe it was a trip they took or a chance to go to camp, but they have some experience. It's truly amazing. And they spend the rest of their lives trying to recreate that. Jill Dawe: Oh wow. Catherine Day: To some extent, we're always looking for, where am I going to have that happen again? And as you were describing this experience of learning, I was picturing that. This idea of resonance was what I started to think about is that the way in which perhaps music is such a vital part of teaching and learning because it's a place where you maybe get to find that moment of residence and then you keep looking forward again and you try to recreate it. What's the possibility of that as we think about the power of music to make peace, form alliances, break down barriers. Jill Dawe: Right. Yes. And I think about that just in my own life, I think. I love the music itself. It makes me weak need, it's my happy place, whatever. But it also has allowed me a way to travel the world and to connect with people. It's allowed me ways to stretch my brain and my body. As you acquire all these different things that you have to play, it's allowed me, yeah, opportunities to find shared space. So we look at... In a [Composer Libretto 00:22:55] studio, I've been part of, locally, we bring together diverse composers, diverse meaning different genres, different kinds of musical aesthetics or goals and diverse writers. So sometimes poets, sometimes playwrights, sometimes librettos, sometimes... I don't know, different kinds of people. And then teams of performers, performers who were primarily actors, performers who are an opera singer, a performer who is a rock and roll person. And we bring together the team and set a parameter and a set of goals. And you work in threes, you have 24 hours, you make the song, and then the next day you come back and you perform it with the performers and people give feedback. That is only in the form of questions and curiosities and not in judgment. Catherine Day: So is it kind of the Liz Lerman critical response process? Jill Dawe: Exactly. The Liz Lerman process. So replace judgment with curiosity and look for that shared space. Where are the edges? Where did these different yet similar people come together to co-create something that was perhaps... I don't if I want to say different than the sum of its parts. Catherine Day: So that process, which people can find online, it's Liz Lerman's critical response process. She's a MacArthur genius, a choreographer. But she devised a form of critique that really serves the artists rather than serves the audience. What does that process do? So what is your intent when you... Is this group you're exercising your muscles as creators? Do people get to see what you've created from this group? Jill Dawe: Nope. That one is entirely professional development and process driven. So the product is off the table. If you get a product, great, that's a bonus. But that is not the goal. The goal is to... It is a collaborative process and to mind the edges. But so interesting that you know the Liz Lerman method. So for years, I've been using it in my piano studio class here, and how it's worked for me, I've adapted it and I'm sure simplified it, but how it's worked for me is we do studio class, which is students play for each other in [inaudible 00:25:07], our formal recital hall, which can be daunting. And traditionally, in classical piano, you would call it a master class, where the teacher would... that would be me or our guest would give feedback to the students. So I flipped the model. Using Liz Lerman, my students ask questions for each other. And so typically, you'll get students who will say things like, "Oh, that was really good," which is lovely and well-intended. And I keep saying, "But how do we help each other?" Yes, it was really good. And can you ask a question? And so then students will learn in time rather than saying things like, "Wow, your peddling was really blurry. I couldn't hear the melody." They will learn to flip it around and say things like, "I was really found myself listening to your peddling. Can you tell me what the goal was?" And then sometimes the performer will do something surprising and say, "Well, my goal was to make things really blurry, kind of like adding reverb on a digital piano." And then we can all say, "Wow, you achieved that." So the questions will be often... or the answers will be surprising, and I think we can learn and the conversations get interesting. Catherine Day: Yeah, because you've gone beyond good or bad, up, down, yes, no, to discovering actually what the intent and the goal was of the work. And maybe the student doesn't even know what their goal is. They may discover that in their process, but then they learn what they're communicating. Jill Dawe: And the students, I'd like to think, learn how to be really active listeners and they learn to turn on curiosity, which then they can use in their own playing and learning too, "Why am I doing that this way?" Or, "Gosh, how do I make this melody more clear, or do I want to?" Rather than, "Oh gosh, this is bad," or "I'm frustrated," or "This doesn't sound good." So it's, again, looking at the process and the learning. Catherine Day: I personally think Liz Lerman's process could be very valuable in so many different settings. Like, what if we were actually using it in our political process? How would the world be different? Jill Dawe: I completely agree. And I love it that you know that system. Catherine Day: Well, I learned it as an artist. So- Jill Dawe: Of course. Catherine Day: ... I became a painter, somebody introduced it to me. It's been used a lot... Jill Dawe: Absolutely. Catherine Day: ... in many different places. So it has a real currency and power. And I am always fascinated, who does use it and what might we do? What could happen if we used it in more places? Jill Dawe: Right. And I think that that's been one of my great privileges to work here is having a foot in the arts world, our rich arts world, so I have to credit Ben [inaudible 00:27:53] Music Theater for introducing me to this system feedback, but also having a foot over at the Cedar Cultural Center and having exposure and learning from Somali artists from around the globe, and then being able to bring those experiences and translating them back into an individual piano lesson or students that I teach here that that porous on off campus learning and that integration of systems, I think for someone like me, has been a really fascinating. I'm looking for the shared space, I guess, between things that might seem to be opposites, if we want to bring it back to where we started the conversation. Catherine Day: We have to discover, what is that relationship between opposites and attractives, if you will, because could these things be in service to helping us lessen our polarization, our inclination to separate from one another? I ask it naively. Jill Dawe: And I'm always looking for the shared space, which sounds touchy feely. But the more that I mind that idea and read, I think that there are ways to do that. Look for the places where the edges rub, and there's almost always shared space. Music can also certainly divide, but music is also a place where a lot of people can find that resonance and let go of some of the... maybe some of the differences and enjoy getting into that shared space. Catherine Day: So when you think about the future of music and the future of music here at Augsburg, what is it you're excited about going forward? What could be different? Jill Dawe: I can only speak for myself, obviously. For me, things I'm thinking about is who holds knowledge. Again, back to that. So how do I bring artists from off campus onto campus in ways that are reciprocal and respectful and where the learning goes both directions in authentic ways. I think I'm interested in opening conversations about all the different ways that music serves in the world, by ear or hip hop or classical or to me, one of the miracles of music is it's multiple, multiple dimensions, and how do we expose students and invite students in from all of those different traditions, I think, is something that I'm interested in. And for me personally, I guess just learning more styles and connecting with more people. I'm happy to be connected to a Balkan community where we're looking at avant garde compositions by Balkan composers. I am lucky to be part of the Cedar Cultural Center and lots of global traditions and artists. I'm, of course, having my training in the classical world and love the incredible music that is produced in that genre. So I'm working with music theater people. It's all fascinating. Catherine Day: We want to include a recording that you were kind enough to let us capture of you playing the piano, and the purpose of it was to share something about a specific person and this idea of a single note and silences, I believe. Would you introduce that for us? Jill Dawe: So Arvo Part is an Estonian composer who started writing when Estonia was Communist, and his early works are works that integrate many of the avant garde traditions of the United States and the Western world. And his works sometimes were premiered to great a claim and sometimes created controversy. And as his work progressed, I think the controversies and the political tunneled and I don't even know, personal tunneled, caused him to question what he was doing as an artist and he retreated in silence, and it was a self-imposed silence. And in the silence, apparently, he studied Bach and he studied history and spirituality and really looked at what music meant to him. And he came out with this piece that was his first piece in a new style that he called [foreign language 00:32:19] or little bells. And as much as I can understand, it's based on this idea that there is a single pitch and from the single pitch, you can generate a kind of music that has a resonance and a meaning that transcends. And so interestingly, from this very minimalist, sparse style, he has become one of the most listened to contemporary composers in the world. So I was just interested in that and interested in, again, of the seeming flipping the frame of starting from a single pitch, rather than starting from a system like polyphony or a system like... I don't know any of the ways that we defined genres. So I chose this piece called For Alina, which I think you'll hear, has a stillness to it and also a power. Catherine Day: I've been speaking with Jill Dawe, associate professor of music. Thank you very much. And I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to The Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit Augsburg.edu.

Vivian Feng: I consider myself always a learner, learning new things always excite me. I am really at the bench learning with my students because we're doing things that I don't have the right answer for and I'm reading papers together with them. I hope that by coming through my classes, my students would actually have a newfound curiosity to the natural world. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educate students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast. And today I'm speaking with Vivian Feng, associate professor of chemistry and we're going to be talking a bit about the impact and importance of both research and experiential learning in the field of chemistry. Welcome, Vivian. Vivian Feng: Thank you, Catherine. Catherine Day: So happy you could make time for us today. Let's start by finding out a little bit about where you discovered your passion for the subject, the field of chemistry. Vivian Feng: I actually wasn't one of those kids that had identified a passion in the natural sciences at a young age. Actually, in fact, I was more drawn to the liberal arts, to history, geography, arts and music. I grew up in China and studied the sciences and math when we separated in different branches in high school. Simply because my parents are both engineers, and then they basically convinced me that I'd have more options in career options down the world. So I was branched into the sciences and math and engineering branch. The most transforming experience I've had in those days was when I was selected to go to the international school called the United World College of the Adriatic in Italy, when I was a junior year in high school. Catherine Day: So you were 17? Vivian Feng: I was 17. And when I got to the international school, of course, all schooling was only in English. And so that added some pressure and some difficulties. I knew because I've had more chemistry, physics, background than most of my peers at that point, it basically was an easy choice to think, "Okay, I will take the higher level of IB courses in those subjects." Catherine Day: An IB just for our audience is International Baccalaureate. Vivian Feng: Yes, International Baccalaureate. Catherine Day: And those are regarded as high achieving high demand classes. Vivian Feng: Right. Because the school was an IB school, so at the end of the two years, we would receive an IB diploma. Because of that, I ended up taking chemistry, physics, and math in my higher level and I was really nervous about my English language ability to tackle those humanity subjects. That's why I took things like economics as a subsidiary level courses. But also because of that experience, I was able to discover the application and an impact of the natural sciences. I don't know how much you know about the education system in China, but basically throughout your school ages, your school days, everything is test-driven. Everything is about how much you can dump what you know, back on the exam paper. So I rarely saw the real life application of the sciences and I think that was one of the reasons why I wasn't inspired in that area. But in the international school, I still clearly remember that this winter break when the international students basically just either went home or when to stay in their country embassies. So I spent this winter breaking Rome in the Chinese embassy and reading a bunch of science journals that my chemistry teacher just left out in the classroom hoping that we'd grab a few copies and just read in our leisure time. I remember one of them was something like Scientific America or a very popular science read. And the article I was reading, and I was actually having hard time reading through all the vocabulary that I wasn't familiar with, was about carbon dating for dinosaurs. That was the first time I saw, "Wow, that's what chemistry can do?" Because it was related to history which was a subject area I was interested in, and I got to see where science is applied. And I would say also from there, plus it didn't hurt when I was actually doing pretty well in those classes. From that experience I remember I started thinking maybe there's more to science than I thought. And for the extended essay assignment that we had to do as part of the IB diploma, I identified to work on mineral water characterization of commercial mineral water, multiple brands of commercial mineral water on the market in China back home during summer break. Because that's when people started notice you started selling commercial mineral waters, and then really [inaudible 00:06:00] from your tap water. That became my extended essay topic, and that was the first time I actually got a flavor of what research is all about. As you have a question and you figure out a way to answer those questions. Catherine Day: Well, I'm struck too by the topic that also you had this idea that was very relevant to your life, it was becoming popular, something marketable and tangible, but had this scientific application and so did you make a discovery about the difference in the mineral waters? Did you come to a conclusion? Vivian Feng: Yes. Actually, that was one of the first things I understood that actually mineral water does not or those commercial mineral water some of them have extra certain ions than what you have in tap water and then some other ions that affect your taste, or you want to be removed actually or removed. Then that's what gives mineral water its unique to taste. People that are sensitive to taste would say, "Oh, this water tastes good," or, "This water tastes bad." And so all those are because of the ion chemistry. Catherine Day: Real application. So it was quite a turn for you then both the idea that you were leaving home at 17 and going far away to study and so forth, where you were gone for a long time. You were back and forth to home? Vivian Feng: I only went home over the summer break. And then from there, then I was admitted to a college in Oregon. Once I received my IB diploma, and I came to Oregon for college. In Oregon, I went to a small liberal arts college, just like where we had a very close relationship with faculty. And I started doing undergraduate research my second month when I got on campus because my organic professor basically asked if anyone wants to do research. She also was working in the field of analytical chemistry. From my experience of working with this mineral water analysis, I thought, I didn't really know what analytical chemistry was, but I thought I want to do something like that. That's why I sign up with her and started undergraduate research experience with her, and until I graduated two and a half years later. So undergraduate research was part of my undergraduate life, for the entire time I was there. Catherine Day: What about Augsburg inspires you in your teaching? Vivian Feng: Well, I would say the students. When I first came to Augsburg, I don't think I knew a whole lot about Augsburg student population. I came in 2008 and to me, what drew me to Augsburg was the liberal arts identity, because that's an environment I've always known that I want to work in, I want to contribute to. I always thought I want to do what my professor did for me and pay it forward. How much influence she had on me, and what she's shown me, not just in the field of chemistry, but in the sense of your value in the society, I thought there's no higher calling than that for me. That's why when I came Augsburg, I wanted to do exactly what she did for me, and to do it for other students. And then once I start working with our students, I started to see the differences of many of their undergraduate experience that are so different from mine. I did work when I was in college, mostly on campus jobs in the library, in the chemistry department, tutoring, and all that. But looking at how much my students work now, is really humbling. Catherine Day: When you say work, you mean work for pay- Vivian Feng: Right. Catherine Day: ... meaning that they have to provide a certain amount of support for themselves in order to simply be here? Vivian Feng: Yes. And so that really made me understand the phrase that education is a privilege. I don't consider myself growing up in a wealthy family or a well-off environment. But I can also say, I didn't have to worry a whole lot about where my next rent come from. And from that, I'm very humbled to actually see and to understand what my students have to go through in order to receive that diploma at the end. Catherine Day: Maybe you could talk a little bit more about the students that you are working with. In addition to the fact that they're having to work hard, what are the characteristics of the student body that impress you? Vivian Feng: Our students are not entitled, and very often they're opposite of entitled. Many of them I see that coming to college with lack the of self-confidence, and very often, we are the ones that have to play the cheerleader role. To tell them, "You're really good at this, you should explore this, you should apply to this, and you deserve this." And so that to me is quite unique, especially in this day and age where entitlement among the younger generation sounds like it's everywhere. And so I find that very unique about our students and I really appreciate that. I'd to find my role as their cheerleader, probably one of the best things that I'm doing for this population. Catherine Day: Well, can you tell us a couple of examples of students in their trajectory as you've come to know them? Vivian Feng: Yes, of course because I love to talk about what's my students. Let me start with one of them that have just recently graduated. And I would say, the impact he's made on me is just so significant that it just changed my view and changes the way I select my students, and I mentor my student differently. He was a typical first generation minority student, and he was so quiet in class. In a class of 30 students, he always sat at the back in the back row, I just felt it's so hard to get to know him. He was so easily ignored in many classes, I'm sure. And then even when I prompt him to coming and talk to me or ... I rarely get them to respond. And until one occasion, he came by to drop off something, and I just made a comment and found out that, oh, he's actually a chemistry major. I mentioned, "You should consider doing research then," without any intention of actually recruiting him because I didn't feel like I knew him, and plus I'd all ready set up my group for that summer by then. By then, it was all ready past the deadline for URGO application and all that- Catherine Day: URGO is our shorthand for the undergraduate research program that happens during the summers, and it's a paid opportunity. And also a very structured one. Vivian Feng: Exactly. And then students have to apply in January, February to be considered for that summer. So for the student that was all ready March, April, when he finally came back to me and said, "You know, what you said about research, actually, I think I might want to give it a try." At that time I thought, "Well, this is a bit late." But one thing he said that really struck me and then made me decide to give him a shot, he said, "I don't know if I'm good. I don't know if I will be good at this." Or something to that extent. And I just thought that's exactly the kind of student I want to give the opportunity to. Luckily, I'm currently grant funded, I am part of a research center. NSF founded a research center called Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, so I do have some external funding that wouldn't give me some flexibility to support an extra student for the summer. Especially at that time, he told me that he was still working at a retail in the mall. And so he thought, even if I can't pay him for the entire 400 hours for the summer, he will just do this as a part-time researcher. Catherine Day: A sense of dedication, it sounds like. Vivian Feng: Right. Catherine Day: And that is curiosity and dedication. Vivian Feng: Right. And so I thought, "Okay, then let's try this." I took him in for the summer, and actually within a couple of weeks, just by watching him at the bench, I knew he was a top-notch researcher. I think he figured out pretty soon as well, because by the end of a month or two, he asked me, "Is that okay if I quit my other job and do this full-time?" I was thrilled. I managed to move some money around to be able to keep paying him throughout the summer. But by the end of that summer, a project that he was working on, was another student in my lab, contributed to a project in our collaborators lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And so by the time winter came around, we started drafting a manuscript with him as a co-author. Catherine Day: Wow, that's significant. Vivian Feng: And now looking back, that was his first paper. Up to now, he has three published papers, one manuscript in preparation, and one manuscript submitted under review. For an undergraduate student with five papers under his belt is just phenomenal. Catherine Day: That's so great. He has graduated, this student? Vivian Feng: He has. And then now as an update, so he's working ... He's taking a gap year because he wasn't exactly ready to apply to graduate school. That wasn't initially on his radar, obviously, until he's got the two and a half years of undergraduate research experience under his belt. With all publications, and conference presentations, and he also represent ... He was the only undergraduate researcher that represented the center at NSF grant review in Madison. With all this, he also impressed other faculty and staff in the center that, for example, our managing director thought so highly of him and really pushed to give him an extra summer because we were so close to get this project done. Catherine Day: That was in Madison [inaudible 00:17:02]? Vivian Feng: Right. After he graduated, we actually were able to fund him for the summer after his senior year through the center to keep paying him and allow him to finish the project before he moved on to take an industrial position in the meanwhile. And now he has been admitted to both University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and University of Wisconsin–Madison. Catherine Day: Very prestigious programs. Vivian Feng: With full stipend and on top of that fellowship. Catherine Day: Oh, my God. You must be so proud. Vivian Feng: Yes. This is one of the highlights of my academic career for sure. Catherine Day: Do you know which one he's going to choose? Vivian Feng: Not yet, we're all holding our breath. Catherine Day: What values do you seek to convey when you're teaching? I mean, I hear you telling us that the students seem to come with that dedication and that commitment. But what are some of the things that you're seeing to instill in them? Vivian Feng: The one thing that I sometimes I'm saddened by while I'm in the classroom is curiosity. You can blame everything on the electronics, you can say because their eyes are always glued to the phone, nobody making natural observations of what's the shape of snowflake? Or- Catherine Day: A very relevant topic at the moment. Vivian Feng: Yeah, that's why I'm staring at this. Or what type of tree is this? So there are various reasons. I'm sure in different stages of their operating, maybe their worst point of time where they were curious about the natural world, and maybe is all the things that we make them memorize and learn that basically murdered that curiosity, I don't know. But sometimes I find it difficult to relate to students when they're not as connected to the natural world around us. That definitely poses a challenge in teaching in a classroom. But that's also why I want to reignite that, and I want them to actually ask the question. The cell phone that they love so much, what about it? What aspects of it? What are some of the technological development behind it, that allows you to have the cell phone? An example I can give you is this Material Chemistry and Nanotechnology topic course that I'm teaching right now. When I designed the course, as a topic course, this is only a two credit that we're meeting once a week for 100 minutes. And when I designed the course, I thought, "Okay, what are some of the general topics usually people add an intro level of material science course that should be covered?" I thought more about this and realized "Wait, I don't want to run this as a coverage based course and run through a textbook. I want to think about what I'm trying to achieve, what I'm trying to get to." Go back to your learning objectives. And one of the highest learning objectives for me in that course, is to get students to notice the exciting field, material science actually is. Then I started to structure the course a bit differently, and actually implemented more applications of various classes of material instead of diving too deep into each classes or material. So far, we've talked about, for example, a Morpheus material, and a great example is glass. So we spent a lot of time on glass. What's exciting about glass? We started to talk about glass. When they came in when we started this conversation, they were all just like, "Okay, sure, whatever." But then when you started digging deep, deeper and deeper and think about, "Wow, I never thought about what gives color to different glasses? What makes bulletproof glass bulletproof? What gives your cell phone screen ... they are supposed to impress you, when is the Gorilla Glass generation for? Why should you be impressed?" Then they started to think, "Wow, I never thought of that." And then the second component is, we were covering semiconductor materials. One of the examples of semiconductor materials that made a huge impact in society is the creation of LED light emitting diode. You just can't help bringing up that, LED lights of other colors came out in the 70s and 80s and they've been marketed over all those years. But why one blue LED came out and won Nobel Prize. What's special about blue LED? Catherine Day: I don't know. Tell us. Vivian Feng: You're welcome to come sit in my class. Catherine Day: Come find out. Vivian Feng: Because when blue LED came around, that's when we can make color white. Catherine Day: Oh, yeah. Vivian Feng: And that's when you can have your cell phone now with LED emitting light. LED became a very, very relevant material in their opinion now. Catherine Day: So they got excited. Vivian Feng: They got excited, and they want to know. And then the third topic we're on right now, currently this week is Energy Storage Material. So then, obviously- Catherine Day: Hm! Beautifully relevant. Vivian Feng: ... obviously your cell phone batteries. What's in your lithium-ion battery? And what makes them unique? Why can't we hold around a lead-acid battery that came around in 1800s? That became a key that I realized, that's driving my course design and driving my content delivery. I want them to see why this material is relevant, why does this is interesting. Catherine Day: One of the things I often say about my outsider experience with Augsburg is that it does seem to be one of the most relevant institutions in its work. And I wonder if you have an additional comment about that. It's a place where it seems as though this combination of learning to make a living, learning to make a life, learning to be part of a community, is quite an interesting relevance. But how do you see it? Vivian Feng: Well, we all want to train our students to be some type of ... to make some sort of contribution to the society. So how do they get to know what a society needs? I think that's part of the equation. It's not just about going out to get a job that Fizzer technical skills, technical background. It's also getting to see what drives the society forward. And I think the example of the material chemistry course was great. I hope that for students come through that class or get a sense of this is a field that's worthy of my dedication, worthy of my career. Catherine Day: Is the materials chemistry a really top field at the university of Minnesota or is it- Vivian Feng: Yes. Material science and engineering, yes. Catherine Day: Is one of the top in the world. So you're also helping them make it possibly connected to a field of study they can continue in a really, really big way. Vivian Feng: Yes. Actually, one of the components in the course, is to ... I called research scientists in the field, I give them a list of researchers that are leaders in the field of material science, and then they can pick whoever they want, and to research about them. To find out why they're considered the leaders of the field. What's their major contributions to the advancement of this field and what are they known for? What's their pedigree? How did it get to where they are? I have to say, that has been a really interesting experience for many of my students, because many of them admit, "Actually I never heard of this person before I did my research, and now I'm just super interested. I really want to do researching this group or have a summer experience” or, "I want to go to his talks at conferences or ..." So it's definitely making an impact. Catherine Day: What dreams do you have for this next phase of your teaching and research? You've come to this place where you've gotten into this new building, there's some momentum around the research, you've been able to attract some outside funding. What do you see coming as another dream? Vivian Feng: In terms of research, I am at a ... I would say a new stage of my career for research because I now have some understanding of what I'm good at, and also, I'm always driven by things that I don't all ready know. I always I'm exploring new field. Right now, my role in the center has brought me to this new area of bioanalytical chemistry. As an analytical material and analytical chemist in my training, the branch into the bio field has definitely been a new experience. So definitely the research aspect, this new direction that I'm taking on is definitely exciting. Catherine Day: Well for us novices, what does that feel mean? Or how would we experience that field when you say the bio ... Vivian Feng: The bioanalytical. Basically, as the material chemist in me, I am definitely driven to understand the develop of new technology, new material. And one example I can give you is this lithium-ion battery that I just mentioned earlier. It is actually one of the things that my research lab is focusing on. For my lab, for my research group right now, instead of looking at the development of new materials, we actually are examining the impact of these new classes of materials Their impact on the environment through some specific biological models. In my lab right now, the biological model is bacteria. Because bacteria are at the bottom of your food chain and that's important for your various nutrients cycles. So what would be an impact of this type of new material if they were at the end of their life cycle, if they got released into the environment? What's the impact of that on to the ecological system? We do this at various levels of biological complexity. In my lab in particular, we look at the more molecular level changes is not just about due to bacteria get killed or not. As more interestingly, do they change? How is their life cycle behavior altered even if we don't have a high dose exposure? That's one of the areas that we're working on right now. Catherine Day: When you think about ... I know you have a young family, your children are how old again? Vivian Feng: Eight and 10. Catherine Day: Eight and 10. When you imagine this sooner than we think, but as they go forth into their exploration, are there some dreams you have for the intersection of the work you're doing and their lives when you think about that environmental impact you're researching? How do you see that? Vivian Feng: Wow, this is actually something that again, goes back to the very beginning where I told you I care about the things that are applicable. That's one reason why I identify this research area to be very attractive, because I can see the real world implication. And one of the things that I tell people what I do this new field of nanotoxicology, that's the word. That's- Catherine Day: Nanotoxicology, wow. Vivian Feng: ... the field that we're in. And so one example is, right now a lot of the commercial products all ready incorporate nano materials. For example, those antimicrobial socks, or kitchen towels that claim to be antimicrobial so that they won't stink. So what are the what are the chemical agents in there that are killing the bacteria and they turn out they're silver nanoparticles? In the field we know that silver nanoparticles are actually transformed, they're not stable. They're not always going to be attached to your socks or your kitchen towels. And over time, what does that mean? They get- Catherine Day: Where do they go? And what are they- Vivian Feng: Where do they go and what are they doing? What additional tasks, unintended tasks they're doing in the environment? So the applicable, the relevance is definitely what motivates me and I can definitely see a long term impact in many generations to come. Catherine Day: Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your explorations into the field and your passion for it. We really enjoyed hearing from you today. Vivian Feng: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Catherine Day: I've been speaking with Vivian Feng, associate professor of chemistry at Oxford University. I'm Catherine Reid Day and this is the Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

Jeremy Myers: How do we help our young people think about God as moving in our world, working in our world? How do we teach our young people to be in our world, partnering with God in the redeeming work that God's doing in our world? So how do we teach them how to listen, engage, seek out places of brokenness courageously, hopefully be in those places to hear those stories, to be changed by their neighbors stories and then learn how to enter into God's story while they're carrying their neighbor's story with them? And by carrying their neighbor's story with them into God's story, it's going to change the way they hear God's story. Just like God's story will change the way they hear their neighbor's story. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg podcast. We're speaking today with Jeremy Myers, associate professor of religion, and director of the theology and public leadership program, among other roles he plays at Augsburg. Welcome Jeremy. Jeremy Myers: Thank you, it's good to be here. Catherine Day: I want to explore several aspects of your work and your passions and I wondered if you'd be willing to start with where you grew up and what you wanted to be. Jeremy Myers: I grew up in the Chicago area. I was born out in Maryland. We moved to Chicago when I was three. My father was a Lutheran pastor, and my mother stayed home and raised myself and my sister. And it was a great place to grow up and be a kid. There were abandoned railroad tracks behind our house, which offered lots of places to disappear from your parents, and build forts, and explore, and be imaginative. Catherine Day: So when you say Chicago, you weren't really right in the city? Jeremy Myers: Not in the city, no. We were about 45 minutes out south of Chicago in a town called Madison, Illinois. And I have vivid memories of loving ... As I said my father was a pastor, and I loved being around the church. I would be given special jobs during certain services. On Good Friday my job was to dial the lights back as the service progressed so the sanctuary got gradually darker, and darker, and darker. And I loved the mystery of that. I remember being a little boy and just loving going to church at nighttime. So there was a mystery about what we did as a religious community that was appealing to me. There was a mystery about that space and the way it smelled, and the way it felt, and the way it looked. And it was a supportive community for me growing up. So the earliest thing I can remember wanting to be was a pastor, and I remember planning little services for my family and setting up an alter, and planning an order of worship, and writing a sermon, and having the family come together and do these little worship services together. And these were not ... I also spent a lot of time pretending I was Han Solo and that was play. And when I was doing these services with my family it felt quite different. It wasn't play. I wasn't pretending to fly the millennium falcon, I was actually leading worship for them. It felt very different for me. And so early on I think, it wasn't the mechanical rote nature of being at church that appealed to me, but it was sort of the darkness and the smells of candles being extinguished after service, and you could smell that smoke. It was a community of people who were trying to figure out how to care for one another. It was all those things that I think early on when I look back now on my childhood, made me really want to pursue this line of work of being a religious leader. Though I never became ordained, so I'm not a pastor. I don't lead worship services. And I don't fly the millennium falcon either. Catherine Day: But you still dream about it? Jeremy Myers: I still dream about that one, yeah. Catherine Day: So the path wasn't direct? Jeremy Myers: No. Catherine Day: What were the twists and turns? Jeremy Myers: Well I parted ways with my church of origin, the Christian denomination I grew up in. As I got to college I realized I just didn't see the world the way they really wanted people to see the world, and I really found their way of seeing the world limited and not informed by the same way of reading the bible that I grew up ... The way I grew up reading the bible informed my world view differently than the denomination I was a part of so I parted ways and it was painful enough that eventually I really didn't want to have anything to do with the church. I felt like I would probably pop in from ... Because that longing for community and mystery was still there I'd probably pop in from time to time. I knew what I really wanted to do at this point was work with young people. I wanted to be a youth worker. I had had some other significant experiences as a teenager with programming and mentors that helped me feel empowered and have some agency, and I wanted to do that with young people also. And so I sort of walked away from the church and started pursuing child psychology, child development. And really wanted to go into school counseling or school social work. And I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in child psychology and youth studies, and I did not get admitted to grad school for social work. So I had to figure out something else to do and was devastated because one, I really wanted to do that work, two, not getting into an academic program that you applied for makes you feel kind of stupid. So I had to deal with a lot of those kind of inner demons of not feeling worthwhile. And I ended up finding a congregation that was looking for a one year interim youth director to run the youth ministry. So I applied for that and I figured it's a chance to work with kids, which is what I really want to do. I'm comfortable in the church. I can do this for a year and get myself back on my feet. Well during the course of that year I actually really loved it. Fell in love with the young people I was working with, fell in love with the work I was doing, found out that I was actually sort of good at it. Found my way into a church that allowed for some of the doubts and the questions and the push back that I really wanted to be able to wrestle with, and that I thought young people really needed to wrestle with as well. And that's sort of how I found my way back into this line of work in a full-time professional ministry. From there pursued my masters degree in youth leadership at Luther Seminary. And when I was done with that, I found out I actually wasn't stupid, that I actually was sort of smart, and wanted to do more academic work. Became more curious, which then led me to PhD work. And while I was doing my PhD work at Luther Seminary, Augsburg posted a position looking for someone to come in and oversee their ministry degree program. And I was quite curious about that. And although at the time I thought I would complete my PhD and go back into the congregation and continue to do youth ministry in a congregation, teaching was something that really interested me, so I applied and through the application process found out that I was really excited. I really wanted this job. And fortunately was offered the position and have been here since. So I like to think of myself as youth worker, and I did that youth work in a church. And now I do that youth work as a religion professor at Augsburg. Catherine Day: Where do the toddlers come in? Jeremy Myers: I forgot about the toddlers, yeah. My first two years of college were at a Lutheran school in Chicago. And that's where I started to realize I could no longer kind of be a part of that particular denomination. And so I dropped out of school. Dropped out of college for a couple of years and traveled with a band, played base guitar in a band for a year. And that organization I traveled with was based here in Minneapolis, so when that tour was over I relocated here in Minneapolis and had to find work and liked kids and there was a daycare in downtown Minneapolis that was looking for a toddler teacher, and I applied and was hired to be a toddler teacher. So here I was, a 22 year old guy working as a toddler teacher in a field where there aren't many men changing diapers for a living. And that's probably where I really fell in love with the minds of young people. I had always enjoyed the youth work I had done in my teens and early 20s, but working with those toddlers, the same group of kids day in and day out, and seeing how they had compassion for one another, how they functioned as a little community, how they were thoughtful, how they were problem solvers. The way we often think about toddlers is the way we often think about teenagers, in that they're selfish, they're whiny. Maybe toddlers bite more than teenagers but we tend to think of those young people in those two phases of life in very similar ways. I found them fascinating. And I found them to be exploring their world and trying to shape their world in really neat ways. And that was what drew me back to school to study child psychology, was working with those two year olds and seeing the giftedness and the tension and the cognitive dissonance that a two year old is experiencing. The inner tension and cognitive dissonance that a teenager is experiencing, because of developmental changes, is often seen as something that we should be afraid of or confused by. And I've just come to really see it as just rich fertile soil for imagination, and problem solving, and creating community, and chasing after passions. And I saw that in two year olds and then in my youth work I saw that in middle schoolers and high schoolers as well. Catherine Day: I'm curious how if there's a connection for you between your own experience in the church with that, I'm picturing you with that dialing down the lights. Almost like I can almost feel your heart beating with anticipation and the drama of it if you will. And how do you think that's informed your own questions about the questions you say were really perplexing you around religion, or your desire to pursue the questions? Jeremy Myers: Even though it was sort of man-made mystery, me dialing ... It was actually really a big dial that dimmed all the lights. So kind of this man made- Catherine Day: It's fun to picture. Jeremy Myers: It is yeah. I could barely reach it, and I had the bulletin and I had the numbers I was supposed to turn it to. The sanctuary became prettier and prettier, and scarier and scarier with each turn of the dial, and for whatever reason ... You know I asked someone who's in psychology, and maybe they could tell me. But that was compelling for me. Not just to turn like ... Being able to help out, I liked. But being able to create this space where other people ... My assumption, whether this was true or not, I don't know. But my assumption was that, turning those lights down made everyone in that space feel like it was becoming more and more sacred. Now that you asked the question, that is very much the way I feel about the work I try to do and the work I try and teach our students to do, is how do you walk into a space, into a community, into a system, and trust that the sacred is already there, and yet also function as a competent leader who can help others become aware of it as well? And so maybe as a 12 year old I was tapping into that when I was turning that dial. I got to play a role in helping people connect to a mystery that I thought was important and meaningful, and there are actual feelings associated with it. Like embodied feelings of, not always peace, sometimes distress. But there were actual emotions that I felt in spaces and conversations where we were wondering about God, telling stories about God. Catherine Day: How has that process of telling stories about God been present in your work here? Jeremy Myers: I think it's the stories about God that are the thing that's compelling. And I think religious communities make God not very compelling when scripture is thought of as a manual or a history book. But when it's thought of as stories about God, stories by a community of people who are trying to figure out their interactions with something they would consider to be divine, they become really compelling stories to read together and they're humorous. And you can see yourself in them, and you can see the foibles and the idiocy, and the naivete of the people who are writing them. When you think of them as stories people told one another to try and grasp who God might be they become really compelling. So when I teach my religion 100 course, trying to invite students into scripture, now we're kind of turning the conversation towards the public theme. But the religion department and my degree program we have this aim, focus towards religion in the public square. If we enter into the stories about God that we have in scripture as public documents of public stories that a public community told to one another, to try and understand their public life together, they become so much more human, rather than divine. And I think when they become more human they actually have more power. I think if we talk about these stories as divine stories then our students, I would say anyone, has a really hard time connecting with them because they're just odd stories. But if you talk about them as human stories, well humans are odd. So then they become humorous, they function as like a mirror back on us. I remember students getting frustrated because as we were reading through the old testament, they were saying like, well the Israelites seemed to keep doing the same thing, they seem to keep making the same mistakes. Doesn't that sound familiar? And they're like yeah, it kind of sounds familiar. So once these stories can become strangely familiar or mysteriously familiar, they can teach us something about ourselves. And they can then empower us I think, to also tell our own stories about where we think we might be encountering God. We're not judging our own experiences that we might consider to be divine against some sort of assumed universal norm, which is often how scripture is held. Well if we can help folks realize that these stories about God are human stories, then our human stories can matter also. And it creates opportunity and space for people to encounter God in new ways that don't make sense given that narrative. These stories we have of God and scripture and descriptive of a community of people seeking to understand God. It's not a prescription. They're not prescribing the way you encounter God in the world. Catherine Day: What I was thinking about is willpower. So if we say that you have to live by these rules, as humans we think of willpower as being really strong, but in fact studies show that it's very weak. We're constantly losing our willpower. And it seems like you're making the connection to the stories that actually it expands our capacity to stay true to what matters to us. I don't know if I'm putting words in your mouth, but that's kind of what was striking me as you were talking about your quest between what you've experienced in the denomination before versus what you've been pursuing now. I don't know if that makes any sense. Jeremy Myers: Yeah, yeah. I think if we treat it as a prescribed method for encountering God in the world or understanding what God does or doesn't do in the world, it can sometimes be helpful. But what happens when people have similar ... Let me use the sacraments for example. Or what we would call in the Lutheran church, the means of grace. And we would say the means of grace so word and sacrament, preaching of the word, proclaiming of the word, administering the sacraments, holy communion, baptism, these are means of grace. We would say these are ways in which God's grace comes to us in tangible physical ways. And I love that. I love the fact that Lutheran theology talks about bread and water and wine as being things that God sees as worthy enough to put God's self into. I like that. But if what the sacraments do is reconcile our relationship with God, and empower us to reconcile our relationship with others, if that's what the sacraments do, then if someone experiences reconciliation with God, and empowerment to reconcile with others, if they experience that same thing in some other way, then can we call that thing sacramental also or is it only bread, water, wine? Or is it the experience that those things make happen that becomes most important? And so how do we teach this sacramental theology, bread, water, wine, in a way that doesn't limit it to a pastor with the magic fingers speaking the right words at the right time over these elements, and poof, somehow something miraculous happens? But how do we teach these stories and this theology in a way that our students enter into the world with sacramental lenses on, looking for that same thing happening in other places. You know, you and I talked when we had our conversation earlier about how much we love trees. I love trees. And I couldn't tell you in this conversation why, but for whatever reason I love trees and trees function that way for me. I can't even believe I'm putting this on a recording right now, but trees function that way for me. In some way they're very symbolic of reconciliation between God and humanity. So nowhere in Lutheran theology do we talk about tree as a means of grace. But for me, they function that way. Going back to your question about the rules, what I'm most interested in my students gaining, whether they're in my degree program, or whether they're in our general religion classes, is a worldview or a lens for moving through the world that thinks that God might actually be possible. Catherine Day: What you're inviting is a sense of going into a world with both possibility and hope then? Jeremy Myers: Hopeful realism I would say. Possibility in hope. It's not just putting on our rose colored glasses and assuming that everything's going to be great. Again this sacramental way of thinking about the world is a belief in a God who shows up in the woundedness and the brokenness, because that's where God chooses to be. So the places of woundedness and brokenness, painful places, where maybe we don't want to go are not signs of God's absence. They're not signs of God's curse. Those are the places God prefers to be. It's a hopeful realism. Like how do we move through our world looking for both places of brokenness and death and suffering, but how do we also move through our world looking for places of life and newness and resurrection. Catherine Day: Well that seems to transition us to this public theology work that you're doing. Can you just talk a little bit about what got you stared down that path, and what your hopes and aspirations are for it? Jeremy Myers: Well again it starts in youth work for me. And so when I'd served a congregation here in Minnesota, in Fridley, Minnesota and I served a congregation in Valparaiso, Indiana. And when I was both places, and I didn't really think much of this at the time, this is more of an insight gained through hindsight. I was very curious in those places about, what can we be doing as a church out beyond the church? So I was always like intrigued by empty storefronts in the community. Or one of the churches had an afterschool program. And one of our young people wasn't showing up for a while, and I was worried about him. So I went driving through the townhouses where he lives to see if I could find him, just to see if he was okay. And I realized, man there are a ton of kids that live up here in these townhouses. What would it look like if we did our afterschool program up here rather than at the church? So those questions were always there for me. I was always kind of curious about what would it look like if, but never did anything with it. And then I ended up at Augsburg, and I'm teaching, and I'm trying to teach students how to lead ministry with young people in congregations. The question of, how do we teach the faith if faith is taught? How do we do faith formation or vocational formation with young people? And I just kept thinking well, you can't start in the text. You can't start in the bible, you can't start in the confessions of the church. There has to be some sort of disruptive element. There has to be something that shakes you. That generates questions, that make you want to go the text. The Lutheran church has a long history of having seventh graders show up for confirmation for an hour a week for two years, and we assume that they're walking into that room because they really want to learn what we're going to teach them. And I think we now know that that's not really the case for most of them. And my assumption was, what if we could create for them some sort of encounter or experience, or disruption that would generate questions that would drive them back to the text? So then I stared to think, all right well how do you do that disruption? Fabricating a disruption in someone's life is not good practice. It is borderline manipulation there. And you don't need to do it, because the neighbor is disruptive. Augsburg's call to be a good neighbor, we believe we are called to serve our neighbor, to be a good neighbor. That neighbor is a disruption always. And so we don't need to create, we don't need to fabricate a disruption, we need to help our young people recognize that the people they encounter on a daily basis place demands on them. They function as a disruption. That's probably a bad way to describe your neighbor, but they do. They place demands on you that might not jive with your own understanding of yourself or the world, or with the time you think you have in that moment. So this is where the public church idea kind of started with. And it doesn't stop with this theological exercise of wondering how these stories interact with one another, but then there is a movement, there is a turn towards discernment and action where you say okay, given what I've heard in God's story, given what we've heard in God's story, given what we've heard in our neighbor's story, who are we being called to be in this place in this moment? What am I being called to do in this place in this moment? My hunch is that most faith communities want their young people, and not just their young people, but their old people too, to be asking themselves that question on a daily basis. Who is God calling me to be in my family, in my workplace, in my neighborhood? What is God calling me to do in these places? And then not just asking oneself that question, but then turning towards action and actually doing something. So if these are the way we want our young people living out their faith, if this is the way we want people living out their faith on a daily basis, we actually have to go through those motions with them. We have to go through those movements with them. And so the public church work really grew out of me trying to think of an intentional way of doing faith formation and vocational formation with young people. And as I was exploring that, some of the leaders who were helping me think about this, helped me realize that this isn't just a youth project, you're talking about a new way of functioning as a congregation. A new rhythm of life for a community of faith. And so then I shifted my thinking towards from just a youth ministry approach, to what would it look like for a congregation to be engaged in ... What if these movements out into the community into God's story, into discernment, back into the community with the word or action of good news? What if these movements became the normal rhythms of life for a group of people gathered together as a community of faith? Catherine Day: Tell us about the public church framework? Jeremy Myers: The public church framework is a cycle of four movements or four art forms that enable a congregation to move into its context intentionally. That's at the core of what I teach my students in the theology and public leadership degree program. It's also the method we're using in the Riverside Innovation Hub, which is a new five year lily funded project, where we're working with 16 local congregations to help them re-imagine their work with young adults. So I'll describe it in the context of the Riverside Innovation Hub, because I think that'll be easier. The Riverside Innovation Hub is functioning off of the assumption that young adults, 22 to 29 year olds, are not really interested in being targeted by a congregation. They do not want to be a target market. Rather they would like to be invited into some meaningful work that is place based, that is contextualized. And so the public church framework becomes a really helpful way for a congregation to begin imagining place based work in their context that young adults can participate in. So that starts with a movement, what we call ... The term we use is accompaniment. It starts with a movement out into the neighborhood. The congregation moves out into the community that it's located in. Its actual context. What does it mean for this faith community, this institution, this system, this group of people, to be planted here in this geographical location? The first movement is an intentional movement out into the community to listen. Who are our neighbors? What are their dreams for our community? What are the things that keep them up at night? What are they afraid of? What do they hope for? What makes them laugh? What do they live for? And just doing the hard work of getting to know those people. That's the first art form, the first movement. The second movement then is the movement back into interpretation. Where we now start to weave God's story into these stories we've heard out in the community. How do the things we say we believe about God impact what we've heard in our neighborhood? How do the promises we say God makes impact the way we hear our neighbor's story? And vice versa. How does our neighbor's story impact the assumptions we make about God? Maybe the things we've always thought about God have been too limited and we encounter stories in our neighbor's lives that change that and expand that. So that's the interpretive move. The third movement then is the movement into discernment. Where the community wonders together, who's God calling us to be in this place, in this time? What is it that God's calling us to do? And then the fourth movement is a re-engagement with the community in what we call proclamation. And proclamation is often thought of as one person speaking to a group of people. The way we use it is the proclamation of good news. Douglas John Hall is a theologian who says "Good news is always good because it's always displacing someone's actual bad news." So if you want to proclaim good news into someone's life, you need to know what their bad news is. And so the first three steps are really about hearing and understanding that bad news in context, and the four step proclamation is reengaging with a word or an action that's actually liberating for that community of people in that context. That might be an outdoor worship service on Easter morning, and that's what churches love to hear. That might be participating in a black lives matter protest. That might be working on water runoff issues to make the watershed healthier. It might be installing solar panels on the roof. It might be working some kind of micro loan program for entrepreneurial type young people in the community who want to start small businesses. But it grows out of a deep listening to the community and a congregation thinking, what's going on here? How might God be working reconciliation in this community? And how might we get involved in it? We have different levels of involvement, so we probably have about 25 congregations in the metro area involved with us. We're in the second stage now. The first stage was a year of listening where we did some research and we studied local congregations who are known as doing good work with young adults already. So we spent a lot of time listening to the leaders of those churches, listening to the young adults at those congregations, to learn from them. And we're in the second phase now, where we have hired eight young adults who are working as Augsburg employees for the next nine months as innovation coaches. So each of these innovation coaches are assigned two congregations. So they spend 20 hours a week in each of those two congregations, 20 in one, 20 in the other, helping those congregations work through these art forms of the public church framework. They've spent these last couple of months getting the congregation to practice accompaniment in their community. Now they'll be moving into the interpretation work and the discernment work. And they'll spend nine months doing those three movements with the congregation. And at the end of that time these congregations will submit grant proposals to us. Essentially what they're doing is they're saying, we've done the accompaniment, we've done the interpretation, we've done the discernment, and here's the proclamation we'd like to try for the next couple years, will you fund it? And so they submit us those grant proposals, we fund it, and then the next couple years will be those ... The coaches will no longer be in those congregations after the grants get submitted. They're just there to help them write the grant. At the end of that time, those congregations will have grant money in two years to really try, experiment with some new things. So we're in the second year. And then those two years will be year three and year four. And then the final year would just be a year of cleaning up and evaluating the work we did. Catherine Day: You describe this as kind of a circle. That it's feeding things both directions, is the way I kind of interpret it. I almost see the piscean fish, or the church fish swimming back and forth if you will. Was that an intentional design? Jeremy Myers: Yeah. My colleague in the Riverside Innovation Hub, Kristina Fruge will talk about the mutual transformation that happens through this in accompaniment. So the goal if you will, is to really proclaim good news or become good news, or speak good news, that's the goal. And sometimes we often think that that means the institution will do the speaking, or the institution will do the proclaiming. But sometimes what might happen if you're truly listening, the good news that you proclaim to your neighbor might actually be you confessing your institution's racism. Or confessing that your community has been hurtful towards LGBT community. That's what we mean by mutual transformation. If you engage with your neighbor in a way that truly honors your neighbor as a person, in a way that's not dehumanizing them, this is not market research. This is accompaniment. Then if you're truly listening and discerning, then the good news might be you saying, I'm a screw up and I'm sorry. I just read an article, another interview that one of our partners congregations did. And they talked about the porous walls of the church or the porous membrane around the church. That if God frees us to be human then our neighbor can help God do that work of making us become human too. So our neighbor can liberate us as well. We're not just there to liberate the neighbor, but it's that relationality, that authentic human encounter, where we really see one another, where we really know one another. That that's liberation and the church doesn't own that. The church can partake in that. So we're just trying to find methods to help congregational leaders be open to partaking in that work in their communities. Catherine Day: I was struck by the poll that just released. The fastest growing religion in Minnesota and maybe beyond that is none. Do you have any idea of what might be happening 10 years from now because of the work you're doing? Jeremy Myers: I like that young people are leaving the church. I like that they're not willing to put up with bad church anymore. And I think a lot of what we have out there is just bad church that people have tolerated because the culture has expected them to tolerate it. And now the culture no longer props that up. So young adults are saying, I'm not anti-church, I'm not anti-religion, I'm not anti-God. What you're doing there doesn't work for me. There was an article in the Star Trib this Sunday about that. And when I read the comments, I read comments of people who are still very inclined to think that God's doing something in the world. For them God is still a possibility. And ironically, faith communities, churches, make God feel less like a possibility. And so they want to be engaged in ways and in places. They want to engage life in way that keeps God as a possibility. And a lot of our congregations have flattened that mystery that I was talking about from my childhood. We flattened that. It's not there, and so God isn't a possibility. This institution seems to be the only possibility. We show up and we talk about God, maybe. We talk about the things we think God does. But you never help me actually encounter those things. You never help me actually become a participant in those things. So I am happy that young people are leaving the church. It also breaks my heart. Because I think the church could be more, and I think they could make it more. So my hope is that we will give congregations permission to set some things aside, that we will teach congregations how to listen, how to draw people into a theological process of wondering who God is in this place and what God is doing, so that God becomes a possibility again for people. And I hope that these congregations will then start to allow young adults to lead. To bring their unique questions, to bring their unique ways of encountering what they think is sacramental into the church. I think that would make the church a richer place. It would make the church a public place. It would make the church a place that compels people to live public lives of faith, where they believe God is at work in the world and they believe they can participate in that work. Catherine Day: I do wonder if in fact part of what you're talking about is a reconnection to wonder and mystery, as the path to save not only our religion, but to also save the world from our own destruction. Jeremy Myers: Absolutely. Catherine Day: And is there a connection with that for you? Jeremy Myers: Yeah. Absolutely. The text we've been using to guide our work in the Riverside Innovation Hub, that's a text that's been really important to me too in my teaching in theology and public leaderships is this vision in Ezekiel 47 where this divine tour guide is showing Ezekiel the river as it flows out of the temple, away from the temple. And this river grows deeper and wider as it flows away from the temple. And at one point this divine tour guide, this angelic figure, whoever it is, turns to Ezekiel, the first words that he says to Ezekiel are "Mortal do you see this?" And in some ways that question, mortal do you see this, is a question I want the leaders that come out of our program to have emblazoned on their hearts, so that they're looking. If you know someone's going to ask you the question do you see this, you're going to pay attention and look. And so it's engaging the world with an expectation of wonder, of mystery. It's that hopeful realism that there's pain and suffering and brokenness and scabs and wounds, and those are beautiful. And that doesn't mean they're not painful, and that doesn't mean sometimes they were inflicted in ways that were deeply unjust. But there's beauty there, there's healing there, so learning how to see again in the world. I think as I read the new testament, I feel like that's what Jesus was really trying to do. I mean like sometimes literally healing a blind person, but figuratively too, saying you can see, you can do this. You can see this again. Mortal you can see this again. So it's having leaders that expect to encounter that wonder, and go out looking for it, and then help other people look for it as well. In trees, in people, in brokenness, in healing, that they believe that there's something that cares about this universe, that's at work in those things. Catherine Day: Thank you so much for joining us today. Jeremy Myers: Thank you. Catherine Day: That was Jeremy Myers, associate professor of religion and public theology. I'm Catherine Reid Day, and this has been the Augsburg podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg podcast. I'm president Paul Pribbenow. For more information please visit augsburg.edu.

Jennifer Forsthoefel: I think it is important to establish a writing culture on campus, really starting out with thinking what is the culture of writing on our campus currently, and what do we want it to be in the future? I think there should be an investment in considering that. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present the Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty, and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of the Augsburg Podcast, and today we're speaking with Jennifer Forsthoefel who teaches English at Augsburg with a focus on writing. We'll be exploring with her what it means to teach writing across the curriculum, and what idea she has for improving writing across the campus. Welcome, Jennifer. Jennifer Forsthoefel: Thank you. Catherine Day: You've just, really just arrived here at Augsburg, right? Jennifer Forsthoefel: Yes. Catherine Day: Tell us about this experience of coming to know this English department that you're part of? What makes Augsburg's English department stand out to you, and what have you learned so far? Jennifer Forsthoefel: The English department here at Augsburg is very welcoming. Being a new faculty member in a department there can be some expectations that you sit back, and listen for a while, and don't jump in too quickly, and while that's true in some ways, they do encourage me to have a voice already, and encourage my perspective, and my opinions, and value my opinions. I remember at the first department meeting something came up about courses that we were going to offer, and the ways we were considering changing our major, and I immediately jumped in with opinions about what I thought. And, afterwards, I remember speaking to a couple of faculty members, and saying, “I'm so sorry if I was a little too opinionated. I know I'm new here, and I hope that I wasn't sort of overstepping by speaking my mind so early.” And, they laughed, and sort of said, “This is why we hired you, your expertise, your perspective on things, it would be our loss if you didn't include yourself in this conversation.” And so, that has been really a wonderful experience to have as a new faculty member in the English department. There is this wave now of considering how we can better equip our students in terms of writing, and I really appreciate being one of the people that they look to, to get some perspective on how to do that well. Catherine Day: Did you study, focus on English all the way through school? Jennifer Forsthoefel: Yes. I went to the University of Florida, and got my degree in English, and I minored in education. When I first started college I was a business major briefly. I was a business major then a marketing major, then a PR major. Then I went, and decided to be a nursing major, and then, I think it was after that where I was just doing so poorly in my classes, even though I'd known that the English courses, and the writing courses was where I excelled, I was really convinced that I had to pursue a degree that had a direct correlation to a profession, and my, after sort of a really difficult semester my parents sat me down, and sort of said, “You are miserable, you don't enjoy your classes. Why are you doing this?” I said well, “I wanna be able to do something with my degree, and I wanna, which you can do lots of things with an English degree, and I want to make sure that's very clear." It is such a versatile sort of degree to have, but it didn't translate one to one to me, and my parents said, "No, you will do better if you are invested, and enjoy what you're studying." They were right. I switched to being an English major, and it certainly wasn't easy, but came easier, because I was enjoying myself, and I found, and I was doing wonderful in my classes. I got a master's degree in English education, secondary English education, and I taught high school briefly as a student teacher, and quickly realized that I was too young. I was about 22, and the students I was teaching were 18, and the ability for me to feel sort of confident in that classroom was far too difficult for me. I felt like I needed to go back to school. I decided to get a master's in English, and literature, and while I was doing that, I became involved in the writing center on my campus, and fell in love with that space, and that spurred some research interests, and intellectual interests in me, so I decided to pursue a PhD in English with a focus on rhetoric and composition. Sitting down one on one with students, and talking to them about their work, talking to them about their writing, I found I was really good at, but also I really enjoyed, and the students seemed to get a lot out of it. And again, sort of getting the positive reinforcement like, "Oh, I'm good at this." Really made me excited about it, and so, it was something I was doing in the one on one space in the writing center quite a bit. The following year I was offered a course to teach writing, and that was extremely terrifying for me at first as I was not sure if my talents in the one on one space would really translate to a whole class setting, and so, it was really nerve-wracking at first, but again, I think it was being open to trying things, and seeing what worked, and seeing what didn't work, and giving myself the sort of space to figure that out. I did, and found that I enjoyed that also teaching students in a whole class setting. Although I will say I do have a special place in my heart in my pedagogy for sitting down with students one on one, and talking to them about their writing, and their work. I think that, that is where I am at my best, and also where my students are at their best, and we are able to have truly wonderful teaching moments. Catherine Day: You have come with a bit of an agenda it seems around writing. Can you talk about that? Jennifer Forsthoefel: I think it's really important to know that writing is a skill, but it's also a muscle. It's something that you can't just learn, and then, it's sort of stored away in your brain, and you have that skill for the rest of your life. Writing is something that you constantly need to practice, and to work on to make that muscle strong, and so, if you're given a lot of space in between opportunities to write then certainly that muscle will weaken, and you will struggle more, and you'll maybe revert back to old habits, or problems in your writing that you didn't have before, because you haven't again had the advantage of having the opportunity to practice. I think one of the things that I'm really encouraging Augsburg to consider, and adopt is the opportunity to incorporate writing throughout a student's curriculum here at Augsburg at several stages of their degree here at Augsburg, so it isn't just the job of the freshman writing course to teach the students to write, but instead is something that happens throughout their degree so that then when they get to be seniors, that they have a really strong muscle that they can use to write these senior projects, and do these [inaudible 00:08:31] things that are really important for them in terms of moving on from college to their career. I'm hoping to assess, or figure out where is writing happening in students curriculum, and the various degrees that are offered here? At what points in their degree process are they given assignments? What kinds of writing assignments are they given? So that we can figure out where do we need to fill in those gaps to include a bit more writing practice, and potentially writing instruction. Catherine Day: What do you think is the role of writing in the culture today if you look at it more broadly as a more global issue? We're a very visual culture, we're learning through YouTube videos. Jennifer Forsthoefel: I think that there are, is as much writing being done now as ever by our students, and by us is just in smaller different formats. Certainly a space like Twitter, but also in these visual spaces that students ... social networking that students are using, there's always writing as part of that. They don't just put the image up, they want to describe it, or encourage the audience to view that image in a certain way with whatever their caption is. They're still writing. Politically, people are writing and presenting ideas that really differ, and so, I think it's important right now in terms of communication generally, be it writing, or any of the other ways that we communicate to consider our audiences, and consider what is our purpose? What are we trying to accomplish when we state this thing, or write this thing, and put this piece of communication out there? Because, if it is to convince others, or to change another person's mind that entails something very specific in particular, but if it is just to state our own opinion so that it's out there, that entails something different, so really considering what the purpose is, and tailoring our rhetoric to serve that purpose. Catherine Day: In what ways do you think it's important for you to show your students that being yourself is is valuable? Does that show up in the way you work with them in writing? Jennifer Forsthoefel: Yes, I think it's difficult, particularly when we're teaching the expectations of academic writing in the freshman writing classes. There is one, there's expectation that we will teach students how to conform to the rules and regulations that have been established long ago as to what constitutes academic writing. That can sometimes be in a bit of conflict with also encouraging students to have their own voice, to have their own sort of identity, and selfhood be part of their writing. I think we have those conversations, and I think that's, if I do anything to encourage being yourself in terms of student writing it's sort of making that a part of the conversation while also recognizing there're certain standards and expectations that I'm expected to teach, and so, how do we negotiate that? It's different with every assignment, it's also different with every student, and it's just an opportunity for them to explore the possibilities of that, and what that means. Catherine Day: In doing academic writing are you in hopes of them making an argument? Jennifer Forsthoefel: Yes, the end goal at the end of my effective writing class is for students to be able to make a rhetorically sound argument. Catherine Day: And, that's been a challenge? Jennifer Forsthoefel: Yeah, it is a challenge. I think that it's always a challenge in different ways at different institutions, and with different students, but asking students just to convince an audience that is not themselves, so really anticipating what does your audience need for them to be convinced, and your audience is not you, so even though you are convinced, and that's great, that's where you need to start from. You should believe in the conclusions of your argument. You need to somehow be able to translate, write that in a way that convinces your audience. Your own personal experiences can't be the only things that we rely on. Where else can we go for support, and evidence to persuade our audience at least to consider our argument if not buy it wholeheartedly? And, yeah, it's challenging to assess your audience, no matter where you are, because it's a sort of nebulous abstract concept audience, what is that? And so, students find that challenging, because I think it is one of the first times that they're really having to consider what do people that are may be completely different from me need to understand where I'm coming from. I think certainly that can do nothing, but benefit us culturally at the moment too, is knowing how to do that. Catherine Day: What investments do we need to make in writing and why? Jennifer Forsthoefel: I think one of the ways to figure out what that needs to be is paying more attention to the spaces where writing happens, and where writing support happens. I think there are incredible opportunities for their writing lab as it's called here on campus to provide support to students who are writing across the curriculum, across grade levels, and across experiences. There's something really powerful about having another student sit down with you, somebody who's your peer, and respond to your writing, or have another student come to your class, and say, “Here is what, here's a workshop I'm giving you from my perspective as a student.” They're much closer to the age that probably are, and the life experience in some ways the audience they're giving, so they're able to provide really, audience appropriate content for the workshops that they're giving. I think investing in that space, and the potentials, the writing lab that is, and the potentials that it has would be really beneficial to the Augsburg community at large. Catherine Day: If there is a, that writing lab, is that something you'd be directing? Jennifer Forsthoefel: Yeah, I'm directing it full-time next year. This year Sarah Kenny is directing it, because it is my first year here at Augsburg, so they sort of, the first year keep your service requirements very, very low if not at all, to give you the opportunity to really focus on the teaching, and things like that, but next year I'll be directing it full-time. My dissertation was on writing centers, sort of, that's the area of scholarship. I'm really passionate about the research area, I'm really passionate about the opportunity to finally have my own writing center to direct is really, really, really exciting for me, and a professional milestone for me, a goal I set for myself that I am now gonna have the opportunity to reach. Catherine Day: Congratulations. Jennifer Forsthoefel: Thank you. Catherine Day: It's a big deal. Jennifer Forsthoefel: It is a big deal. It's so exciting, and with the amount of emphasis that this campus right now is putting on things like [inaudible 00:15:58] and student research, and it's so exciting, because in that writing center [inaudible 00:16:04] can students provide support for other students while tutoring in the lab, but also the tutors themselves are going to have some really enriching educational experiences. Certainly a space like a writing center, and writing center scholarship encourages tutor voices, encourages directors to collaborate with tutors on research projects, and that's something that I am excited about doing, that there's support here already in place to do, and that I plan on making a part of the program of the writing lab here on campus. Catherine Day: Is there a dream that you have for this time in your life as you embark you're so new to full-time teaching? What do you imagine for yourself in a few years, and for your practice? Jennifer Forsthoefel: I imagine running a thriving writing center, writing lab, writing center, whatever it ends up being called on campus, and creating a reputation for the center here on campus for other small liberal arts colleges to sort of look to, and potentially learn from. That is certainly a dream, and I think a very, very possible dream for me, as well as settling down, and creating a life here in the Midwest, which is, again, a very different space than where I came from, but certainly, I think I can certainly do that here. Settling down, and creating a family, whatever that looks like here in Minneapolis. That's the dream. Catherine Day: Thank you for joining us today Jennifer, it's been great having you on the Augsburg Podcast. Jennifer Forsthoefel: Thank you. Catherine Day: That was Jennifer Forsthoefel of the English department at Augsburg University. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to the Augsburg Podcast, I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.

  Katie Bishop: Every person at Augsburg is carrying something. Our students are carrying heavy burdens, some of them, many of them. And they have to share some of those burdens in order to be here in this space. That requires a lot of empathy and that costs something. There is a cost associated with that for people when a burden is shared, and we have to carry that. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University. It's my great privilege to present The Augsburg Podcast. One way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg Podcast. Today I'm speaking with Katie Bishop, chief student success officer for Augsburg. Welcome, Katie. Katie Bishop: Thank you very much. Catherine Day: I'd love to start with how you found your way to where you are, because it wasn't a direct path. And it's probably useful to start off by simply saying it wasn't even a job that existed, as recently as three years ago. In fact, I'm wondering, how many other people in the United States have that position that you're aware of, in private colleges? Katie Bishop: The role at Augsburg is relatively new, a little less then three years old. Across the nation, it's becoming increasingly common to see a role like that. It isn't always titled exactly like that. But there is an increasing, an urgent focus on student success, particularly related to making sure that students graduate from college, unpacking issues around retention, and on student progress to degree. Three years ago, when the role started to be talked about, it was not very common at all. As I travel and research, the role is becoming actually quite common. Catherine Day: That's such an important idea, because of a number of pressures. Anything beyond four years to completion, the costs grow higher and higher if they don't complete. They still might have the burden of their debt or responsibilities. But no, nothing to show for it and so forth. But are those some of the reasons behind? Katie Bishop: Yeah, absolutely. I think the higher education model in the United States is really designed, was designed, particularly in the '50s and '60s, around this assumption that students attending higher ed would be middle class or upper middle class. And primarily, white students. They would be aged 18, they would take four years, they would come in with social capital, and assumptions already built in around what it means to be in college, what it means to get a job after college, how you navigate the college system. There were assumptions built into the model around family socioeconomic status, and affordability, and how you paid for college. Increasingly, as the United States has grown to understand, rightly so, that higher ed needs to serve all of our population, and all academically ready students. The entire higher ed system has seen growth in diversity of students, whether that's diversity around race and ethnicity, diversity in socioeconomic status, diversity in first-generation students, and other marginalized identities that the assumptions that the model of higher education, those assumptions don't fit students who are currently entering the system. And the data shows us that, as students are not being retained and not graduating on time. And you're right, the timely graduation is critical because for example, the financial aid model is built on an assumption around how long college takes. And that is not reflective of the experience that our current students are having. Catherine Day: I had the privilege of hearing you give what they called your ED Talk to the faculty, a 15-minute sort of informal prepared presentation. What I really appreciated about that was the way in which you gently invited your peers, your colleagues, to really think about the students and the faculty's expectations of them, and where those gaps might be. I know you're not giving your talk here; that's not my intention. But maybe if you could hit a couple of the points that you made in that. I thought that it really opened people's eyes to things. Katie Bishop: Socioeconomic status is interwoven throughout our understanding of higher education. It's the language we use, it's how we approach the classroom, it's how we build our service models. The data is pretty stark for institutions like Augsburg and nationally. Generally, we have about 20% of our students who are missing a required text for the classroom. Recent national surveys show that anywhere from 20 to 50% of students are experiencing food instability at some point during their college time, and/or housing instability. Meaning that they won't know where they're going to sleep tonight. Those are measurable data points around whether a student has access to food and housing and things like textbooks. It doesn't really get at the lived experience of how those things play out then in your daily life. I think a lot of the work at Augsburg is both, "What is our response to those primary data points?" If we know that a student doesn't know where they're going to sleep tonight, but we have empty dorm rooms, then what is our institutional response to that? We have started some programming around that. And then there's this deeper, more interwoven question around, "How do we use language and assumption and expectation to communicate our understanding around class-based values?" If we say that a text, for example, is only $70, the use of that language communicates to a student whether or not they belong and fit in that classroom. Whether that faculty person, and I've been guilty of using language like this too. Whether there's a place for that student for whom only $70 is actually a key decision point, that says whether or not you can be successful, whether or not you can eat tonight, whether or not you have family obligations, you need to put gas in the car, whatever those things are that your experience of money is intentioned with this faculty person, or staff person, or an administrator saying, "But it's only $70." There's a lack of alignment there that communicates to a student whether or not you belong on the campus, and communicates a sense of not belonging. Catherine Day: Our experience with financial aid you can maybe even present the idea. You have a full ride, let's say the language you would use. "Oh, they got a full ride." But that full ride is not necessarily going to include some really key things. It may also be based on the idea that their, or the assumption and expectation of a certain amount of work, which will simply help with the expectations of what their financial responsibilities are, strictly related to higher education. Not necessarily family obligations and so on. Maybe you can talk a little bit about some of those kinds of nuances of how that's showing up here. Katie Bishop: These are the things that are harder to measure, because they're not a survey that you can fill out to say, "Well, how many students were missing a book?" That's a kind of yes or no question. The experience of socioeconomic status, or cultural status, or cultural understanding, or family understanding, family background, plays out in multiple ways. We hear anecdotes from students quite regularly around "We're a one-car family, and somebody else needed the car today. So I didn't come to class." Or, "I have to be at home to take care of siblings or take care of family, or meet a family obligation in some way. "And that obligation overlaps with class, and I have to make a daily choice about class attendance versus family obligation. Whichever choice I make, one of those two stakeholders is going to be disappointed with me or mad at me or there's a consequence to that." And when a student is first generation, students don't come in with language to help bridge that divide with their families around, "But my professors need me to be in class, or say that I will be in trouble if I'm not in class." We don't do a very good job of helping to build that with students, in helping them to go home and then help understand how they could or should make choices. I think our model also is, this model that assumes that students can devote all of their time to being in class, and to being on campus. We need to start moving more quickly around developing models where information, the class is important, and we can't get away from that. But information should also be accessible in other ways. So that if a student can't be in class that day, they're not cut off from receiving the benefit of the classroom information. Catherine Day: That's causing the university to make some choices, and some decisions. Like you said, housing is one option. The texts being accessible and free is one? Is that not exactly? Katie Bishop: I wish. We're not quite there yet. We're working hard to develop a variety of models that faculty can pick from to try to accommodate the affordability conversation. Part of the challenge there is that textbook publishers, the cost of textbooks have gone up well over 100% in the last decade. The growth in textbook cost has been quite large. And as this narrative has grown in higher ed around affordability and understanding cost, publishers have tried to find different business models. Each business model is built on a profitability for textbook publishers. And so they do things like online access codes. So you don't have to buy the hardcover book now. You can go online and have access to online materials that are quite attractive in terms of providing additional content, or additional course material or other things. But then also, they are expensive. You have to have access to a mobile device, and access to the internet to get to those things. They're one-time use only, so you can't sell the book back and recoup any of those costs. You buy the code and then once you've used the code, it's essentially broken, and it's only good for you. For me, at least, the work at Augsburg is not to constantly be chasing what's the cheapest option? It's actually to break out of that model entirely, and say, "We are not interested in, to as much as we can, to contribute to that textbook profit model. "We're actually interested in new models that recognize the burden that textbooks are for our students, and that we have technology, we have information available to us in new ways. That we're going to explore those new ways, and find new ways to engage with students in the classroom that are not predicated on this profit model." Now, that sounds lovely. We're one baby step down the path of perhaps realizing that. Catherine Day: Tell us a little bit about your growing up experience, your early passions, and what's been motivating you for a while. Katie Bishop: I'm the oldest of three children. We grew up in Minnesota in a first-ring suburb of St. Paul. I started playing the cello when I was 10 years old, and immediately fell madly in love with it. And felt like I had this moment of vocation, even at that young age, that that was going to be the thing that I did. Everything that I did, really, from age 10 through graduating college, was focused on essentially becoming a professional musician. Which I'm obviously not, at this point. I didn't really do other extracurricular activities throughout my childhood that were not focused on that. I was really intensely focused on music, and those kinds of activities. Catherine Day: Did you tour or anything like that with ... ? Katie Bishop: Yeah, invited to be in variety of different kinds of orchestras and different kinds of experiences. Did a lot of chamber music playing, did some master class playing, taught lessons myself at a certain point. Went to college, I went to Macalester, I was a music major, and Macalester, the practice is to take a major and a minor. I was a minor in women and gender studies. Really enjoyed the connection between those two things. When I graduated from college, about two weeks before graduation, just had this moment of, "Oh my goodness, I'm really tired out from music. And also I'm not going to be quite good enough to get the kind of job that I want in a top-tier orchestra." Others probably could have said, "Yeah, duh, we knew that in your freshman year." So, graduated and had a little bit of a vacuum in my life, because everything had been so focused and prioritized around this. I don't want to say dream, but just what I felt like I was going to be doing. And then had a bit of a vacuum, when all of a sudden I realized that was not what I was going to be doing. Actually, got a job at Starbucks, because I was a college graduate and needed employment. I worked at Starbucks for a good period of time. And it was actually was really important because it, understanding customer service, understanding how businesses operate ... I was a manager for a period of time ... and so developing some of those skills around how you navigate the business environment, were good for me. In some ways, I needed that grounding, and that time away from ... I would say some of the privilege and the expectations of an institution like Macalester, where Kofi Annan's nephew was one of my roommates on my floor the first year in college. There's a privilege and an expectation that everybody at Macalester is going to go off to do these momentous international kinds of things. And it was actually really good grounding for me to spend some time doing some customer service. Sometimes I think more people should have that experience because it teaches you a sense of gratitude and a sense of understanding the connection with others that I, at least, was missing at that moment in my life, immediately post graduation. After a few years, I realized I needed to make a bigger contribution, and so a little bit on a whim, decided I was going to go to law school. I applied, relatively late, and got into law school. Went to law school, firmly with the intention of becoming a public defender. Had decided that was going to be my contribution, that sort of work. I think for non-lawyers, there's sometimes a lack of, a misunderstanding, maybe, of what that work is. I think for lawyers doing public defense is really about being the last place where you actually push against the state power and state bureaucracy. You're sort of the guide or coach for people who are navigating the system. The way law school is set up, you get to spend actually a lot of time in practice in doing that. And so I was functionally a public defender for almost three years. Then I graduated from law school. As I was in law school, the economy crashed, and there were no law jobs at all, including public defender jobs. So I again found myself having graduated with no job prospects in the skills that I had built. So, needed a job, and was lucky enough to get hired at Augsburg as a project manager in the dean's office at that time. The law skills have translated really beautifully, actually, to a lot of the strategic work that I do now, although the path was a little bit circuitous. Spent a period of time doing project manager work in the dean's office. That was beautiful, because it was like a two-year crash course in how higher ed operates, because it was cross divisional and focused on a wide variety of topics. HR topics, payroll topics, student success and graduation topics. It both introduced me really quickly to a wide variety of people on campus, and also I had to learn how systems operate, and connect really quickly to do that work. I feel really grateful for that, because it was really like a fast kind of internship in how colleges operate. Catherine Day: I'm kind of struck as we're talking about this that the relationship to some extent between the public defender work and your affinity perhaps for people who are coming into higher education from a different path. Do you see any connection to that? Or was that too far a stretch? Katie Bishop: No, no. I think that's a good connection. In doing the public defender work, it became obvious to me really quickly that one of the challenges in that work is you're seeing people who are in the same situation over and over and over again. That the situations are caused by either systemic poverty and/or systemic racism. And that, as a public defender, you have no capacity whatsoever to impact those large systems and to make any kind of change. And that your role is really just to help people navigate the kind of bureaucratic system that is set up to perpetuate the reasons why they ended up there in the first place. Very little public defender work is focused on murders or other sorts of big crimes. They're just the crimes that happen when people are entrenched in systemic poverty, often because of issues of institutional racism. I actually got really frustrated doing that work, and I don't think, even if there had been jobs available, I don't think I would have lasted very long in that work, because the persistent inability to really affect change, both in an individual's life and in the system that's causing the problem, I found very frustrating. Catherine Day: As you've been on this learning curve and the role, what are some key takeaways, if you had the ability to really remember back to the end of year one, the end of year two, and now, what would those look like? What moved the ball in the first year? Maybe what surprised you in that, too? Katie Bishop: I think that coming from outside of higher ed, although at this point, I think I can't claim that anymore. I think I'm firmly in higher ed. The pace of change seems very very slow, compared to any non higher ed industry. And yet, the pace of change at Augsburg is so much faster than at most other institutions, despite the fact that it feels slow. One of the things that I value about Augsburg so, so tremendously is that we, everybody says that we're mission driven. I think how that plays out at Augsburg is that we actually cut through the noise and the beautiful language and all the rest of the theoretical underpinnings that can be distractions in higher ed, and we actually say, "What is the problem? Let's zero in on that and let's really talk about what will fix that problem." There's a practicality that sometimes is in big ideas, and sometimes in little ideas, that is very focused on what is the problem and how are we actually going to fix it. There's like a realness there that I think is what people identify when they say, "We're mission driven." There's an authenticity around, we're actually going to grapple with this really challenging thing, as opposed to just writing a statement about it or writing a report. We do those things, sometimes, because they're part of procedures or process. But then there's a realness to making change. Catherine Day: You haven't done this alone. What kinds of teams have been involved, or how do you, what kinds of consultation, how do you do the research, what's the access points to understand where to push those levers? Katie Bishop: I feel like I'm the person who gets invited to do this podcast. And that is great, and I feel incredibly fortunate about that. But really, a lot of my work is actually representing the work of the 30 people who at least in the Gage Center, who are part of the Student Success Division. In a lot of ways, I'm the spokesperson for the amazing work that all of those, everybody else on campus does. Because you're right, when the position was created, and they said, "Well, she's chief student success officer," and immediately, people were like, "Well, what is that? I mean, isn't that everything on the campus?" And I thought to myself, "Well yeah, it is, and I feel really scared because I don't know everything there is on campus. But that's not possible, and so what is it really?" There's different components to the work, obviously. Some of those components are strategic components around what are the systemic change issues that we have to address? And who is leading each of those? But a lot of the work is actually really just representing and pulling together the work of everybody else. Both on the Student Success team and across campus, because every person on campus is really focused on this. The Division of Student Success is the Gage Center, which is academic advising, it's disability resources, it's a TRIO program, academic skill support. Also included in that is career services, which is housed somewhere else, but is part of Student Success. Those represent not even half, but a large group of people on campus who are doing the day-to-day engagement with students and both implementing ideas, implementing changes, and then collecting information and bringing that back to say, "This did work, it didn't work, here are the trends, here's what we observed, here are the things that the institution should actually be thinking about and talking about in terms of change making." Catherine Day: One of the things that came up with another conversation that I had was the need for both empathy and sympathy. And I'm wondering what extent you've needed ... you collectively, not just you Katie ... have had to work on that emotional muscle to develop another way of seeing things? I'm going to give an example of someone, things that have come up in previous conversations I've had included, "Do I let that student come late, when I find out they didn't get to the bus, or they were working all night? And never got any sleep? Or, how high should my expectations be? Am I really going to have to adjust my expectations? Am I failing then, because ..." Anyway, those are a few things I've heard. So I'm just wondering, what's that process like. Katie Bishop: I think that question is to a large extent the tension and the issue and the problem that we have to wrestle with on a daily basis at Augsburg. It makes me laugh because there's a narrative in higher ed literature around grit. "Oh my goodness, if we could just find the students with grit," whatever that magical term is, "and let those students in, then somehow students would persist and graduate on time." I always think, "Well, then you people haven't talked to Augsburg students, because they have demonstrated grit over and above what most experience in order to even be here." For me, I think as I think about the strategic work of Student Success, it's both how are we engaging with the student in front of us, in a way that acknowledges and allows a student to bring their whole selves in, so that we know what it is that they're carrying, and we can support that to the best of our ability. But then, there's also a systems piece to that, around if we thought about making information accessible, like if we videotaped classrooms and then posted that online. Then, we wouldn't necessarily be so worried about whether a student came late. Right? I say "we" broadly. There's some fear about that. Well, then, why would a student ever come back to class? Well, because class is actually really good, and students want to engage, and they like to engage. But if they felt less stress about, "I have to leave my job early so I can get to class on this particular day." because we knew that information was posted in a way that they could access, then maybe we'd solve some of that. We're not going to solve all of it. But I think for me at least, a tension around, "We have to recognize the student in front of us, and make sure that we are competent at inviting that whole student in, so that we know who they are. And they know who we are. And that we've co-created a community around that." But then we also have to acknowledge, like a student can't just set aside their family expectations or their work obligations. And we've created a system that allows them to participate and have full access with those other things. Catherine Day: Where do you get the largest pushback? Katie Bishop: I think there are three main buckets of systemic change that I focus on. One is financial. Even as Augsburg is affordable, that affordability is defined within a set of assumptions, that many of our low-income students simply can't meet. It's scary to think about what is a new business model, or what would it look like to change financial aid, or to distribute money in different ways. But for me, we have to have those more profound conversations. It isn't just, "What is $1,000 going to cover for this student?" Actually, we are thinking differently about how we distribute money, so that we are more equitable for students. There's pushback from administrators about that. And some of these things are meant a little bit rhetorically to push us to think harder and differently about what we do. The second maybe strategic piece is a curricular piece around some of this idea of how are we structuring classrooms. That's ideas around pedagogy, that's ideas around class and language and how we understand how we're using language to either invite or exclude students. And then these pieces around, why does attendance matter? I'm not saying that it doesn't. But I'm putting the question out there as a rhetorical piece for us to respond to around if we shared information with students in multiple modalities, would attendance be quite so important? And would that actually support our students differently? Catherine Day: Right. Katie Bishop: The third strategic piece is how do our systems integrate in a way that there's a term in higher ed called hidden curriculum. Which is really all the things that students come in without the social capital, that just automatically know, and how are we unpacking that hidden curriculum, and actually making it transparent, so students don't have to wonder if they've asked the right question. We know and they know that they've gotten the right information. We have limited ability to influence what happens to students before they get to us, and we work hard to build relationships with our local recruiting partners. The high schools and public districts, where we get the bulk of our students from. But, we really can't influence what's happening in those systems or in those classrooms. It starts from the recruiting path and goes to the point of graduation. And trying to understand where are moments where hidden curriculum access barriers to students? What is the terminology that students don't know? But what are the concepts that they need to know? Rather than just rewriting terminology, rather than renaming the bursar, I think it's important to think through, what do we actually need a student to accomplish when they go to that person, and then how do we communicate that? So it isn't we're renaming the bursar to the financial aid person, but what we actually need a student to do, and a student and their family, or their community, or their support system, to understand in that moment, and then how are we communicating those things to them. Catherine Day: I was struck the other day, I was just on one of those crossroads at the campus coming in. I often bump into people who are standing at the bottom of those steps. It's the steps from Memorial Hall and Christensen. And these two young men are just so animated, having such a great conversation. What I overhear is, "Man, I haven't seen you, you haven't been ..." And he said, "Well, I don't actually come to campus unless I absolutely have to." What he was really building up to was how much he's working, how much, and he's just basically saying, "I'm not coming in unless I absolutely have to." Part of me just completely respected what I heard. I thought, I loved this warmth of, "Man, where have you been? I miss you." There was this connection. But I'm guessing that's probably not an uncommon story in your students today. Is that true? Katie Bishop: That is true. The research literature in higher ed over the last 20 years has statistically shown that students who live on campus, and have that traditional on-campus residential experience, are more likely to graduate. I think that the challenge of Augsburg is to recognize that students cannot afford that model anymore, whether they live on campus or not. That kind of traditional experience is no longer the experience that students can fit into. So how do we get to a point where we're able to be successful enough that literature now says, "Students can be successful whether or not they live on campus"? Because living on campus presupposes an employment level, and a family obligation level, and a resource level, and an ability to focus and attend to classroom in a particular way. And that you culturally racially identify and fit into the classroom setting. I think at Augsburg in 20 years, if we are to become who we say we want to be, our literature will show that students are successful whether or not they live on campus. Because they find success here, regardless of those other assumptions. Catherine Day: How different does that make Augsburg in the lexicon of Minnesota or the region? The fact that in 20 years, it might look like that? Do you think others will be right there with you? Or do you think, is Augsburg leading in that regard? How do you see it? Katie Bishop: I think we are at the forefront in Minnesota. I think there are a lot of institutional partners that do a lot of this work already, although we don't always see them. Because of the kind of issues of elitism, so community college partners do this work in particular ways that we don't always acknowledge or see, although they're doing it in some places better than we are. Some state schools do it as well as we do. Amongst the private institutions, we are very much at the forefront of that. Although the higher ed landscape is really competitive, and so people look to Augsburg and say, "What are you doing, and we want to do that as well." I don't know in 20 years if we'll be still at the forefront or if everybody will have said, "Yes, that's what we should be doing." And everybody's doing it. We tend to get focused on one narrative or another, and I think our narrative can easily focus on, "Well, what are we doing for low-income students, or for students of color, or for first-generation students?" This question of empathy in every student and carrying these heavy things with them, and shouldn't we feel this sympathy. We are producing a high proportion of Fulbright scholars, with the same population of students. I think we don't always lift up our successes in the best way. In five years, how I would measure success is that we have started to move the needle on graduation rate, for example. But we have started to rethink in deep ways, things like how we use financial aid to support students all the way to the point of graduation. That a student can be here for nine semesters instead of eight, and they can still afford it, and they can still graduate, and we are comfortable with that, because not every student has a straight-line path to graduation. It's a zigzag. That students on surveys start to report that they have access to the course materials that they need to be successful. Those things to me are all about we, the students have helped us to co-create the environment that they need, in order to have really meaningful access to the educational opportunity at Augsburg. And that we aren't just perpetuating an old-fashioned model of higher education. Catherine Day: Beyond that five-year vision, do you have a dream that you want to fulfill here? Katie Bishop: I guess I haven't set a dream for myself. Not every student will graduate in the way that we imagine, because people have lives, and they move in and out of this system. If I were to say that I have a dream, it is that students find us to be culturally competent, they find us to be inclusive of an intersectional understanding of identity, that they find us affordable, and that they are able to graduate in a timeframe that works for them. And that they find their degree to be a meaningful degree. Catherine Day: I know you have a two-year-old son, or soon to be two years old. Katie Bishop: Yes. Catherine Day: What do you imagine higher education will be like for him? Katie Bishop: Oh, goodness. I don't know. I try to work hard not to put expectations on him, and so, I don't know if he will encounter a higher ed system that's completely redesigned and blown up from what it looks like today. Both of his parents work in higher ed, and so it's important to me that he not get to 18 years old and we're like, "Well, you have to go to college now." I hope that he finds a supportive environment at home, where if college is the right, that's the moment for him, then that works. And if he would be better served in some other space at that time, that we've been supportive enough parents that he can do that as well. Catherine Day: Thank you so much, Katie Bishop, for joining us today to talk about what it means to be the chief student success officer. And thanks for taking the time today. Katie Bishop: Thank you so much. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to The Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit Augsburg.edu.  

Katie Bishop: Every person at Augsburg is carrying something. Our students are carrying heavy burdens, some of them, many of them. And they have to share some of those burdens in order to be here in this space. That requires a lot of empathy and that costs something. There is a cost associated with that for people when a burden is shared, and we have to carry that. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the President of Augsburg University. It's my great privilege to present The Augsburg Podcast. One way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg Podcast. Today I'm speaking with Katie Bishop, chief student success officer for Augsburg. Welcome, Katie. Katie Bishop: Thank you very much. Catherine Day: I'd love to start with how you found your way to where you are, because it wasn't a direct path. And it's probably useful to start off by simply saying it wasn't even a job that existed, as recently as three years ago. In fact, I'm wondering, how many other people in the United States have that position that you're aware of, in private colleges? Katie Bishop: The role at Augsburg is relatively new, a little less then three years old. Across the nation, it's becoming increasingly common to see a role like that. It isn't always titled exactly like that. But there is an increasing, an urgent focus on student success, particularly related to making sure that students graduate from college, unpacking issues around retention, and on student progress to degree. Three years ago, when the role started to be talked about, it was not very common at all. As I travel and research, the role is becoming actually quite common. Catherine Day: That's such an important idea, because of a number of pressures. Anything beyond four years to completion, the costs grow higher and higher if they don't complete. They still might have the burden of their debt or responsibilities. But no, nothing to show for it and so forth. But are those some of the reasons behind? Katie Bishop: Yeah, absolutely. I think the higher education model in the United States is really designed, was designed, particularly in the '50s and '60s, around this assumption that students attending higher ed would be middle class or upper middle class. And primarily, white students. They would be aged 18, they would take four years, they would come in with social capital, and assumptions already built in around what it means to be in college, what it means to get a job after college, how you navigate the college system. There were assumptions built into the model around family socioeconomic status, and affordability, and how you paid for college. Increasingly, as the United States has grown to understand, rightly so, that higher ed needs to serve all of our population, and all academically ready students. The entire higher ed system has seen growth in diversity of students, whether that's diversity around race and ethnicity, diversity in socioeconomic status, diversity in first-generation students, and other marginalized identities that the assumptions that the model of higher education, those assumptions don't fit students who are currently entering the system. And the data shows us that, as students are not being retained and not graduating on time. And you're right, the timely graduation is critical because for example, the financial aid model is built on an assumption around how long college takes. And that is not reflective of the experience that our current students are having. Catherine Day: I had the privilege of hearing you give what they called your ED Talk to the faculty, a 15-minute sort of informal prepared presentation. What I really appreciated about that was the way in which you gently invited your peers, your colleagues, to really think about the students and the faculty's expectations of them, and where those gaps might be. I know you're not giving your talk here; that's not my intention. But maybe if you could hit a couple of the points that you made in that. I thought that it really opened people's eyes to things. Katie Bishop: Socioeconomic status is interwoven throughout our understanding of higher education. It's the language we use, it's how we approach the classroom, it's how we build our service models. The data is pretty stark for institutions like Augsburg and nationally. Generally, we have about 20% of our students who are missing a required text for the classroom. Recent national surveys show that anywhere from 20 to 50% of students are experiencing food instability at some point during their college time, and/or housing instability. Meaning that they won't know where they're going to sleep tonight. Those are measurable data points around whether a student has access to food and housing and things like textbooks. It doesn't really get at the lived experience of how those things play out then in your daily life. I think a lot of the work at Augsburg is both, "What is our response to those primary data points?" If we know that a student doesn't know where they're going to sleep tonight, but we have empty dorm rooms, then what is our institutional response to that? We have started some programming around that. And then there's this deeper, more interwoven question around, "How do we use language and assumption and expectation to communicate our understanding around class-based values?" If we say that a text, for example, is only $70, the use of that language communicates to a student whether or not they belong and fit in that classroom. Whether that faculty person, and I've been guilty of using language like this too. Whether there's a place for that student for whom only $70 is actually a key decision point, that says whether or not you can be successful, whether or not you can eat tonight, whether or not you have family obligations, you need to put gas in the car, whatever those things are that your experience of money is intentioned with this faculty person, or staff person, or an administrator saying, "But it's only $70." There's a lack of alignment there that communicates to a student whether or not you belong on the campus, and communicates a sense of not belonging. Catherine Day: Our experience with financial aid you can maybe even present the idea. You have a full ride, let's say the language you would use. "Oh, they got a full ride." But that full ride is not necessarily going to include some really key things. It may also be based on the idea that their, or the assumption and expectation of a certain amount of work, which will simply help with the expectations of what their financial responsibilities are, strictly related to higher education. Not necessarily family obligations and so on. Maybe you can talk a little bit about some of those kinds of nuances of how that's showing up here. Katie Bishop: These are the things that are harder to measure, because they're not a survey that you can fill out to say, "Well, how many students were missing a book?" That's a kind of yes or no question. The experience of socioeconomic status, or cultural status, or cultural understanding, or family understanding, family background, plays out in multiple ways. We hear anecdotes from students quite regularly around "We're a one-car family, and somebody else needed the car today. So I didn't come to class." Or, "I have to be at home to take care of siblings or take care of family, or meet a family obligation in some way. "And that obligation overlaps with class, and I have to make a daily choice about class attendance versus family obligation. Whichever choice I make, one of those two stakeholders is going to be disappointed with me or mad at me or there's a consequence to that." And when a student is first generation, students don't come in with language to help bridge that divide with their families around, "But my professors need me to be in class, or say that I will be in trouble if I'm not in class." We don't do a very good job of helping to build that with students, in helping them to go home and then help understand how they could or should make choices. I think our model also is, this model that assumes that students can devote all of their time to being in class, and to being on campus. We need to start moving more quickly around developing models where information, the class is important, and we can't get away from that. But information should also be accessible in other ways. So that if a student can't be in class that day, they're not cut off from receiving the benefit of the classroom information. Catherine Day: That's causing the university to make some choices, and some decisions. Like you said, housing is one option. The texts being accessible and free is one? Is that not exactly? Katie Bishop: I wish. We're not quite there yet. We're working hard to develop a variety of models that faculty can pick from to try to accommodate the affordability conversation. Part of the challenge there is that textbook publishers, the cost of textbooks have gone up well over 100% in the last decade. The growth in textbook cost has been quite large. And as this narrative has grown in higher ed around affordability and understanding cost, publishers have tried to find different business models. Each business model is built on a profitability for textbook publishers. And so they do things like online access codes. So you don't have to buy the hardcover book now. You can go online and have access to online materials that are quite attractive in terms of providing additional content, or additional course material or other things. But then also, they are expensive. You have to have access to a mobile device, and access to the internet to get to those things. They're one-time use only, so you can't sell the book back and recoup any of those costs. You buy the code and then once you've used the code, it's essentially broken, and it's only good for you. For me, at least, the work at Augsburg is not to constantly be chasing what's the cheapest option? It's actually to break out of that model entirely, and say, "We are not interested in, to as much as we can, to contribute to that textbook profit model. "We're actually interested in new models that recognize the burden that textbooks are for our students, and that we have technology, we have information available to us in new ways. That we're going to explore those new ways, and find new ways to engage with students in the classroom that are not predicated on this profit model." Now, that sounds lovely. We're one baby step down the path of perhaps realizing that. Catherine Day: Tell us a little bit about your growing up experience, your early passions, and what's been motivating you for a while. Katie Bishop: I'm the oldest of three children. We grew up in Minnesota in a first-ring suburb of St. Paul. I started playing the cello when I was 10 years old, and immediately fell madly in love with it. And felt like I had this moment of vocation, even at that young age, that that was going to be the thing that I did. Everything that I did, really, from age 10 through graduating college, was focused on essentially becoming a professional musician. Which I'm obviously not, at this point. I didn't really do other extracurricular activities throughout my childhood that were not focused on that. I was really intensely focused on music, and those kinds of activities. Catherine Day: Did you tour or anything like that with ... ? Katie Bishop: Yeah, invited to be in variety of different kinds of orchestras and different kinds of experiences. Did a lot of chamber music playing, did some master class playing, taught lessons myself at a certain point. Went to college, I went to Macalester, I was a music major, and Macalester, the practice is to take a major and a minor. I was a minor in women and gender studies. Really enjoyed the connection between those two things. When I graduated from college, about two weeks before graduation, just had this moment of, "Oh my goodness, I'm really tired out from music. And also I'm not going to be quite good enough to get the kind of job that I want in a top-tier orchestra." Others probably could have said, "Yeah, duh, we knew that in your freshman year." So, graduated and had a little bit of a vacuum in my life, because everything had been so focused and prioritized around this. I don't want to say dream, but just what I felt like I was going to be doing. And then had a bit of a vacuum, when all of a sudden I realized that was not what I was going to be doing. Actually, got a job at Starbucks, because I was a college graduate and needed employment. I worked at Starbucks for a good period of time. And it was actually was really important because it, understanding customer service, understanding how businesses operate ... I was a manager for a period of time ... and so developing some of those skills around how you navigate the business environment, were good for me. In some ways, I needed that grounding, and that time away from ... I would say some of the privilege and the expectations of an institution like Macalester, where Kofi Annan's nephew was one of my roommates on my floor the first year in college. There's a privilege and an expectation that everybody at Macalester is going to go off to do these momentous international kinds of things. And it was actually really good grounding for me to spend some time doing some customer service. Sometimes I think more people should have that experience because it teaches you a sense of gratitude and a sense of understanding the connection with others that I, at least, was missing at that moment in my life, immediately post graduation. After a few years, I realized I needed to make a bigger contribution, and so a little bit on a whim, decided I was going to go to law school. I applied, relatively late, and got into law school. Went to law school, firmly with the intention of becoming a public defender. Had decided that was going to be my contribution, that sort of work. I think for non-lawyers, there's sometimes a lack of, a misunderstanding, maybe, of what that work is. I think for lawyers doing public defense is really about being the last place where you actually push against the state power and state bureaucracy. You're sort of the guide or coach for people who are navigating the system. The way law school is set up, you get to spend actually a lot of time in practice in doing that. And so I was functionally a public defender for almost three years. Then I graduated from law school. As I was in law school, the economy crashed, and there were no law jobs at all, including public defender jobs. So I again found myself having graduated with no job prospects in the skills that I had built. So, needed a job, and was lucky enough to get hired at Augsburg as a project manager in the dean's office at that time. The law skills have translated really beautifully, actually, to a lot of the strategic work that I do now, although the path was a little bit circuitous. Spent a period of time doing project manager work in the dean's office. That was beautiful, because it was like a two-year crash course in how higher ed operates, because it was cross divisional and focused on a wide variety of topics. HR topics, payroll topics, student success and graduation topics. It both introduced me really quickly to a wide variety of people on campus, and also I had to learn how systems operate, and connect really quickly to do that work. I feel really grateful for that, because it was really like a fast kind of internship in how colleges operate. Catherine Day: I'm kind of struck as we're talking about this that the relationship to some extent between the public defender work and your affinity perhaps for people who are coming into higher education from a different path. Do you see any connection to that? Or was that too far a stretch? Katie Bishop: No, no. I think that's a good connection. In doing the public defender work, it became obvious to me really quickly that one of the challenges in that work is you're seeing people who are in the same situation over and over and over again. That the situations are caused by either systemic poverty and/or systemic racism. And that, as a public defender, you have no capacity whatsoever to impact those large systems and to make any kind of change. And that your role is really just to help people navigate the kind of bureaucratic system that is set up to perpetuate the reasons why they ended up there in the first place. Very little public defender work is focused on murders or other sorts of big crimes. They're just the crimes that happen when people are entrenched in systemic poverty, often because of issues of institutional racism. I actually got really frustrated doing that work, and I don't think, even if there had been jobs available, I don't think I would have lasted very long in that work, because the persistent inability to really affect change, both in an individual's life and in the system that's causing the problem, I found very frustrating. Catherine Day: As you've been on this learning curve and the role, what are some key takeaways, if you had the ability to really remember back to the end of year one, the end of year two, and now, what would those look like? What moved the ball in the first year? Maybe what surprised you in that, too? Katie Bishop: I think that coming from outside of higher ed, although at this point, I think I can't claim that anymore. I think I'm firmly in higher ed. The pace of change seems very very slow, compared to any non higher ed industry. And yet, the pace of change at Augsburg is so much faster than at most other institutions, despite the fact that it feels slow. One of the things that I value about Augsburg so, so tremendously is that we, everybody says that we're mission driven. I think how that plays out at Augsburg is that we actually cut through the noise and the beautiful language and all the rest of the theoretical underpinnings that can be distractions in higher ed, and we actually say, "What is the problem? Let's zero in on that and let's really talk about what will fix that problem." There's a practicality that sometimes is in big ideas, and sometimes in little ideas, that is very focused on what is the problem and how are we actually going to fix it. There's like a realness there that I think is what people identify when they say, "We're mission driven." There's an authenticity around, we're actually going to grapple with this really challenging thing, as opposed to just writing a statement about it or writing a report. We do those things, sometimes, because they're part of procedures or process. But then there's a realness to making change. Catherine Day: You haven't done this alone. What kinds of teams have been involved, or how do you, what kinds of consultation, how do you do the research, what's the access points to understand where to push those levers? Katie Bishop: I feel like I'm the person who gets invited to do this podcast. And that is great, and I feel incredibly fortunate about that. But really, a lot of my work is actually representing the work of the 30 people who at least in the Gage Center, who are part of the Student Success Division. In a lot of ways, I'm the spokesperson for the amazing work that all of those, everybody else on campus does. Because you're right, when the position was created, and they said, "Well, she's chief student success officer," and immediately, people were like, "Well, what is that? I mean, isn't that everything on the campus?" And I thought to myself, "Well yeah, it is, and I feel really scared because I don't know everything there is on campus. But that's not possible, and so what is it really?" There's different components to the work, obviously. Some of those components are strategic components around what are the systemic change issues that we have to address? And who is leading each of those? But a lot of the work is actually really just representing and pulling together the work of everybody else. Both on the Student Success team and across campus, because every person on campus is really focused on this. The Division of Student Success is the Gage Center, which is academic advising, it's disability resources, it's a TRIO program, academic skill support. Also included in that is career services, which is housed somewhere else, but is part of Student Success. Those represent not even half, but a large group of people on campus who are doing the day-to-day engagement with students and both implementing ideas, implementing changes, and then collecting information and bringing that back to say, "This did work, it didn't work, here are the trends, here's what we observed, here are the things that the institution should actually be thinking about and talking about in terms of change making." Catherine Day: One of the things that came up with another conversation that I had was the need for both empathy and sympathy. And I'm wondering what extent you've needed ... you collectively, not just you Katie ... have had to work on that emotional muscle to develop another way of seeing things? I'm going to give an example of someone, things that have come up in previous conversations I've had included, "Do I let that student come late, when I find out they didn't get to the bus, or they were working all night? And never got any sleep? Or, how high should my expectations be? Am I really going to have to adjust my expectations? Am I failing then, because ..." Anyway, those are a few things I've heard. So I'm just wondering, what's that process like. Katie Bishop: I think that question is to a large extent the tension and the issue and the problem that we have to wrestle with on a daily basis at Augsburg. It makes me laugh because there's a narrative in higher ed literature around grit. "Oh my goodness, if we could just find the students with grit," whatever that magical term is, "and let those students in, then somehow students would persist and graduate on time." I always think, "Well, then you people haven't talked to Augsburg students, because they have demonstrated grit over and above what most experience in order to even be here." For me, I think as I think about the strategic work of Student Success, it's both how are we engaging with the student in front of us, in a way that acknowledges and allows a student to bring their whole selves in, so that we know what it is that they're carrying, and we can support that to the best of our ability. But then, there's also a systems piece to that, around if we thought about making information accessible, like if we videotaped classrooms and then posted that online. Then, we wouldn't necessarily be so worried about whether a student came late. Right? I say "we" broadly. There's some fear about that. Well, then, why would a student ever come back to class? Well, because class is actually really good, and students want to engage, and they like to engage. But if they felt less stress about, "I have to leave my job early so I can get to class on this particular day." because we knew that information was posted in a way that they could access, then maybe we'd solve some of that. We're not going to solve all of it. But I think for me at least, a tension around, "We have to recognize the student in front of us, and make sure that we are competent at inviting that whole student in, so that we know who they are. And they know who we are. And that we've co-created a community around that." But then we also have to acknowledge, like a student can't just set aside their family expectations or their work obligations. And we've created a system that allows them to participate and have full access with those other things. Catherine Day: Where do you get the largest pushback? Katie Bishop: I think there are three main buckets of systemic change that I focus on. One is financial. Even as Augsburg is affordable, that affordability is defined within a set of assumptions, that many of our low-income students simply can't meet. It's scary to think about what is a new business model, or what would it look like to change financial aid, or to distribute money in different ways. But for me, we have to have those more profound conversations. It isn't just, "What is $1,000 going to cover for this student?" Actually, we are thinking differently about how we distribute money, so that we are more equitable for students. There's pushback from administrators about that. And some of these things are meant a little bit rhetorically to push us to think harder and differently about what we do. The second maybe strategic piece is a curricular piece around some of this idea of how are we structuring classrooms. That's ideas around pedagogy, that's ideas around class and language and how we understand how we're using language to either invite or exclude students. And then these pieces around, why does attendance matter? I'm not saying that it doesn't. But I'm putting the question out there as a rhetorical piece for us to respond to around if we shared information with students in multiple modalities, would attendance be quite so important? And would that actually support our students differently? Catherine Day: Right. Katie Bishop: The third strategic piece is how do our systems integrate in a way that there's a term in higher ed called hidden curriculum. Which is really all the things that students come in without the social capital, that just automatically know, and how are we unpacking that hidden curriculum, and actually making it transparent, so students don't have to wonder if they've asked the right question. We know and they know that they've gotten the right information. We have limited ability to influence what happens to students before they get to us, and we work hard to build relationships with our local recruiting partners. The high schools and public districts, where we get the bulk of our students from. But, we really can't influence what's happening in those systems or in those classrooms. It starts from the recruiting path and goes to the point of graduation. And trying to understand where are moments where hidden curriculum access barriers to students? What is the terminology that students don't know? But what are the concepts that they need to know? Rather than just rewriting terminology, rather than renaming the bursar, I think it's important to think through, what do we actually need a student to accomplish when they go to that person, and then how do we communicate that? So it isn't we're renaming the bursar to the financial aid person, but what we actually need a student to do, and a student and their family, or their community, or their support system, to understand in that moment, and then how are we communicating those things to them. Catherine Day: I was struck the other day, I was just on one of those crossroads at the campus coming in. I often bump into people who are standing at the bottom of those steps. It's the steps from Memorial Hall and Christensen. And these two young men are just so animated, having such a great conversation. What I overhear is, "Man, I haven't seen you, you haven't been ..." And he said, "Well, I don't actually come to campus unless I absolutely have to." What he was really building up to was how much he's working, how much, and he's just basically saying, "I'm not coming in unless I absolutely have to." Part of me just completely respected what I heard. I thought, I loved this warmth of, "Man, where have you been? I miss you." There was this connection. But I'm guessing that's probably not an uncommon story in your students today. Is that true? Katie Bishop: That is true. The research literature in higher ed over the last 20 years has statistically shown that students who live on campus, and have that traditional on-campus residential experience, are more likely to graduate. I think that the challenge of Augsburg is to recognize that students cannot afford that model anymore, whether they live on campus or not. That kind of traditional experience is no longer the experience that students can fit into. So how do we get to a point where we're able to be successful enough that literature now says, "Students can be successful whether or not they live on campus"? Because living on campus presupposes an employment level, and a family obligation level, and a resource level, and an ability to focus and attend to classroom in a particular way. And that you culturally racially identify and fit into the classroom setting. I think at Augsburg in 20 years, if we are to become who we say we want to be, our literature will show that students are successful whether or not they live on campus. Because they find success here, regardless of those other assumptions. Catherine Day: How different does that make Augsburg in the lexicon of Minnesota or the region? The fact that in 20 years, it might look like that? Do you think others will be right there with you? Or do you think, is Augsburg leading in that regard? How do you see it? Katie Bishop: I think we are at the forefront in Minnesota. I think there are a lot of institutional partners that do a lot of this work already, although we don't always see them. Because of the kind of issues of elitism, so community college partners do this work in particular ways that we don't always acknowledge or see, although they're doing it in some places better than we are. Some state schools do it as well as we do. Amongst the private institutions, we are very much at the forefront of that. Although the higher ed landscape is really competitive, and so people look to Augsburg and say, "What are you doing, and we want to do that as well." I don't know in 20 years if we'll be still at the forefront or if everybody will have said, "Yes, that's what we should be doing." And everybody's doing it. We tend to get focused on one narrative or another, and I think our narrative can easily focus on, "Well, what are we doing for low-income students, or for students of color, or for first-generation students?" This question of empathy in every student and carrying these heavy things with them, and shouldn't we feel this sympathy. We are producing a high proportion of Fulbright scholars, with the same population of students. I think we don't always lift up our successes in the best way. In five years, how I would measure success is that we have started to move the needle on graduation rate, for example. But we have started to rethink in deep ways, things like how we use financial aid to support students all the way to the point of graduation. That a student can be here for nine semesters instead of eight, and they can still afford it, and they can still graduate, and we are comfortable with that, because not every student has a straight-line path to graduation. It's a zigzag. That students on surveys start to report that they have access to the course materials that they need to be successful. Those things to me are all about we, the students have helped us to co-create the environment that they need, in order to have really meaningful access to the educational opportunity at Augsburg. And that we aren't just perpetuating an old-fashioned model of higher education. Catherine Day: Beyond that five-year vision, do you have a dream that you want to fulfill here? Katie Bishop: I guess I haven't set a dream for myself. Not every student will graduate in the way that we imagine, because people have lives, and they move in and out of this system. If I were to say that I have a dream, it is that students find us to be culturally competent, they find us to be inclusive of an intersectional understanding of identity, that they find us affordable, and that they are able to graduate in a timeframe that works for them. And that they find their degree to be a meaningful degree. Catherine Day: I know you have a two-year-old son, or soon to be two years old. Katie Bishop: Yes. Catherine Day: What do you imagine higher education will be like for him? Katie Bishop: Oh, goodness. I don't know. I try to work hard not to put expectations on him, and so, I don't know if he will encounter a higher ed system that's completely redesigned and blown up from what it looks like today. Both of his parents work in higher ed, and so it's important to me that he not get to 18 years old and we're like, "Well, you have to go to college now." I hope that he finds a supportive environment at home, where if college is the right, that's the moment for him, then that works. And if he would be better served in some other space at that time, that we've been supportive enough parents that he can do that as well. Catherine Day: Thank you so much, Katie Bishop, for joining us today to talk about what it means to be the chief student success officer. And thanks for taking the time today. Katie Bishop: Thank you so much. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to The Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit Augsburg.edu.

  Doug Green: As a teacher of literature, as long as students can ground what they're saying in the text, I'm happy. It's rich stuff, so you can pull a lot of different things out of it. Probably the thing they most take away from my class is what's exciting about literature because I can't help myself, I get excited about it too. Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University. And it's my great privilege to present The Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg Podcast. We're speaking today with Doug Green, Professor of English at Augsburg. Welcome. Doug Green: Hi. It's nice to be here. Catherine Day: Where did you discover your passion for Shakespeare? When did that pop up in your life? Doug Green: I always enjoyed reading him, even back in high school. I had very good high school English teachers. But I think the real passion came when I was at Amherst College in the '70s. A writer named Ben DeMott, who wrote regularly for The Atlantic, actually taught the Shakespeare course. And he was just the most fantastic lecturer. And he would read characters differently, three or four different ways. And that taught me a lot about drama and a lot about Shakespeare. And from there on, I was sold. Then I had a great teacher also, Elmer Blistein at Brown when I was there. Catherine Day: Amherst was undergraduate and Brown was graduate school. Doug Green: Graduate school. Catherine Day: Okay. And you went on in English. That was what you were pursuing. Doug Green: Yes. I was a classics major though also at Amherst. And my dissertation involved Latin, which I used to know. Catherine Day: Where did you get this sort of pull for these classics do you think? Did that come earlier in your life? Doug Green: That's a really good question. I'm not sure I know the answer to that. I started taking Greek in college because a roommate of mine said to me, "Wouldn't it be great to read Plato in the original?" And I thought, "Yeah, it would be." It turned out I didn't care that much about Plato, but I loved reading the tragedies in the original. And then I was just completely taken away. And I had a great professor there too, Rachel Kissinger, and we actually did two plays in Greek. And I played Tiresias in The Antigone in the second one, and Ajax's little brother in the first one, in The Ajax, both by Sophocles. Catherine Day: What's the difference for you in reading the material and acting the material? Doug Green: I would actually say that there isn't a difference for me. And some of this is just realizing that when you're reading drama, you actually have to hear it. You actually have to hear voices. And so when I read drama, if I'm skimming it, I'm not getting it. If I'm reading it silently, I'm not getting it. I have to stop regularly and read speeches that call out to be read, is the way I would put it, that sort of summon you to read aloud. And even if I'm not thinking about it, or I'm rushed, I find myself having to stop and say a passage aloud. Sometimes that happens with poetry too. Catherine Day: Do you have your students read aloud a lot? Doug Green: They have to do a performance project, so I don't train them to do that, but they have to ... This is in English class rather, and not a drama class. But they always do a performance project so that they learn that mode requires speaking. That mode requires thinking the words that you're saying and thinking your reception of other characters' word. That was one thing Ben DeMott taught us. I remember one exam by him where the question was, Miranda says, "Oh, brave new world." And the question he asked afterwards was: What is Prospero thinking? So it wasn't about why Miranda said the line. It was: What's going on in Prospero when she says that line? And I thought that was brilliant. And I've tried to keep that frame of mind alive in my classes about drama. Catherine Day: It's helping people really understand the perspective, the point of view, the stetting, the emotion, all of that. Doug Green: Right. And usually, it's not always this, but usually the interaction between characters. Really, all you have in a drama most of the time is a scaffold. And you're building the drama from the words, but that means building psyches. It's means building action. It means all of these things. And actually, I just had a chance to work with Darcey Engen in theater, so we're both teaching Shakespeare at the same time, but different Shakespeare classes. She's teaching acting Shakespeare, and I'm teaching just Shakespeare. I like the fact that I get the simple title. Catherine Day: Vanilla version. Doug Green: Right. And we planned a visit together in October, where we worked on Midsummer Night's Dream together. And we planned a visit that we just completed two classes on Macbeth at the beginning of November. And just to give you an idea of how this would be different from my class normally, we were in the TV studio, so we had a big space. Catherine Day: The TV studio on campus. Doug Green: Over in Foss, yes, on campus. It's a big open area. It's a good rehearsal room. And the first time Darcey had us working on the witches' scene in Macbeth. And we saw by the end of that, four different versions of what the witches are like. They had to memorize two lines and use them. And we could shut out the lights and do all kinds of minor special effects. They had props they had to use. Great training for my performance projects, the performance projects in my class. As I said, normally I'm not teaching them how to do that. They kind of have to find their way. I just love that they got this kind of practice this time. And it gave them a different relation to the words, so they were reading aloud. They were really speaking aloud. The second time we did Banquo's, the appearance of Banquo's ghost at the banquet table, the feast in Macbeth. And we actually did a table reading at what could be the set, so we were all stretched out on a long banquet table lit by candlelight and a little bit of overhead, just enough to read. And we just simply went around with the parts and read aloud. And then we just stopped to talk about what just happened. How did this work? So a great example of close reading, but also giving us a feel for the atmospherics, who's talking to whom. What are they saying? How does Macbeth feel? What's Lady Macbeth doing here? She's got a complicated part in that scene. She's trying to calm the guests, doesn't see the ghost that Macbeth is seeing. What's going on? She's saying to her husband, "Straighten yourself out." So she's managing a lot of that scene. It's very difficult and very interesting. It was a lot of fun to do that. Catherine Day: Sounds wonderful. You talked about the fact that you teach Shakespeare as being continuously relevant. How do you see that? Can you unpack that a little bit for us? Doug Green: Two plays come immediately to mind that I've actually taught in the last couple weeks. One is Measure for Measure, which you don't even have to stretch it to think of it as Shakespeare's me too play. I mean, it's about sexual harassment. It's about assault. It's about leaders who don't obey the laws they set up. It's about the responsibility of leaders. The duke, who's not "the problem character" in the play, Angelo is, his deputy who takes over the city while he's out of town because he doesn't want to take responsibility for cleaning up the city. People won't like them then. Angelo's the one who actually abuses the nun, Isabella, in the scene, threatens her with rape. The duke himself is problematic. He is not taking responsibility for governing the city. That's what his job is. And it's a play that doesn't resolve well. There's ostensibly, everybody's married and happy, just like in the earlier comedies, what are called the high comedies, like As You Like It, or Twelfth Night. And it doesn't feel real. It seems just conventional that he feels like, well, it's a comedy, so I'm going to set up the couples. But there's very much a sense in that play that the differences between men and women, the kinds of experiences that have been violent experiences in some ways, and threats that have gone on in that play are not something that you can simply gloss over. And I think Shakespeare's deeply troubled by them. And I think that reads powerfully in our period as well. The other is Othello. And we're right in the middle of that right now. And that play is just eternally relevant, and especially with what's going on with race right now, what's going on with gender also. There's always a way into it, and a way that it speaks to the present moment. How does an outsider, how does a black man feel in a white society? That play still attracts actors who want to play that role. We're dealing with the stage history too, which is one of, sort of has a black face history. And how does that affect the way that part was seen? And what does that mean now if we see Olivier made up to play Othello? I don't think there's simple ... I mean, there's some simple answers to that. But the history of performance of many of the plays is just as interesting as the plays themselves in that regard. Catherine Day: Given your student body, which is now increasingly diverse in so many respects, what kind of discussion comes out? I'm thinking of any of the subjects you've just touched on, whether it's gender. It seemed as though we're at a point at this moment where the me too movement is facing: Is it really doing its thing? It seems to be lodged in a question. Doug Green: Right. Right. Catherine Day: I don't know why it would be any other way, personally. Doug Green: Right. Catherine Day: What do the students say about that? How do they find themselves? Doug Green: Well, let me sort of pick up on issues that I think are fraught, and that really intersect with our own problems right now about talking about those. One answer to your question is, I never know what they're going to say because I'm an older guy. Right? I'm in my 60s. So right now there are many things that I find surprising that students will say. Their experience, for one thing, we are more diverse, so we're getting a lot of different perspectives in class. I sometimes don't know what's going to come up. But I find that fascinating, so it's a great learning experience for me. The other piece of it is, though, that there are sometimes things that come up in teaching a play that I think surprise students from all different backgrounds. One of the things I teach about when I'm doing ... I usually do it with Henry the Fifth, and I use the Branagh film of that. Catherine Day: Sir Kenneth Branagh. Doug Green: Sir Kenneth Branagh, yes. He kept what Olivier didn't, because Olivier made that film during World War II. And he couldn't have traitors in it. Right? So he cut the traitor scene, which is early in the play. Branagh kept it. And in it, one of the traitors is a bedfellow, someone who slept with the king when the king was alone. He was a single man at that point, wasn't married. He's going to get married at the end of the play. And bedfellows were your companion of choice. Right? Your spouse wasn't. Your spouse was a political matter, an economic matter, a political matter. But your bedfellow was your choice. And so it raises a whole lot of questions about renaissance sexuality, English renaissance sexuality, that I don't think most students are aware of. And how do you think about sexuality across time? How did Shakespeare, who's using boy players also, to play women, think about sexuality and gender? And that actually sparks a lot of interest across a variety of students that is in many ways positive because they can start thinking about: Well, how distanced am I from this? Am I right about, or have I thought about the complexities of the past? I think we sometimes thinking the past was bad, and now we're better. Maybe we don't right now. But I think it's easy to think that way. And in fact, there's a lot to learn from the past. It's not a nice neat progression. Be lovely if it were, but it's not. And so they can actually find themselves at certain points in plays in ways they didn't think were possible. And that sometimes happens as well in Othello or Measure for Measure, when Isabelle's talking to her brother, for instance, and saying, "You wouldn't have me sleep with Angelo just to save your life. I know you would never do that." And he says, "Oh, death is a fearful thing, Isabelle." How do we respond to that? Is that a human response? Is that who's right and who's wrong in that situation? It's really fraught. And it gets right to the kinds of issues that we talk about today when you bring them down to a personal level. Catherine Day: Do you anticipate that this is a place where they're challenging their own identity and ideals? Doug Green: Yeah. I mean, I think they are surprised about the way Shakespeare makes them think about things that they often take for granted, or that they think they know the answer to. And a lot of that happens, I believe, because in Shakespeare, even in some of the smallest roles, there's always a moment or more where you suddenly get this kind of depth of character. In Twelfth Nights, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a minor character, mostly parodic, he's a fool, Sir Toby's taking advantage of him. And they're talking about love. And he says, "I was adored once too." And just for one minute, you understand why he's so desperate for love. And it's just this one moment. Everything else he says is ridiculous. Catherine Day: You've been here a while. And I'm wondering with the change in the student population, I know the university has talked a lot about teaching to its students. Does it change the way you teach now, and in what ways if it does? Doug Green: That's a good question, and a hard one. I think in my case, I don't know if it changes the way I teach or makes me very conscious that I need to check in with students a lot and make sure that I'm hearing what they're saying, that I take the time to understand where they may be coming from. The sort of jargon for that is being student centered. I tend to move back and forth between discussion and lecture, so I have to be careful that I'm also not talking to myself. I guess it's really not so much that I change the way I teach, is that I have to be highly conscious of what I'm doing and where they are, and kind of checking in to see. Does that make sense? Do people have questions about that? And I love it when ... This happened the other day, actually, in Shakespeare. I said, "How's everybody doing?" There was some complex point about something. I don't remember what it was right now. And somebody had the guts to say, "I'm a little confused about this." I said, "Thank goodness. Is anybody else confused?" And of course, then I got 10 people confused. And that's great because then we can go back over what's confusing about it. Does this make sense to you? Why doesn't it make sense to you? And we might end up on the closer to the same page. Catherine Day: I'm curious. For some of them, culturally, how do they experience the fact that this material has endured for so long and is still relevant? Does it surprise them? Doug Green: It might depend a little bit on what class I'm teaching. In Shakespeare, I think students that take Shakespeare usually want to take it. I mean, some are taking it because they need to have a Brit lit class, or something along those lines. And I think then they may discover, oh, this is more interesting than I thought. It's not just old literature. The fact it's acted helps, and that they can ... They have to kind of make it their own. Catherine Day: And that way it's more experiential. Doug Green: It's more experiential, so I'm lucky I'm teaching that material. I think the same is sometimes true of poetry because that has to be read out loud, or I insist that at least some of it is. And so again, they have to figure out: How do I say this? What am I saying? Which, I have to say, as somebody who has taught John Ashbery only once with my colleague, Bob Cowgill, I have no idea what he's saying. And so when I have to read it out loud, it's extremely difficult. But it also makes me have to figure out: Well, how do you say this out loud? Where is this coming from? What kind of person is saying this? What kind of persona is speaking here? Catherine Day: You've been here a while. And one of the things that you shared with me is that you've had the chance to essentially have three careers here. Doug Green: Yeah. Catherine Day: Could you speak about that a little bit? Doug Green: Yeah. I could speak about that. I was talking to a colleague today, that I don't know if I had three careers, or 2.5 and another .5. I don't know for sure. There are two big breaks in my career. One is that I came in, I was schooled as a renaissance scholar. Pretty soon after I got here, I was able to teach Shakespeare in, at that time it was the weekend college program. Then eventually I was teaching it in both the traditional program and that adult program. And of course, I was teaching composition at the same time. And I was schooled in that as well. That's what I thought I'd be doing. And I loved doing it, and I taught a lot of Milton, for instance, which I didn't love quite so. I have a love hate relationship with Milton. But I did teach it for many years. And I found his poetry rich, but it's not the same for me as teaching drama. Around 2000, I think it was 1999, at that point I had been writing poetry here for about 10 years, publishing a little bit. They needed somebody to take over the Intro to Creative Writing course. We had a last minute vacancy. And my colleague who worked extensively on that side of things, [inaudible 00:21:29], said to me, "Doug, I think it's time. We need you to do this." And I said, "Well, as long as you'll mentor me through it, I'll do it." And I've been doing that ever since, and I've loved it. It's just been fantastic. If you had asked me as a graduate student right in the middle of my graduate career, "Are you going to be teaching creative writing?" I would've said, "Well, no. I'm not even allowed to talk about the fact that I write poetry," because at that time you were told you're not going to be taken seriously as a scholar if you're also doing this other thing, so don't say anything about it, which I found an absurd position also. But once I was doing both things here, it really enriched my whole experience. I loved my first 10 years here. But the subsequent almost 20 have been absolutely fantastic because I'm doing at least two different things. Along the way, and the reason why I kind of said, "Well, is it three careers? Maybe it's not exactly three." I've taught film regularly. I intersect with the drama because of my interest in drama, and now the fact that's a major part of my load. I have a drama sequence I teach also in American British and Commonwealth and World Drama, in addition to Shakespeare. I'm intersecting with them a lot, so have theater students in my classes many times. And I do dramaturgical in literary consulting for my colleagues over there, which I love. I'm so glad they let me do it. That's been another sort of aspect of my work here. And then really since the early '90s, I've been involved in one way or another in women's studies. It was women's studies, and is now gender, sexuality, and women's studies. And was actually one of several people, Bev Stratton, who used to teach a religion and math here, who developed the queer studies class. And in fact, I'm teaching that now with my colleague, Mary Lowe, in religion. I have a varied career, I guess I'd say. And I love that. That's one of the advantages of teaching here as opposed to, say, teaching at the U. Some people will see it as an advantage to teach at the U for a lot of reasons. But for me, teaching at a liberal arts college, I'm able in some ways to pursue my interests. In some ways, we are generalists across our disciplines at least. And sometimes we even cross those disciplines, with a little trepidation I think at times. But trying to model what the educated person is for our students as well. Catherine Day: Could you unpack what queer studies is? Doug Green: I can. I can say a little bit about that. It's really grew out of what initially started as gay and lesbian studies. And it's the study of sexuality. I think it is, and it's taken a long time to be able to say that name and to make that name official, queer studies. It takes that name in part because understanding what our society marginalizes is actually important for everyone, and not just for those communities themselves, that you will understand your own sexuality better if you understand the varieties of queer sexuality, and the questions that arise when you're looking at different people's sexuality, and then looking at it across time and across cultures. Catherine Day: How do you reflect on the impact you've had in the variety of topics you've been able to pursue? And in what ways do you think that goes forth into the world in the form of graduates who've had some of this experience? Doug Green: I think about the philosopher, Richard Rorty, in a chronicle short version of a longer essay her wrote, that was published in the Chronicle probably 25 years ago now, he said, "There are two kinds of teachers. One teaches knowing-ness." Today we might say they're very deconstructive. They're very critical. There's all the sort of critical studies, that you take things apart to see how they work. You take things apart to see what effects they have? What are the consequences of them? What's the consequence of Othello as a representation of a black man, for instance? That's one kind of teaching. The other kind Rorty says derives from Wordsworth. And I'm going to botch the quote. I wish my colleague, Del Little, were here. But it derives from Wordsworth. And it's something like, we will teach them what we love, and how, and I would say why we love it. And for me, it's always been a little bit of both of those things. Probably the thing they most take away from my class is what's exciting about literature because I can't help myself. I get excited about it too. At the same time, I know that for many of them, the critical aspects were surprising, what you could discover by analyzing a passage of Shakespeare, for instance, was surprising. One of the things I have students do is translate. You can't see it, but there's air-quotes. Translating Shakespeare, a speech by Shakespeare, and then writing your interpretation of it because they start to discover that you actually can't say everything that the speech is saying. You try to approximate it. But the speech is doing more work than we can actually compass in our paraphrasing it. And I think that's something that they then, the sort of richness of that literature, which is the very thing that excites me. Rorty treats those things as separate, but I actually think that for me they've always been a kind of double mindedness that someone who loves literature and also teaches it has to bring into that arena, and that you hope that students can take away, that they'll be more excited about the reading they do because they have that experience. I think that's only deepened by those students that I've encountered primarily in writing classes. We're reading in there. We're reading really great works of literature. But we're also reading them with an eye to how they might affect how we write. And then we're reading each other's literature. And I think it is eye opening for students to see their work treated as literature, and understood as something of significance, which I think, it's not that, that doesn't happen in composition classes, but there's a utility in especially basic composition classes that can't be avoided. There's a kind of instrumental quality. We want students to succeed in college. We need to help give them the tools for that. Hopefully they're getting more than that. I think my colleagues are really good at doing that. But in creative writing classes, we're really dealing with their work in some ways, something that they've got a personal, a deep personal investment in. Catherine Day: That's exciting, fresh. Doug Green: Thanks. Catherine Day: Well, thank you for joining us today. We appreciate it. Doug Green: It was a pleasure. Catherine Day: That was Doug Green, Professor of English. I'm Catherine Reid Day, and this has been The Augsburg Podcast. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to The Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.  

Kwame-Ross: As an African American coming from Chicago or African American living in Minneapolis, versus a white teacher who teaches in Minneapolis, but comes from Minnetonka, you have a discrepancy of knowledge. How do you get white teachers who grew up differently, who have different experiences, in other words, have different knowledge sets to teach a group of kids with a whole different knowledge set? Paul Pribbenow: Augsburg University educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers and responsible leaders. I'm Paul Pribbenow, the president of Augsburg University, and it's my great privilege to present The Augsburg Podcast, one way you can get to know some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day. Catherine Day: I'm Catherine Reid Day, host of The Augsburg podcast. Today we're speaking with Terrance Kwame-Ross, associate professor of education, and we're going to touch on a number of topics about the crucial nature of education. Welcome. Kwame-Ross: Thank you. Catherine Day: I'd love to start with where you came from, what your origins were. Kwame-Ross: I grew up in Chicago, Illinois on the south side. The way I describe it is I had a wonderful childhood related to the geography. The place that I grew up at, it was close to the Museum of Science and Industry at University of Chicago, Jackson Park, so it was a place that was an environment for constant learning. Even though financially we didn't have a lot of financial means. But I feel as though that particular geographical place that I grew up was rich with resources, and I really think that that was foreshadowing how I think about learning. That it happens all the time, everywhere, in many different places. Chicago was that place. When people think of Chicago, they probably think of this big scary place, which sometimes it is. I've learned when things are scary in some places, how do we still survive and still learn? My roots from Chicago, and still they are. My mom still live there, my family live there, so I go back there. 62nd and Stony was my stomping grounds, as they say. Catherine Day: Your stomping grounds, yeah. For anyone who has been to the University of Chicago or the Museum of Science and Industry ... and I think so many people ... I went there probably in fifth grade on the train or something- Kwame-Ross: Yes. Exactly. Catherine Day: ... it's an amazing ... as you say, it's just a rich learning environment. In what ways do you think place continues to inform the way you're thinking about educating? Kwame-Ross: There's this idea called ... well, people call it context. I like to think about it as an ecology. That there's different places, and we know it, it's a fact that there's places inside of ourselves that we have conversations with about morality or our ethics, what we're seeing in the world. There's ecological places in terms of our families and our homes that knowledge come from and we learn. There's neighborhoods and communities and society and laws. I think that place, the physical place that you grew up or that you're currently at or live in is a fertile ground for knowledge and learning. I believe that place, geographical, and all other ways in which we think about place and space, it plays a significant role continually in my life. Where I decide to teach it? Where I decide to eat dinner at? Where do I decide to go for my spiritual development? Where do I go with friends? These everyday movements that all human beings make are wonderful places to grow. I believe that as a professor and as a teacher, the ideal of place is both practical and abstract. But how it plays in my life, I'm always aware of where I'm at in the history of it, and the way that plays out in education is I want my students, these pre service teachers, these teacher candidates, to understand how important who they are, where they come from, and how those things that was learned and knowledge set may be different from other people come from other places. I think this idea of place connected to learning is very important in everyday life, but also in learning. Catherine Day: It sounds like what you're saying is that in training a teacher and getting them ready, what you're saying is you want their feet really planted on their ground. Kwame-Ross: Yes. Catherine Day: And that in that act of being clear about what their ground is, that they're also going to have a better relationship to give that power to the students that they're teaching? Kwame-Ross: That's so true. One of the things at Augsburg, part of our commitment is to be engaged citizens, and so knowing physically where you're at, where you stand, and then knowing that practically helps you begin to develop a perspective, a point view. I believe once teachers understand that deepness in terms of themselves and that metaphor of where you stand and where you're at, I think it's easier to then pivot towards other understanding in terms of the other. Your idea is right related to what we're trying to do, what I'm trying to do in my classes. I play with these ideas related to place and taking a stance because it's both metaphorically, but it's also real. Here at Augsburg, we are not afraid to talk about concepts like race, or social class, or sexual orientation and for teachers or pre service teachers to really get in touch with those particular ideas as concepts, but also how they play out as real things in the world around biases and all sorts of things. So really literally helping pre service teachers figure out literally where they're at in their beliefs, in their historical context, with their relationship with race and sexual orientation and class, and how those things may or may not affect where they grew up. The places that they were that may not have been that friendly to these particular concepts. This idea of the place and stance, I think, I speaks directly to Augsburg mission of faculty, staff and students becoming much more aware of who they are, where they stand morally, ethically. This particular place that we're at right now in terms of Augsburg, where it's located, literally, where it's located, steps away from a multi generational, multi ethnic community close to downtown, close to the Somalian community, and many other communities close to a wonderful community theater, close to wonderful community centers. That place is important related to what we're up to at Augsburg. What that means in terms of teaching ... teaching to me is an opportunity to really integrate. What are we integrating? We're integrating as a teacher, things that's been wrong and to try to figure out practices and strategies that can stick to all learners' brains. That's around equity. We're also interested in ... as a teacher, how do we bring our best selves? Once again, here at Augsburg, having Lutheran traditions or Christians underpinnings, we're not afraid to talk about the ideal of righteousness or moral education. Doesn't necessarily mean we promote constantly religion, but it does mean that when we think about other people's children or even our own ... but let's think about other people's children for a minute, Catherine. That's sacred. That's sacred. I do believe that we're not only looking at this material kid, we're trying to help this kid grow in terms of their material understanding of the world, we're trying to help them grow spiritually, we're trying to help them grow with their understanding of economics. It's all these aspects of what it means to be a whole human being that I think being at Augsburg, this particular place, where not only spiritual and religious inquiry is one of the commitments, but also religion and spiritual inquiry is a commitment just like civic engagement. You see, Catherine, Augsburg, as an African American male, for all these years it's been hard to find a place and space that I could bring all of me. These commitments that Augsburg have, in terms of spiritual and religious inquiry, civic engagement, vocational discernment and global understanding, those commitments are grounded in this particular place that allows me to be me. I think that I bring that into the classroom, and I think it is infectious. I think students see that I'm not afraid to talk about the 1954 law or history in terms of Brown v. Board of Education, and then ask the questions. How far have we come? Catherine Day: That's a big question. Kwame-Ross: Given where we're at now, how do we reflect? Is our current system equitable, fair and has a moral ground to teach all children an American system? Augsburg gives me an opportunity to integrate that, and I think- Catherine Day: That's great. Well, that energy has to be infectious. In your experience with the students, what are they most troubled about when they think about how they're going to go out and make a difference as educators? Kwame-Ross: I think they're concerned with how to practically take ideas of freedom and equity and what is right and moral, but what does that actually look like inside of a classroom where you have maybe five or six different languages that are spoken? When you have children who are from 10, 12 different backgrounds? I think it's a struggle, but I think that sometimes it's a good struggle between the best American ideas, the best of Augsburg ideas, the best of ideas in the teaching field. How do you actually make them practical through your living body in the classroom? How do you make your body do these things to make that equitable and just classroom? That, I think, teacher candidates at Augsburg I think are constantly struggling with, and I think it's a good struggle. Catherine Day: Do you have theatrical training? Do you- Kwame-Ross: Yes, I do. I do. Catherine Day: Tell us a little bit about that. Kwame-Ross: I went to a small liberal arts college similar to Augsburg in Evanston, Illinois called National Louis University, and I stumbled into teaching. I knew what I wanted. I started to take a few courses, but the liberal arts allowed me to really think about integration. That allowed me to take some courses, and so I took some theater courses and I loved it. One of my first theater courses was makeup, which was fascinating. We had to figure out how to use makeup, how you can make wrinkles and un-wrinkles. So I'm fascinated with the material aspect of how theater and makeup could change reality, and so I started to really take more theater courses. I wanted to combine theater and teaching, so I got a teaching licensure with a minor in social studies in theater. That allowed me to really, I think, start to think outside of the box and how theater ... I think for me, my teaching practices and strategies and theories are the science. The theater is the art. I really believe that teaching is an integration of both. Catherine Day: What I love is that ... well, I was thinking about this as any of us who have to stand up in front of a bunch of people and work. I can look back at photos of myself and realize when I wasn't physically comfortable with myself. And it shows up in those photos. If they showed up in those photos, they were obviously showing up in the way I related to whomever I was with at the time. When I think about these young people going out and starting their careers, what a gift that you're giving them, if they're actually physically practicing something in the classroom. Could you tell us a little bit about how much they get to do that? Are they standing up there and you're talking with them about, are you in your body- Kwame-Ross: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Catherine Day: ... do you play with them? Kwame-Ross: Yeah. I teach foundation courses, and I teach methods. One of the methods courses that teach is social studies, and what the students immediately realize is that social studies is just that. It is the study of all things social. All things. Social interactions, history. It's all of that social. Part of it is I go through a little sequence in the beginning of the course in terms of how the body is used socially throughout history. And then what does that mean for teacher? When sometimes people want you to become a sage on a stage, how do you begin to be comfortable in your body? It may seem small, but it's important because when I see those students, some of those same students in my learning and development course, and we talk about self identity, self concept, they really start to make those connections of how important ... or another way of putting it, they really start to make the connection of how the body informs our concept. As a teacher, if you become comfortable with within your body, your body concept, it seems as if from my own experience in teaching, that my students are able through many kinds of activities we do ... so for example, I do an activity where you're mirroring the other person and the idea is to really try to stay conscious of what they're doing, but that is a person consciously but unconsciously trying to intuit what others are doing with their body. Practically how that works in a classroom, when I started doing student teaching, this is what we mean, that teachers could use all their senses to integrate see, hear, smell, taste, and touch behavior and cognition. When a teacher is teaching, and they have these inner experiences with understanding their body and theater, actually when they start teaching, they can actually start to look at a kid's face and not be afraid to move their body closer for proximity in order to help the kid understand. This theater stuff, you can see it come out in the classroom through how teachers may ask at kindergarten, "Demonstrate one plus one," and the kid can't, and you can see the teacher in her body then grab two waters this close, and say, put them down on a table and use prompts. We call that hands on. But actuality when teachers use theater, that stuff come intuitively. You start to use prompts, you start to use skits when you start to talk about, "What is the timeline?" And kids are really trying to figure out what a timeline is. So you can write it on a board, or you can say, "You know what, let's do a timeline. Let me-" Catherine Day: And they stand up- Kwame-Ross: And they stand up. Yeah. Catherine Day: ... and they physically make that feeling. Kwame-Ross: Make that feeling. Yeah. Getting teachers comfortable with theater and knowing their body, I think that it compliments right into the classroom and extends. It actually tricks their body. Catherine Day: Into believing in themselves- Kwame-Ross: Exactly. Catherine Day: ... and then that must connect with the students. Kwame-Ross: Believing in the students too. Catherine Day: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kwame-Ross: Yup, exactly. Catherine Day: Believe in them. Augsburg takes on so many challenges, learning styles, learning approaches. Where does that conversation happen? What are you learning from that experience with your students? Kwame-Ross: As a teacher, we move away from certain words. At one point we moved away from sympathy to empathy. However, I want to bring both back. And there's a difference. Empathy is transporting myself in someone else's shoes. Sympathy is really feeling, really being sympathetic of the energies of someone else. If a student is crying, I can transport myself there to think about why that student is crying. But I can also have sympathy. I can actually feel the crying. What does that mean? Students come in to Augsburg and teachers sometimes, even though we're teachers, that when we have a classroom ... teachers really know this even if we don't want to admit it, but we know when we have a classroom, there's so many different levels that people are on developmentally, cognitively, physically, socially. We just know that in terms of human beings from the research and in theory. We know that here at Augsburg, not only do we know that, I think that students are liberated in a sense to grab hold of ... however we frame it. Abilities, disability, weaknesses, strengths. It seems like students have a good sense, or if they don't have a good sense, Augsburg creates an environment where students have a heightened sense of places they need to grow. The way it shows, is that students in some sense invite and sometime demand teachers to pay attention and pushing teachers become more authentic in the variety of ways in which we teach and have strategies. I think it's a powerful thing. And for me personally, it makes me fall back on patience and observation. Being able to observe and see certain things and slow things down. Just because I'm a college professor teaching people who are 18 or 22 or 50, doesn't mean that I have it all, and that each person is different. One of the things I learned in kindergarten is that you watch, watch, watch, watch, watch, watch, watch. And then you pick up on small behaviors and cognitive things, and then you talk to the student and you co create opportunities for them to move in powerful ways. As a professor here with this idea that all students can learn and that people learn differently, I'm learning to observe more and be patient. Catherine Day: When you think about what's going to be coming at us in the next, let's say, five years, do you think this is just going to stay as your through line or do you anticipate you need to make some adjustments to address any other things coming at us around education and the needs? Kwame-Ross: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, we do know that in 2014, something dramatic happened to America, and that point was the point that more children of color ... marked the time that more children of color was born. And then when we project in the next 30 to 50 years, the statistics may go up to 67% of public school kids are children of color and come from poverty. Right now it's 52%. The kids of color in public schools. And then for elementary education it's 95% teachers are white. Nationally 63% of teachers are white. Right here in Saint Paul Minneapolis, you have the same statistics, the same demographics. Catherine, I'm really serious. I think that in five years ... but I think the question now, but I think it's with the reckoning and we don't have 20, 30 years. What do you truly do? From my scholarship, here you have the fact that ... if you live in a certain place ... let's take Minnesota and then let's take a place in Africa. Ghana, West Africa, Accra. You have two cities. You have two continents, but you have two cities. In both of these places ... both of these places have certain geographical environments. And these environments have people in them, and these people have to solve problems, but the problems are different. My point is, problems in Minnesota based on geography could be different than the places in Ghana. What does that mean? That means that different knowledge comes from different places in different geographies. I think one of the biggest issues that's coming is our reckoning with this big idea around how do teachers teach kids particular knowledge that the teacher doesn't have herself? Catherine Day: And we don't have an answer for that right now? Kwame-Ross: I think we're hinting towards it, but overall, I think we frame some of it as culturally responsive classroom, culturally relevant stuff. But that's the surface. What is really at stake is ... in terms of my African American scholarship ... for example, my research; in 1900s, the turn of the century, we had the height of industrial revolution. That gives you a certain kind of history. But while that was going on, it was four years before it, 1896, which was The 14th Amendment, The Equal Clause. But at the same time, you had Plessy v. Ferguson, where the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was okay. The early 1900 set the stage for 60 something years of locked in discrimination. Jim Crow. African Americans at that time started to develop their own knowledge of how to live in a racist society. That's knowledge. What came out of that, 1929 Martin Luther King was born, or 1928. He grew up at a time where he was learning how to be a certain way and have knowledge as an African American, and you see what he did with it. There's a set of knowledge that is locked inside of culture and communities. How do mostly white teachers access that knowledge in order to teach kids, or how to help set the stage to access some of that knowledge? Catherine Day: Do you think, Terrance, that it's a shift in their thinking about power? Kwame-Ross: Yeah. Because knowledge is connected to power. I have very effective white female teachers in college. Now, what made them effective? They didn't have knowledge I had. Camille Blachowicz. Did a lot of stuff around vocabulary. That changed my life. She was good at vocabulary. What did she do? She didn't know Ebonics or the lexicons of the Black language, but what she knew was her theoretical knowledge about vocabulary and root words. I remember being in her classroom and she said, "Terrance, as an African American, there's this idea of language. Language is a phenomenon, and it can be used in many different ways. The way whites use language to create worlds, blacks use language to create worlds, and you can actually integrate those." "Really Mrs. Blach? What do you mean by that?" And from that moment on, it opened me up. You see? Here's a white female ... and I was at that time 20 years old. 20 years old. She opened my eyes up to something that I was using all the time, but because of power, I didn't think it was worthwhile to study black culture, black language. Catherine Day: Can you just imagine or tell me about maybe one student who comes to mind that your teaching has opened up their world. And what is that story? Kwame-Ross: I'm currently working with a student now, so white female. I was a little hesitant, but it's working out. It's a white female and she's a URGO undergrad research- Catherine Day: Scholar? Kwame-Ross: ... scholar- Catherine Day: She's studying undergraduate research with you? Kwame-Ross: Yes, yes. With me, on my Black Boys study and I'm taking them through a process. There's some interviews with 30 African American middle school boys from three high schools here in Minnesota. I interviewed them, I did a pre impulse interview. We have teacher data, student data surveys. She wanted to do some research, so I said, "Yeah, yeah. You can do some research with me." What's coming out through her being with the interviews, having to read these interviews, hearing the African American young mans on their own terms ... and the questions was around how they conceptualize themselves, what are good teachers, what are bad teachers, who's helpful for them? And here's this white females going into elementary education. She's in a couple of my courses. She's reading this stuff, and she saying, "Terrance, this stuff is connecting to the literature. What the young mans are saying about teacher characteristics. Characteristics that are helpful or are harmful or are humorous. The literature is talking about these, and this is actual stuff." She's opening herself up to what I would call the live voice. Sometimes as teacher, we can have African Americans and Latino's among right in front of us and just go through everyday life and teach them. What is interesting for her to sit with these interviews around African American boys that she do not know, and just listen to the live voice. And that's one of her words, the live voice. And for African American, for a white female who's going into education to be able to, in her own words, talk about the live voice of black males, I think that's power there. That she's going to approach black males in a different way. She's going to have these categories and themes about how they view themselves on their own terms, what they hope for themselves, and what they hope for their teachers and education. That's in her. And so now she has the categories. It gives her opportunity to talk with me, and then now we're doing a lit review and she's going to put something together. But I think what she's being open to is how to listen. Catherine Day: Is there one last thought you have about a dream you hope to fulfill that you're working on here? Kwame-Ross: With my African American scholarship, the way I define that is my focus is looking at how adults within the African American community, from historical time to contemporary, how they have thought about framed question and given meaning to the category youth. In other words, how have African Americans conceptualized young people? That's important because the way in which African Americans have thought about and worked with African American children, think about it, has been much different than the broader society because of racism and discriminatory practices. My hope is within the next ... well, I want to bring all my work together. I've been doing some stuff at Como high school, I've been doing some work in Saint Paul Community for the last 25 years with black men, and so I have a national local reputation around practical work with them. Practical work. My hope is to further bring this practical work. I push a little against, in terms of all of his being in written form, but I think as I began to write up my research, figuring out a way to use art and theater in public voice and performance to make the research practical in everyday assessable for the everyday person. Catherine, I'm looking at ways to do that, and I think that's important because claiming to be American and historically the rhetoric attached to that in terms of freedom, liberty .... my hope is that all children growing up in America, all of them, all of them, and particularly the ones who are marginalized, like African American males, that they see themselves as wonderful learners in this particular context of America. My hope is that I bring this stuff in some form that is attractive and assessable to all Americans, all citizens of Minneapolis and Saint Paul or Minnesota, and then branch out nationally. Because I think that's a ... I think there's something missing. There's a conversation missing around black male voices and what they have to say and contribute to the American society. I would like that to be a conversation, and particularly with the 95% of white teachers in elementary education around the country. Catherine Day: Well, Terrance, I'm going totally be cheering for that dream. It sounds fantastic. I think one of the things that excites me listening to it as I observe how Augsburg approaches teaching, is that you're really pushing on that integration, that is permission giving to others. I want to thank you for the permission you gave others to be themselves, and thank you for this conversation. Kwame-Ross: Thank you, Catherine. Catherine Day: We've been speaking with Terrance Kwame-Ross, associate professor of education. Paul Pribbenow: Thanks for listening to The Augsburg Podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit augsburg.edu.