Luther magazine winter 2018

WINTER 2018

Engineering a new world of space travel

CONTENTS 16

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Prepared for blastoff Scott Roland ’04 puts his Luther pre-engineering training to the test by designing rockets for Blue Origin, a private spaceflight company.

Luther Magazine Volume 51, Number 2, Winter 2018 Published by Luther College Editor Ellen Modersohn Managing Editor Kate Frentzel Art Director/Designer Michael Bartels Contributors Sherry (Braun) Alcock ’82 Sue (Franzen) Drilling ’78 Annalise Johnson ’18 Kirk Johnson ’82 Aaron Lurth ’08 Rozlyn Paradis ’18 Anna Restemayer ’19 Judy Riha Luther Magazine welcomes articles and signed letters to the editor; submissions may be edited for style, clarity, or length. Inquiries and submissions may be sent to the Editor, Luther Magazine, Luther College, 700 College Drive, Decorah, Iowa 52101-1045; magazine@luther. edu; phone (563) 387-1350. Class Notes submissions and changes of address may be sent to the Alumni Office at the address above. Alumni news may be emailed to the Alumni Office at alumni@ luther.edu. Questions and concerns about the magazine may be emailed to magazine@luther.edu. Alumni Office (800) 225-8664; (800) 2 ALUMNI Admissions Office (800) 458-8437; (800) 4 LUTHER Web luther.edu luther.edu/magazine © Luther College 2018

COVER IMAGE © DMYTRO DENYSOV

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Learning through Italian geology

Departments 2 President’s Letter 3 Campus News 26 Alumni

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Alumni artistteachers plan spring show at Luther

32 Class Notes 44 Marriages 45 Births/Adoptions 46 In Memoriam

48 Collections Calendar (inside back cover)

Picture perfect Luther made it onto a list of best-landscaped colleges in the Midwest this fall. But then, we’ve always know we were surrounded by unusual beauty. We have renowned landscape architect Jens Jensen to thank for it. His 1909 plan for the campus alternated sunlit clearings, such as the library lawn shown here, and groves of trees. Thanks to careful planning through the years and to current grounds workers, Luther’s campus retains the pastoral beauty of Jensen’s design. PHOTO BY AARON LURTH ’08

Giving Day • March 8, 2018 • #LutherGives18

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PR ESIDENT'S LETTER

“Luther educates pre-professional students—and those in every other area of study—with the goal of helping them grow as whole people.”

says, he not only developed a solid understanding of the fundamental principles of engineering through his physics major, but he also learned to find and synthesize research and then explain it in his own writing.

Pre-professional students get added value at Luther Our cover story for this issue illustrates that the sky—or even outer space—is the limit for professionals educated at Luther College. Students in pre-professional studies at Luther graduate with the knowledge needed to succeed in professional graduate schools as well as with the broader skills imparted by a liberal arts education. These skills enable them to be flexible in the workplace and to keep learning throughout their career—a value they might not get from a purely professional school.

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Scott Roland, a 2004 graduate of Luther College, interviewed on pages 16–18, illustrates this value. He has an advantage over many of the engineers he works with at a company designing private spaceflight in that he can write well. The author of six published papers, Scott says he stepped into that role because writing was not a strong suit of his coworkers— and they would say the same. He credits his liberal arts education, citing the holistic style of learning through courses like Paideia, for this ability. As Scott

Scott has become what is called a T-shaped engineer. The T represents both vertical depth of knowledge in scientific and technical areas, and horizontal breadth in literature, the arts, philosophy, and more. T-shaped engineers who begin their training and education at Luther are able to draw on a wide range of knowledge to generate innovative solutions. The strong science and mathematics foundation that Scott developed enabled him to join the more than half of Luther physics graduates and 5 percent of chemistry graduates who go on to graduate programs in engineering and become practicing engineers. He could have gained that foundation at a professional school devoted entirely to that study, but his liberal arts education at Luther gave him the added skills that now provide him an advantage in his career. He knows how to question and think critically, how to make connections among disciplines, how to keep learning throughout his life, and how to communicate clearly.

The same is true for graduates of Luther’s other pre-professional programs: pre-law and preseminary, and the pre-health studies in dentistry, medicine, optometry, pharmacy, physical therapy, and veterinary medicine. Our courses prepare students for professional school entrance exams, and students strengthen their competencies in their specific areas through offcampus study, internships, work in clinical settings, and research. Luther has a strong record of preparing students for careers in these professions, with successful alumni in all of them. Luther educates pre-professional students—and those in every other area of study—with the goal of helping them grow as whole people. Yes, they gain knowledge and skills in their particular field of study, but they also learn to think for themselves and to remain engaged with the changing world throughout their careers and lives. Thank you, Scott, for sharing your insight. We’re excited to see where your career leads you! Soli Deo Gloria,

Paula J. Carlson President

CAMPUS NEWS

COLLABORATION SHOWS COMMUNITY-SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS WORK TO REDUCE OBESITY

A six-year Luther collaboration on childhood obesity research shows that community- and school-based interventions are effective in reducing the rise of childhood obesity. The project is an example of meaningful research partnerships that Luther faculty, students, and, in this case, local communities engage in every year.

PROJECTS

FOR PEACE

Biology major Jenny Woods ’18 spent last summer improving access to health care and education for expectant mothers on the island of Roatan, Honduras. Woods, recipient of a Davis Projects for Peace grant, used the $10,000 award to partner with Clinica Esperanza to strengthen outreach efforts among the island’s mothers-to-be.

Prior to arriving in Honduras, Woods coordinated a Decoraharea donation drive to collect two hundred pounds of baby clothing and supplies for the clinic to distribute to expectant mothers who complete pre- and postnatal care

Jenny Woods ’18 (left) used her Davis Projects for Peace grant to help purchase an outreach vehicle for an expectant-mother clinic in Honduras.

Data was compiled from 10 school districts on more than 4,000 students. The analysis led the team to conclude that students who participated in the food and fitness initiative for several years showed slower rates of growth in BMI across the kindergarten through fifth-grade years. Because of childhood obesity, for the first time in modern history, children may live a shorter life than their parents. This study offers a proven way to help reverse the trend.

classes. She then used the seed money provided by the grant to help purchase a vehicle to extend the reach of the clinic into new communities. During Woods’s time at the clinic, she learned how to read ultrasounds and measure a fetus’s growth and heart rate. Toward the end of her visit, she created a survey to solicit feedback from the women who use the clinic. Woods describes her experience as life-changing, noting that “When we show others that we also care, it changes their whole perspective on life.”

Loren Toussaint, professor of psychology, worked with students and others to assess the success of a collaboration to slow BMI gain in children.

Espinosa ’81 joins regents Peter Espinosa ’81 has joined Luther College’s Board of Regents. “I am honored and humbled to join the Luther College Board of Regents. Like many others [on the board], I have a long and extensive connection to Luther. I am from a family of Luther graduates and I married a Luther graduate (Kari Tollefson ’84). I have benefited greatly from the liberal arts education and Lutheran approach to learning that I received at Luther,” Espinosa says. He graduated from Luther with majors in speech communications and political science and went on to work for IBM until 1999. Espinosa then held positions at Vignette, Guidewire Software, and Computer Science Corporation. He founded Pulpit Rock Brewing Company in Decorah in 2014 and remains its chairman.

Partners in the childhood obesity research included Loren Toussaint, Luther professor of psychology, along with Kristin Housholder ’16 and Katelyn Janssen ’16; Ann Mansfield ’79, Luther’s project coordinator for Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative; and Mayo Clinic pediatrician Brian Lynch ’96. They examined the impact of the Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative on rates of increase in body mass index in elementary school children over the course of six years.

Peter Espinosa ’81

Toussaint says, “The collaboration is continuing to work to assess BMI and understand contributors to childhood obesity. We are actively collecting data, planning for future programming, and using the results of analyses to inform our next steps. We are writing grant proposals and seeking out potential funders to support this work. Our continuing aim is to collaborate with multiple levels of expertise and work together as students, faculty, and community to address childhood obesity.” Read about more faculty-student research partnerships at luther.edu/ academics/high-impact-learning/ research.

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WHO IS AT THE TABLE?

A Q&A with Lisa Scott, interim dean of institutional equity and inclusion In August Luther welcomed Lisa Scott, Luther’s first dean of institutional equity and inclusion. Scott comes most recently from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., where she held multiple roles, including special assistant to the president and chief diversity officer, assistant provost for retention, and vice president of student engagement and success. In her short time at Luther, Scott has met with different constituents of the college, leading workshops and encouraging people to ask questions of themselves and one another about what we want the college to look like, feel like, and offer to those who come to live, work, study, and teach here.

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How does a diverse, inclusive campus enhance learning?

Students who interact across differences—with those who are different from themselves in multiple ways—tend to be better able to contribute to and be more productive in a complex society. Today’s environment is filled with people who have contradicting experiences and expectations of the ways in which we perform in the workplace. In a workshop this morning, we were talking about the recent massacre in Texas [in a church in Sutherland Springs on Nov. 5] and the level of anxiety that such events have created for people and the ways in which it’s almost normative to want to close yourself off, to hunker down. But today’s workplace calls for just the opposite. Today’s classrooms call for the opposite—they call for a willingness to hear, though not necessarily agree with, different belief systems and worldviews, during a time when there’s a call from some prominent voices for uniformity about a particular worldview. And so that is a piece of my work and, I think, that of my colleagues: How do we intentionally encourage and intentionally engage with those who see the world differently from ourselves? How do we create spaces for the stories, experiences, and knowledge of historically marginalized voices in the curriculum, the workplace, and in the lived experience outside of the classroom at Luther College? How would you describe diversity efforts at Luther?

I think that there has been a lot of effort. One of the questions is, to what end? What needles institutionally have been moved? Because we still have minimal faculty diversity, and there is always room to grow the diversity of the student body in all sorts of ways. Although there’s been significant

growth in the diversity of the student body during the last ten years, Luther has much room for growth, including yielding and retaining greater numbers of U.S.born students of color as well as faculty of color. Environmental issues regarding campus climate, both on campus and in the larger community, also remain. Does the curriculum reflect a rich diversity of ways of knowing, scholarship, and research? And so the question is, to what end? Who do we want to be? And then we need to align institutional resources, financial and human, toward getting there. It’s rather like when you build a house, and you’re excited about this new house. Before you even build it, you draw it. And you draw it thinking, Okay, I want the sun to come into that room because I want to be in here and read a book. I want this to be a place for communal dinner. I want a yard where I can grow vegetables. So, you design it because there are experiences you want your family, your guests, people walking by to have. It’s something you are trying to impact them with. What do we want to look like? What do we want to feel like? What experience do we want to offer those who live, work, teach, study here? What is the thing we’re trying to create, to draw, to innovate? What do we want the organizational culture to look like and feel like for those who have a “lesser” position and less autonomy and less power on campus? How do we provide people greater autonomy, creativity, and power to engage the work they do? That conversation is a rich though not an easy one. You kind of have to draw it and map it, and then people can find their place in it much more seamlessly. How do we create a more inclusive environment here?

It begins with an organizational belief system. If we believe equity

is important, then we will work to make it inherent across our operations. Approaches to diversity in higher education have often been additive—they’re there, but diversity initiatives often operate on the margins of an institution and don’t challenge historical core values and assumptions. Many people have not and still don’t see diversity and inclusivity as core to their work. So, leadership plays a critical role in positioning and situating inclusive excellence as a core value. There can be a perception that since we have a dean of equity and inclusion, we’re good. We’ve checked that box, so some may think they no longer have to worry about it because the dean does that work. It’s a perspective that does not help us achieve institutional goals. Rather, all of us will need to develop innovative ways to create operational models that bear the fruit of inclusive excellence both in the operations and in the student experience as well as for the people who teach and work at Luther.

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“How do we intentionally encourage and intentionally engage with those who see the world differently from ourselves?” —Lisa Scott, interim dean of institutional equity and inclusion

What might this process look like?

As I say to all my colleagues, if you’re going to do this work, you’re going to make mistakes. You absolutely are. I also think we ought to be as brave as we ask students to be, plain and simple. We ask students every day to engage with difference, whether they want to or not. We ask students to come here from all parts of the country and the world, and to engage people, to have roommates who are different from themselves. We ask them to consider ideas and histories and theories and ideologies that may interrupt their own belief systems. I just think we ought to be as brave as we ask students to be. I would say that same courage and vulnerability is important for those of us who serve the college.

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TRUE TRASH

CAMPUS CUTS LANDFILL WASTE As part of our mission to “practice joyful stewardship of the resources that surround us,” Luther takes an innovative approach to reduce waste generation on campus by implementing a variety of unique and effective projects to keep items in circulation and out of the landfill.

During the 2015–16 academic year, four-stream bins—allowing users to sort for compost, landfill, paper, and plastic and metal—were placed throughout Valders and Sampson Hoffland, and classroom trash and recycling bins were removed. A baseline waste audit in fall 2015 demonstrated

The same type of bins placed in the Union in spring 2017 resulted in true trash increasing from 64 percent to 75.3 percent by the fall audit. These audits demonstrate that infrastructure, when combined with education, is key to driving behavior change around waste reduction. In addition, the installation of a pulper in the cafeteria dish room this year has reduced the amount of solid waste Luther sends to a landfill by 28 percent over last year. The pulper captures and processes all food waste from consumer plates and food preparation. Food scraps are scraped directly into the pulper, which removes moisture and pulverizes the food into scraps that break down faster in a compost pile. The college has set a goal of sending 90 percent of all food waste to compost by May 2018.

26+5+11256z True Trash 56.3%

Organics 26.2%

Plastics/ Metals 4.7% Paper 10.6% Cardboard 2.1%

Fall 2017 Valders/Sampson Hoffland Waste Audit

4+3+189z

For instance, every year student zero-waste educators working with Luther’s Sustainability complete waste audits on the dumpsters behind ValdersHall of Science and Sampson Hoffland Laboratories. Students sort the dumpster contents to learn more about the waste stream and determine what percentage by weight is “true trash.” The true trash consists of items that would not have a home in any of Luther’s other current recycling or composting waste streams on campus.

that 56.3 percent of the contents of the dumpster were true trash. A waste audit was conducted in fall 2017 showed that 89.6 percent of the contents of the dumpster were true trash.

Fall 2015 Valders/Sampson Hoffland Waste Audit

Organics 4.2%

True Trash 89.6%

Plastics/ Metals 2.8% Paper 2.8%

Cardboard .6%

New VP for marketing Aimee Viniard-Weideman joined Luther as vice president for communications and marketing in September. She served the University of Minnesota Extension for nearly a decade as the assistant dean and director of communications and public relations, creating and establishing a successful brand platform, uniting more than 400 diverse programs and 800 statewide employees under one extension brand aligned with the university.

Aimee Viniard-Weideman

In 2015 she became the assistant dean and director of strategic communications and organizational development for the University of Minnesota Extension. In that senior leadership position she worked with statewide extension boards and University of Minnesota leaders, leading organizational change initiatives and external relations programs. Since 2003 she has also facilitated strategic and communications plans for nonprofits and provided individual and team coaching as part of AVW Communications, her own consulting/coaching firm. As vice president for communications and marketing at Luther, ViniardWeideman leads and directs Luther’s media, web, publications, music marketing, and sports information teams, and advises the president on the communications and marketing operations of the college. She succeeds Rob Larson, who has returned to teaching full time at Luther as associate professor of management.

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CORRECTION Kate Elliott’s email address was incorrect in this magazine’s fall 2017 issue. The correct address is ellika03@ luther.edu. Elliott, Luther associate professor of art history, is researching the works of Herbjørn Gausta and asks that anyone who has a Gausta painting or information on his work contact her.

CAMPUS NEWS

PARENTS COUNCIL 2017–18

Luther’s 2017–18 Parents Council held its fall meeting Sept. 23, 2017, during Family Weekend. Parents Council is the representative body of the Luther College Parents Association, to which all parents of Luther students belong. The council, a liaison between parents and the

college, is a way for parents to express concerns and suggestions to the college, and to raise money for the Luther College Annual Fund through the Roots and Wings campaign. Council representatives send parents fall and spring letters that provide college news, updates, and contact

information for council members. For additional information, contact the Development Office at (800) 225-8664 or visit luther.edu/parents/parents-council.

First-year class representatives (left to right): John and Rachel Vanderploeg, Doug and Bonnie Hanggi, Steve Abernethy, Jeff and Heidi Elkins, Eric ’85 and Di (Reque) Storvick ’85, Jen (Carlson) ’86 and John Lembezeder. Absent: Janeen Haller-Abernethy.

Sophomore class representatives (left to right): Larry ’87 and Connie (Foxworthy) Logeman ’88, Todd Saner ’90 and Jennifer Munn Saner ’89, William J. “John” and Vickie Sharp, Michael and Dina Barron, Colleen and David Bolthouse.

Junior class representatives (left to right): Dan and Naomi Palmquist, Elizabeth and Benjamin Stewart, David Finger and Ann HaydenFinger, Scott and Mary Peters. Absent: Kevin and Jody King.

Senior class representatives (left to right): JoBeth and Leofwin Clark, Peggy and Greg Miller, President Paula Carlson, Michael ’85 and Susanne Carney, Linda and Tom Floden ’82.

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Junior Elliot Douma performs with Concert Band last September.

MUSIC ENSEMBLE TOURS 2018 Performances marked with an asterisk will be followed by a reception; see the calendar, back inside cover, for details. Find more details about all performances at luther.edu/music/tours.

VICKY AGROMAYOR LAMMERT ’19

NORDIC CHOIR MIDWEST AND COLORADO TOUR

*February 11, 7:30 p.m. Christ the King Lutheran Church New Brighton, Minn.

January 27, 7:30 p.m. Immanuel-Trinity Lutheran Church Fond du Lac, Wis. January 28, 4 p.m. Mount Olive Lutheran Church Weston, Wis. *February 1, 7 p.m. St. Patrick’s Catholic Church Cedar Rapids, Iowa February 2, 7:30 p.m. Atonement Lutheran Church Overland Park, Kan. February 3, 7:30 p.m. St. Fidelis Catholic Church Victoria, Kan. *February 5, 7:30 p.m. Augustana Lutheran Church Denver, Colo. February 6, 7 p.m. First Lutheran Church Colorado Springs, Colo. February 7, 7 p.m. Estes Park High School Estes Park, Colo. February 8, 7 p.m. First United Methodist Church Fort Collins, Colo. February 9, 7:30 p.m. Newman Center at University of Nebraska–Lincoln Lincoln, Neb. *February 10, 7 p.m. Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church Sioux Falls, S.D.

CONCERT BAND MIDWEST TOUR

JAZZ ORCHESTRA MIDWEST TOUR

February 13, 7:30 p.m. Luther College

March 23, 7 p.m. Galena Middle School Galena, Ill.

April 12, 7 p.m. Bethany Lutheran Church Spencer, Iowa

*March 24, 7:30 p.m. Bethlehem Lutheran Church St. Cloud, Minn.

March 24, 7:30 p.m. Vinton-Shellsburg High School Vinton, Iowa

April 13, 7 p.m. Memorial Auditorium Dawson, Minn.

March 25, 3 p.m. Orchestra Hall Minneapolis, Minn. Joint concert with Wartburg Choir and Iowa State Singers

March 26, 7 p.m. Kasson-Mantorville High School Kasson, Minn.

April 14, 7 p.m. First Lutheran Church Sioux Falls, S.D.

March 27, 7 p.m. New Richmond High School New Richmond, Wis.

April 15, 3 p.m. Waconia High School Auditorium Waconia, Minn.

March 28, 2:30 p.m. school performance Central High School La Crosse, Wis.

April 17, 7:30 p.m. Luther College

SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MIDWEST TOUR *February 1, 7 p.m. Valley High School West Des Moines, Iowa February 2, 7 p.m. Western Dubuque High School Epworth, Iowa February 3, 7 p.m. First Lutheran Church Janesville, Wis. *February 4, 2 p.m. Sun Prairie High School Sun Prairie, Wis. *February 5, 7 p.m. Stillwater High School Stillwater, Minn. *February 6, 7 p.m. Grace Lutheran Church Eau Claire, Wis. February 7, 10:30 a.m. school performance Wayzata High School Plymouth, Minn. February 11, 7 p.m. Luther College

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April 10, 7:30 p.m. Luther College

COLLEGIATE CHORALE MIDWEST TOUR April 12, 7:30 p.m. St. Paul’s Lutheran Church Davenport, Iowa April 13, 7:30 p.m. TBA Minneapolis, Minn. April 14, 7:30 p.m. Grace Lutheran Church River Forest, Ill. April 15, 4 p.m. First Presbyterian Church Neenah, Wis. April 19, 7:30 p.m. Luther College

CATHEDRAL CHOIR MIDWEST TOUR April 20, 7:30 p.m. Trinity Lutheran Church Sioux City, Iowa April 21, TBA Immanuel Lutheran Church Princeton, Minn. April 22, church services Trinity Lutheran Church Princeton, Minn. April 22, 4 p.m. Gloria Dei Lutheran Church Rochester, Minn. April 24, 7:30 p.m. Luther College

CAMPUS NEWS

Christmas at Luther 2017

RECORDINGS FOR SALE: The recording of Christmas at Luther 2017: The Tree of Life My Soul Hath Seen is available on CD. Ensembles on this album include Nordic Choir, Symphony Orchestra, Luther Ringers, Cathedral Choir, Collegiate Chorale, Norsemen, Aurora, Cantorei, and Christmas Brass, comprising members from the Luther Concert Band. Selections include the newly commissioned “The Huron Carol” by Terre Johnson, Mack Wilberg’s soothing rendition of “Whence Is That Goodly Fragrance Flowing?” and the raucous finale arrangement of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” by Dan Forrest. Christmas at Luther performances from 2016 and 2014 are also available on CD. The 2012 concert is available on CD and DVD. The 2015 and 2013 concert CDs are sold out. All recordings by music ensembles at Luther may be purchased at lutherbookshop.com or by calling (888) 521-5039.

DORIAN CHORAL RETREAT Register at dorian.luther.edu

Next summer Luther will offer, for the first time, a Dorian Choral Retreat for adults. The long weekend, Friday, June 29–Sunday, July 1, 2018, will offer participants an opportunity to return to Decorah—or experience the area for the first time—through one of their greatest loves, choral music. The rehearsal schedule will allow time for breakout sessions on musical and nonmusical topics possibly including church music, vocal education, a Decorah church tour, and more. The retreat is intended as a way for singers to rejuvenate their spirit and take a break from everyday life. Experience Decorah’s unique food and drink venues, engage with the natural world along the city’s trails, exchange musical ideas, and throughout it all, harmonize beautifully.

The title of the 2017 production of Christmas at Luther, The Tree of Life My Soul Hath Seen, comes from the hymn “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.” It ties back to a quote credited to Luther’s namesake, Martin Luther: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” Students and faculty in Luther’s theatre program created the focal point of the show—a tree with a core featuring a rustic cross.

The retreat will be led by Luther choral music faculty, including Andrew Last ’97, and will also feature Tom Trenney, a prominent choral and church musician from Lincoln, Neb. Organizers hope to explore opportunities to add an instrumental retreat in the future. Registration for this initial Dorian retreat is open to anyone interested in choral singing, age 19 and up. Fees are $100 for those not staying on campus, $150 for those wanting two nights of on-campus housing. Available rooms will be singles with air-conditioning. Saturday and Sunday lunch are included in the fees. For more information, email dorian@ luther.edu or call (563) 387-1389.

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ENDOWED CHAIR HONORS FINANGER ’54 A Luther alumna who wishes to remain anonymous and who was a member of Luther’s first women’s cross country team and her husband have given the college $1 million to establish the Kent Finanger Endowed Chair for Women’s Cross Country and Track and Field. The alumna says, “As a student and runner, I thrived under Coach Kent’s leadership. The immense respect I have for him and his nurturing abilities have unequivocally impacted my life.” This is the first endowed coaching position at the college. Finanger says of the donors, “What she and her husband have chosen to do humbles me. I am awed that the way you go about coaching, inspiring, and motivating an individual would one day lead to an honor such as this. I’m so thankful for their generous gift and what it will do for Luther College and the growth and development of our women’s cross country and track and field programs.”

Kent Finanger ’54

Finanger coached multiple sports at Luther from 1956 to 1996 and was instrumental in developing Luther’s women’s cross country team. He coached the women’s cross country team from the first official season in 1976 through the fall season of 1978. Luther President Paula J. Carlson says she is excited for the opportunities stemming from the Finanger Chair. “This gift is very special in that it honors a great person in Coach Kent, and it creates opportunities and enhancements to both the women’s cross country and track and field programs that wouldn’t necessarily otherwise happen. Our thanks go back to our alumna and her husband for investing in their second home.” To learn more about making an impact, please call the Development Office, (563) 387-1862.

Book fund to help students in need Over its 15 years, Luther’s Diversity Center has been committed to supporting students in every way possible. Often the center’s staff have helped students figure out financial difficulties. Students sometimes just need a little extra help to be able to continue at Luther, and an area of particular need is covering textbook costs. Students and their families may work hard to earn money for transportation, tuition, and room and board at Luther only to come up short when it’s time to buy the required books. GIFTS AT WORK

Your gift can make a difference in how much students in need learn during their time at Luther and even whether they can continue their studies.

Support the Diversity Center Book Fund: givenow.luther.edu. 10

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Since 2006, the Diversity Center Book Fund has sought to ease this problem by providing one-time emergency book grants for students who could not continue their semester without the funds. But the cost of textbooks has been increasing, especially in the fields of accounting, psychology, and the sciences. The number of students who need help far outweighs the funding available.

We need to do more. You can help. Luther is seeking to increase funding to provide grants for all who need them. “I’m so happy to see this fund being developed,” says Jen FollstadPopp ’98. Now a visual arts teacher at Waseca (Minn.) High School, she recognized the problem while she was an undergrad working in the former International Student Office. “Friends often resorted to sharing a book, which made it difficult to spend enough time studying with it,” she says. “And because they pooled their money to buy the book, that meant they had to take the same course instead of something else they might have liked to study.” Students in need also frequently purchased less costly used, marked-up, and out-of-date books, sometimes the wrong edition for their course. Gifts to the Diversity Center Book Fund can be made online or by calling the Development Office, (563) 387-1862.

CAMPUS NEWS

Honor someone special: sponsor a robe The velvet robes worn by Nordic Choir, Collegiate Chorale, and Cathedral Choir are a hallmark of the Luther choral tradition. Generations of Luther singers have worn these beautiful robes, sharing their music with thousands over the years. This year, Luther will launch a robe sponsorship program, giving donors a new way to support Luther’s rich choral tradition. It has been many years—in some cases decades—since the choral robes were first purchased, and they have seen much use both in concerts on campus and in national and international tours. The need for replacements is great. Through a robe sponsorship, beginning at $1,500, donors will be able to honor or memorialize someone special with a personalized, embroidered label sewn into their sponsored robe. Contributions in any amount are welcomed as well and will go into the Robe Fund for all Luther choirs.

Support the Robe Fund: givenow.luther.edu.

Alex ’03 and Laura (Amundson) Smith ’03 with daughter Signy.

UFF DA sweatshirts available!

Luther College Book Shop luther.edu/bookshop 563-387-1036

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Blackburn ’18 selected for NCAA III program Luther senior Paul Blackburn was selected for the NCAA III Student Immersion Program. Each year since 2015, 40 students, nominated by administrators from their respective institutions across the United States, are selected for the NCAA III Student Immersion Program. The selected students are fully funded to attend the NCAA Convention, this year held Jan. 17–20, 2018, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The students are exposed to Division III athletics, its members, and its governance process. In addition to the scheduled Division III programming, grant recipients receive DiSC (an assessment tool) training and attend welcome and debriefing meetings. The goal is to build a pipeline of talented ethnic minority candidates with an interest in Division III coaching and/or administration in an effort to ultimately diversify the division.

LUTHER ATHLETICS TEXT ALERTS ARE BACK! The Luther Athletics Department has brought back Norse text alerts for athletic results. For the past seven years, Luther fans were able to sign up for escores, which allowed them to receive results of athletic events via text messages, email, or both. This service was retired by the company last fall.

“It is a true honor to be accepted in the NCAA Student Immersion Program,” Blackburn says. “Being able to represent Luther College at the NCAA Convention is an amazing opportunity for me to network and create relationships with people who have the same passion for working in sports as I do.” Blackburn has been assisting Luther’s men’s basketball program for two years. “Paul started out as a player for us and has transitioned to an outstanding student assistant coach,” says Mark Franzen, head coach of Luther men’s basketball. “He has responsibilities coaching on the floor every day and is also involved in the recruiting process. This year he will take on the added role of coaching our junior varsity team that will play a 14-game schedule.”

But now all athletic results are available through a website called RainedOut, free of charge.

Paul Blackburn

Go to rainedout.net and search for “Luther College.” Click on the top link and follow the instructions. Once you sign up, you can choose the sport or sports for which you would like to receive results. You can also use your phone, text 84483, and type in the keyword “norsesports.” To stop receiving text alerts, just text STOP to 84483.

KIRK JOHNSON ’82

Luther Athletic Hall of Fame 2017

Inductees into Luther’s Athtletic Hall of Fame during Homecoming 2017 were (left to right): Melanie House ’92, golf; Gary Lowmiller ’64, football; Julie (James) Modjeski ’97, basketball; Rick T. Burke ’92, football/basketball/track; Stephen Stokes ’92, football/baseball; Christopher E. Mitchell ’97, soccer; Nate J. Hanson ’07, wrestling;

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Lynn C. Dalhed ’02, basketball/track; Matthew R. Pyle ’07, wrestling; and Rochelle D. Swiggum ’87, cross country and track, who was honored with a posthumous award accepted by her parents, Donna and Dan Swiggum.

Science and arts combine in geological hot spot Luther’s Earth and Environment in Italy semester is the unicorn of study-abroad programs: it combines science learning—already unusual in study-abroad programs—with arts and culture in a remote but exceedingly relevant setting. Laura Peterson, associate professor of environmental studies and chemistry, attended the Italy program in the early 2000s, when she was an undergraduate at Carleton College. After a years-long hiatus, the program, which focuses on geology and is open to all ACM (Associated Colleges of the Midwest) students, resumed in 2012 under Luther’s administration, and students are reaping the rewards. by Kate Frentzel SUSIE WOLD ’20

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An idyllic village with layers of history

Italy is a geological hot spot, Peterson says. It sat under the Mediterranean Sea for more than 200 million years, recording changes in the environment in layers of sediment. Within the last two million years, those sediments lifted to create the Italian peninsula, displaying the earth’s history in layers of rock. These layers recorded changes in sea life, which can signal changes in sea temperature or ocean circulation and shed light on historic climate change, Peterson explains. Coldigiocco (students call it Coldi), where the Italy program is headquarterd, sits along the calf of Italy’s boot. Less than two hours away lies the outcrop that geologist Walter Alvarez used to formulate his groundbreaking theory that a meteorological impact was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Students on the program visit this historic site, and Alvarez himself frequently turns up at Coldi, where he

“It was such a remarkable immersion within a scientific community. You had literally some of the best geologists in the world who had purchased property or invested in this place or brought research. They were trickling in and out throughout the whole experience.”

keeps an apartment and visits with students. Coldi is a hilltop collection of 10 or 12 buildings that started life as a medieval farming village. In the 1990s, a group of geologists doing field research in the area banded together to purchase the buildings, which have become a base camp/observatory for these researchers and a small campus for ACM students. “A lot of students have more urban studyabroad experiences,” Peterson says, “but this is a backdoor experience to Italy, a way of life you maybe wouldn’t recognize is still there if you were in the cities.” “It was totally different from what any of my peers experienced studying aboard,” says Travis Houle ’15, who attended the program as a student in 2013 and returned as a teaching assistant in 2015. “It was such a remarkable immersion within a scientific community. You had

literally some of the best geologists in the world who had purchased property or invested in this place or brought research. They were trickling in and out throughout the whole experience. At the dinner table at all times, it was like: Let’s talk about the science!” Imagine sharing a communal meal around a wood-fired oven that dates to medieval times, chatting about your new passion with a dozen new friends and a couple of world-class experts, surrounded by gentle hills, olive groves, fruit trees, and grapevines, then making music together around the campfire as the sun sinks below the horizon. Who wouldn’t sign up for that? Becoming a rock hound

During the Italy semester, the group learns in modules, spending about a week on a particular lesson in a particular place—such as a rock

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One component of the Italy semester is an independent research project. Sophomore Susie Wold (right), who participated in the Italy semester last fall, studied soil samples from Croatia as part of her project. “So many factors play into it,” she says, “so it’s a puzzle to figure out why certain soils are the way they are.”

SUSIE WOLD ’20

Coldigiocco (far right), where the students live and study, is a collection of 10 or 12 buildings that originated as a medieval farming village and are now used by students and international researchers.

HANNAH SUTCLIFFE ’18

During the Italy semester, students learn in modules, tackling one subject in depth over the course of a week. During one module (left), students traveled to Tuscany to study tectonic processes.

Lucia Holte ’17, a former environmental studies major who attended the program in 2015, is one of those students. “I’m someone who does really well with experiential learning,” she says. “If we’re going to learn about this kind of rock, this period of time, the K-T boundary, let’s go touch it, let’s go see it, let’s hike up and around and through it. If I were learning about that indoors, my knowledge of it and why I care about it is going to be a lot different. The

personal connection I have with that time has to do with how I learned.”

today. Our understanding of geologic science is how we understand the impacts of climate change and how big of an issue it is.”

During the semester, students map and interpret rock formations in the area, collect and analyze soil samples, and conduct independent research on widely diverse topics such as paleo climatology and biological surveys of local cave systems.

The overwhelming time scale that the Italy program centers on makes a deep impression on most of the students who participate in it. “I love that you can look at deep time and this broad historic spectrum and learn so much about the distant past, and it can also tell you a lot about our future,” Hannah Sutcliffe ’18, an environmental studies and anthropology major, says. “Paleo climate is something I got really interested in. The idea that we can reconstruct environments 60 million years old and use those to predict our future in this unprecedented era of climate change is kind of scary and kind of exciting. The greatest weapon we have to fight climate change is this sort of knowledge and being able to model the unknown.”

Learning about the future from the past

Houle says, “Throughout the program, we were engaging in science continuously, learning how to be a scientist. I had taken a couple of environmental science and geology classes before the program, but once we got there, we got to know the history of the area so intimately that your whole perspective of the world changes. You see these periods of great innovation and growth of life on the planet that are reflected in the geologic record, and you also come to understand how influential geology is for us

Luci Holte ’17 (left) participated in the Italy semester in 2015. She notes that the analytical thinking the program encourages “is applicable to all sorts of fields—not just science, not just geology.”

Aj WILLIAMS

outcrop, a local valley, a nearby cave system, or across the Adriatic Sea in Croatia—before moving on to the next. Peterson says, “The whole concept is that it’s field-based, hands-on inquiry. There really are not textbooks associated with the program. We do a little bit of classroom lecturing, but the program is meant to center around what students can go out and observe and interpret themselves. It’s liberating to a lot of students and serves a lot of learning styles.”

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Engineering private space travel Actually, it is rocket science for Scott Roland ’04 Chances are good that space tourism will one day be commonplace. When it is, chances are very good that everyday astronauts will travel to space in a rocket that a Luther grad helped design. Scott Roland ’04, who graduated from Luther’s pre-engineering program with a physics major, designs rockets at Blue Origin, a private spaceflight company in Kent, Wash., owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin wants to make space accessible and affordable for everyone. Roland compares the company to the transcontinental railroad—it will allow people to live, work, and supply goods along new frontiers in space. It’s an ambitious vision, but the company is already defying expectations. In 2015 Blue Origin made history when it launched and then landed its New Shepard spacecraft in the first-ever vertical landing of a rocket from space. The company subsequently relaunched and re-landed New Shepard four more times, proving reusability. Blue Origin says that New Shepard is likely to launch passengers by the end of 2018. Meanwhile, the company is developing a second reusable spacecraft, New Glenn, which will carry people and payloads into space. Roland is one of the top-level engineers designing these rockets.

Parachuting into the industry The day New Shepard launched and landed in 2015 was the last day of Roland’s job at Airborne Systems, a para-

chute engineering company that had been subcontracted by Blue Origin to design the parachutes that brought New Shepard’s capsule safely to earth. “It was a great sendoff,” Roland says. While at Airborne Systems in Southern California, Roland also worked on the design and testing of the parachutes for NASA’s Orion spacecraft, intended for manned deep-space exploration. He was able to attend several tests of the Orion capsule in Yuma, Ariz., where a full-scale mockup of the capsule was dropped from a C-17 aircraft at altitudes higher than 25,000 feet. He also worked on parachute systems for the Missile Defense Agency, designing chutes that would allow flight crews to safely leave airspace before ballistic missiles were ignited. In addition, Roland worked on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s low-density supersonic decelerator, designed to bring a heavy rover to the surface of Mars. His team used a rocket sled track at the China Lake Naval Weapons Center to simulate the dynamic pressure loading environment the parachutes would have to endure while entering the Martian atmosphere. “I still remember when that rocket fired, you could feel it in your chest even half a mile away!” Roland says. Roland recalls his time at Airborne Systems as epic, saying, “It was not a big company, but there’s a lot of expertise in that niche parachute world. They gave me the groundwork for where I am today. I got exposure to all sorts of Boeings, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and Blue Origin, ironically.”

Through extensive testing by Scott Roland and others, Blue Origin has developed a reusable rocket, illustrated above, that takes off and lands vertically.

Scott Roland ’04, who graduated from Luther’s pre-engineering program with a physics major, designs rockets at Blue Origin. Opposite, he stands with his wife, Alyssa Roland, in front of Blue Origin’s New Shepard, which went to space and back five times.

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Calculating the rocket’s behavior When Roland and his wife were ready for a move, Blue Origin hired him onto their Systems Engineering and Integration team, where Roland truly is a rocket scientist, though you won’t hear the humble native of Caledonia, Minn., proclaiming this at parties. At Blue Origin, Roland’s job is to identify external and internal forces a rocket might encounter during transport, ascent, reentry, landing, and recovery. This means calculating the thrust produced by the engines during flight, internal tank pressures, external aerodynamic pressures, forces and accelerations produced by stage-separation events, and loads imparted on the vehicle during landing events. “Basically,” he says, “if the rocket does it, we need to have analyzed it in order to make sure the rocket is sufficiently designed to withstand it.” Roland credits his Luther education with making it all possible. “I honestly think that if it weren’t for Luther, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. The holistic type of learning that you get at Luther isn’t like what you get elsewhere,” he says. His liberal arts foundation comes in handy in another way too. As an engineer, Roland has published six technical papers. “One reason I got into doing that originally,” he says, “is that a lot of the engineers I work with don’t enjoy writing—it’s not necessarily their strong suit, and they’d definitely tell

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you that. So having that Luther background and being able to do research on Apollo-era documents, understand what they’re saying, and apply them to other systems or applications—those are the fundamentals you have to learn as far back as Paideia.”

“A pale blue dot . . . a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” When it launches in 2020, New Glenn will be the largest launch vehicle since NASA’s Saturn V, which was a workhorse during the Apollo program of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Roland is excited to usher in a new heyday of space travel. “When I was a kid,” he says, “the teacher would wheel in the cart with the TV on it, and we’d watch shuttle launches. Then that sort of went away. But space exploration sets the bar high for what we can achieve if we all work together instead of tearing each other down. It’s very aspirational.” He pauses a minute, then references Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, inspired by the photograph Voyager 1 took of Earth from four billion miles away, on the fringes of the solar system. “It’s hard not to feel insignificant,” he says. “Space really minimizes the everyday nonsense. Our day-to-day stuff doesn’t matter as much when you see that.” —Kate Frentzel

LUTHER COLLEGE PHOTO BUREAU

IMAGES COURTESY OF BLUE ORIGIN

Engineering at Luther Students who study pre-engineering at Luther become well-rounded engineers. They learn a depth and breadth of knowledge that helps them to innovate and think creatively. Most of our pre-engineering graduates pursue a graduate degree. Earning a bachelor’s degree with a major in science (such as in physics or chemistry) plus a master’s degree in engineering is a great way to become a practicing engineer. The breadth of coursework in the liberal arts required at Luther, coupled with the depth of study in a major, gives students a strong background in problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and ethical reasoning. These characteristics make Luther grads stand out among prospective applicants to engineering graduate programs. Luther engineering-focused students graduate, in most cases, with a master’s degree in their engineering field six years after starting at Luther. Luther pre-engineering students also have the option to enter a dual-degree program in which they complete their requirements for the bachelor’s degree at Luther in three years, then transfer to Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science in St. Louis, Mo., to complete the requirements to become a professional engineer. The dual-degree option enables students to earn a bachelor of arts degree from Luther and a bachelor of science degree in engineering from Washington University. Another option at Washington University is a sixsemester combined bachelor of science/ master of science degree program. Regardless of which path they choose, Luther graduates excel in engineering positions in diverse organizations such as NASA, IBM, John Deere, Rockwell Collins, the US Navy, and major universities. Learn more at luther.edu/pre-engineering.

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Those Who Can Do Teach Mixed media, works by Luther alumni art educators Preus Library April 12 to May 27

Creating while teaching

Spring exhibit explores lives of alumni artist educators

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hat does an artist’s practice look like when the artist is also a teacher? Graduates of Luther’s art education program, along with current students, will explore that topic during a spring exhibit and forum. Works created by seven Luther alumni who teach elementary, middle, and high school students will be included in the show Those Who Can Do Teach, on display in Preus Library, April 12 to May 27. Some of the show’s participants will share their experiences and ideas with current students through an educators retreat during the exhibit. Alumni are valuable resources for Luther’s art education program, says program director Lea (Donhowe) Lovelace ’97. She regularly invites grads back to campus to provide students practical perspectives on teaching, asking, for instance, what they wish they had known before entering the classroom. As the Q&A with this story on the next page shows, grads are well able to use the lessons and methods they learned at Luther, concentrating on helping children in their classrooms make meaning of their lives. Luther’s art education program, Lovelace says, “focuses on teaching contemporary art lessons, using contemporary art as inspiration, which opens up possibilities about making interdisciplinary curricular connections and addressing social justice issues.” Art education students also hear from a variety of professionals—in museum education, art therapy, studio art—and investigate how art, community, and education intersect. Lu-

ther’s Art in Community course, in particular, connects students to the world outside Luther and lets them try on teaching in a practical way. Over the years, students have done projects with Decorah’s Peace and Justice Center, a pottery studio, a teen art program, a high school art club, and an organization that works with persons with developmental disabilities. Lovelace says students come to understand how audiences are different and need different ways of teaching. Luther’s art educators major in art and minor in education and have likely come to the program through their love of creating art. Lovelace says the exhibit Those Who Can Do Teach will explore “how when you’re a studio artist you might be working in one way, and when you’re a teaching artist, an artist educator, the time and space that you have to work on your practice might look a little different. Some of our art educators are school art teachers who have incorporated a space in their own classroom to make their work while the students are doing their own work. Some teachers say they just want to have a sketchbook practice, where every day they’re making one drawing. Some find that it is important to have the space and be painting on canvas in their home or studio after school, and some find that their artist practice is being in the education space and learning how that influences them in and outside the classroom.” —Ellen Modersohn

Jenny Bonnell ’15 says she tries to take about 30 minutes to an hour each day to doodle or draw a significant space she has visited (opposite).

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Q&A

Micayla Irmiter ’14 joined with her students to create this collage. She says: “Some of my art-making process is ingrained in my fourth graders’ curriculum. I see my school life as being a solid part of my personal life, and so the young artists know that I’m also working to create art outside of school. When they receive critiques, I also receive critiques. When I need thought partners, I ask them for advice.”

Life on the job—making art and empowering students LARS JOHNSON ’16

Art teacher at Ellis Middle School, Austin, Minn. How did Luther’s art education program influence what or how you teach? The department does a great job of telling us it’s okay to be an artist and an educator, not just an art educator. This is an important distinction to me, because that’s the way I try to lead my professional life—by still staying grounded in the art world, while also living in the educational world. What is your goal as an art educator? My goal is to empower students, to teach curriculum that is contemporary and relevant to my student’s interest, and hopefully make a small impact on their lives. I hope to foster a classroom environment where everyone is welcome and where students feel comfortable and supported. What are your biggest challenges in the classroom? When students flat-out refuse to do art, there is only so much motivating I can do. But this is also the challenge of teaching that can result in the most fulfilling moments. I would also say another challenge is trying to get through a lesson when you are exhausted and all you want to do is sit down, but you have 30-plus students trying to get your attention. Coffee helps—lots of black coffee. How do you find time and space to create your own art? I maintain a pretty consistent sketchbook practice, but my art-making process has changed. My art projects are now crafting lessons that I think my students will love and engage with. However, I feel this is the plight of all art teachers—how do you find time to still make art? One of my goals for this next year is to figure out how to balance both parts of my life.

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MICAYLA IRMITER ’14

Art specialist at Hiawatha Leadership Academy– Northrop, a public charter school in Minneapolis What are your biggest challenges in the classroom? The truly challenging part of being a teacher is trying to actively disrupt systemic inequity for 400 different students who are faced with different obstacles each day. I don’t know what students have experienced before they enter the art studio. I don’t know what they will experience when they leave the art studio. On a structural, systemic level, I do know that English language learners, students of color, students experiencing trauma and/or poverty, and students with special needs have been presented with an uneven playing field in schools. I do know that I have a lot of work to do to deal with my implicit biases and how I perpetuate inequities. My challenge is to do the work so that when students enter the art studio I am able to give each one of them exactly what they need to thrive. My challenge is to push myself to help every student feel validated, respected, and cared for in the art room. What would you tell current art education students? Each student is a powerful change maker—take them seriously. Each one of them might need something just a little bit different from you. Set the precedent that their voice matters in the art studio and then actually listen. If a student wants to be called “T-Rex” ask why, internalize the answer, and then call them T-Rex. Future generations of artists and art viewers depend on you to be as caring and thoughtful and positive as you can be. Are you involved with art organizations outside of the classroom? I volunteer at the Walker Art Center during Free First Saturday programming.

JENNA DARSEE ’15

K–5 art teacher, Irving Elementary, Indianola, Iowa What’s the best day you’ve had on the job? It sounds cheesy, but every day is the best day on the job, because I have the best job. When you get notes about being a future artist or a hug from a kid as they pass you in the hallway, that’s what makes this job such a blast! How do you find time and space to create your own art? I try to collaborate with artist friends and have studio days. Sometimes that means working together in the same space, other times it simply means agreeing to both work at the same time so you have someone that you can snap your ideas to and get an instant critique. It’s tricky when you leave college and aren’t surrounded by peers you can pull into the studio with you. It’s all about making time for what’s important to you. Are you involved with art organizations outside of the classroom? I am involved with Art Educators of Iowa as marketing and mentoring chair. I also try to stay active in the Des Moines Art Center. What would you tell current art education students? I would tell them to always take risks, push students to be the best that they can, allow students to make their own choices within their creating, and don’t be afraid to try something new.

JENNY BONNELL ’15

Long-term substitute teacher at Countryside Elementary School, Edina, Minn. What are your biggest challenges in the classroom? I would say my biggest challenge in the classroom is breaking through to students who feel like they “just can’t.” It’s really sad to see a child who has so much imagination and creativity become defeated because they are afraid of trying something new and “failing.” That being said, it’s amazing to see them break down that barrier and finally create something that they are proud of. What is your goal as an art educator? My goal is to help every student realize their creative potential. Even if they don’t identify with art-making, I want students to learn how to problem-solve, engage and focus on activities, reflect on their art-making and past experiences, and express themselves. Are you involved with art organizations outside of the classroom? Yes, when I lived in Iowa I was on the board of the Art Educators of Iowa as the co-rep for the Prairie Lakes AEA. I also attend conferences through the Art of Education and am currently trying to get integrated in the Art Educators of Minnesota.

Robin (Schone) Hengesteg ’16 says that moving to Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin has influenced her art: “I’ve always been fascinated with light and color, and moving to this area has rekindled my interest in photography. I wouldn’t dream of heading out on an adventure without my camera.”

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KATIE MATHIS ’15

K–6 art teacher and assistant volleyball coach, West (Iowa) Branch Community Schools How did Luther’s art education program influence what or how you teach? Throughout my time at Luther, I was able to spend a lot of time in various art classrooms—observing, assisting, and actually teaching or co-teaching with my peers. While our coursework was engaging and rigorous, it’s impossible to know how a lesson will really play out, or how to manage a classroom, or even how to arrange the tables and materials without actually getting into the classroom and seeing it or doing it for ourselves. And although I am constantly learning and adapting lessons and classroom management strategies, those experiences definitely helped to build my confidence and prepare me for my own classroom.

“Always reflect and reinvent your curriculum. Keep it current and introduce students to contemporary artists and careers. The days of building a curriculum and using it for 20 years are over and gone. Modern teachers must be adaptable and innovative.” —Robin Schone Hengesteg ’16

What is your goal as an art educator? To engage my students in a relevant and meaningful art curriculum, meaning that they are able to connect what they learn in art class to their own lives and interests. I strive every day to make personal connections with my students to best tailor each lesson to both their skill levels and interests. What are your biggest challenges in the classroom? There is never enough time to prep! I could spend my entire day just cutting paper, prepping materials, and creating teacher samples or developing new lessons. Since that’s not possible, I’m typically the first teacher to school each morning and spend about an hour before school starts prepping for the day. Are you involved with art organizations outside of the classroom? I am a member of and the acting treasurer for Art Educators of Iowa. ROBIN SCHONE HENGESTEG ’16

Kindergarten and past K–8 art teacher at Lovell (Wyo.) Elementary School How did Luther’s art education program influence what or how you teach? The art education program at Luther had a huge impact on how I teach art. It cemented the understanding that students need room to explore and experiment. Art assignments that revolve around meaningful topics that students can relate to keep the students invested in the project and engaged in the process. What is your goal as an art educator? My big goals in the art classroom are to create an environment where students feel comfortable and willing to take risks. I want them to problem solve and learn experientially. I believe that the elements of art and the principles of design can be taught to students of all ages, and once they have a firm understanding of these concepts, they are better equipped to communicate their ideas visually and feel empowered as artists. What would you tell current art education students? Making your own curriculum is a lot of work, but it’s an opportunity to create something powerful for your students. Always reflect and reinvent your curriculum. Keep it current and introduce students to contemporary artists and careers. The days of building a curriculum and using it for 20 years are over and gone. Modern teachers must be adaptable and innovative. MAXWELL GREEN ’17

Just finished student teaching at Irondale High School in New Brighton, Minn., and Lyndale Elementary in Minneapolis How did Luther’s art education program influence what or how you teach? We talked a lot about cultivating a safe, creative atmosphere where students can express themselves and have new, meaningful ways to break up their day and critically engage with their own lives and the world around them. I think those conversations have helped me better consider how my curriculum and teaching strategies can be more process-oriented as well as culturally and emotionally engaging. How do you find time and space to create your own art? I try to create in the classroom with my students as much as possible, but I also just make sure to give fairly strict priority for at least an hour or two in my studio space at home every night. Additionally, I try to keep in touch with my art pals and get together to paint or chat about art, too.

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Jenna Darsee ’15 says, “Luther’s art education program set me up with the fundamentals, the confidence, and a love of teaching that I don’t believe I would have been given elsewhere. Each day I am able to reflect on my education at Luther as I teach my students the values I learned while in Decorah— social justice in the classroom, collaborative learning, and a deeper understand of one’s world.”

Retreat to connect grads, current students

Luther will host an art educators retreat to connect those in the show with current Luther art educators and preservice educators on Friday, April 13, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, email Lea Lovelace at lovele01@luther.edu.

FRIDAY

April

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CHARLIE MITCHELL ’17 PHOTO

ALUMNI NEWS ALUMNI NEWS

HOMECOMING 2017 MADDIE MILLER ’19 PHOTO

Top: the class of 1967 marked their 50-year reunion with a group photo in Dahl Centennial Union’s Addams Lounge. Above, the class of 1967 reveals its generous gift to the college during the football game on Saturday. Right: the Jazz Orchestra’s trombone section sparkles during Jazz Night at Marty’s; pictured are Jackson Churchill ’19 and Jacob Wessels ’19. For more photos from the 2017 class reunions, see

luther.edu/homecoming/photos-2017.

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ALUMNI NEWS

MADDIE MILLER ’19 PHOTO

RACHEL MILLER ’18 PHOTO

HASAN ESSAM MUHAMMAD ’21 PHOTO

Top: junior offensive lineman Grant Heller lifts senior quarterback Brady Letney in celebration during the Homecoming football game against Nebraska Wesleyan University. Luther won, 41-38, in overtime. Top right: a player goes all out during the annual alumni Ultimate Frisbee match. Above: yes, it rained on our parade this year, but Ben Jasper ’20, Arthur Kudhlande ’21, Lerang Gaositwe ’21, and Zakithi Nkosi ’19, marching with the International Student Association and Allies, didn’t seem to mind.

KIEN DAO ’20 PHOTO

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ALUMNI NEWS

HOMECOMING HONORS DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARDS Criteria considered for Distinguished Service Award (DSA) candidates include meritorious service to society in areas such as education, government, the arts, business, church, labor, industry, agriculture, research, medicine, and community affairs; loyalty and service to Luther; fidelity to the ideals of Luther; and timeliness of the award. Though individuals nominated for DSAs typically have a strong Luther connection, they do not have to be alumni.

Susan (Livingston) English ’82

Michael Harman ’87

English is retired from the Northeast Iowa Agency on Aging, where she served in several capacities for more than 20 years. She and her late husband, Cliff English, professor emeritus of sociology, headed up the college’s Malta program and taught several years with Luther’s Lutherlag event. In retirement she volunteers with the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, First Lutheran Church Pantry, and for the Alzheimer’s Walk. She is on the United Way Board and the Elks Club Foundation Committee and is a member of the Friends of (Mississippi River) Pool 9. She works as a substitute lunch lady for Decorah Schools and has volunteered to drive people to La Crosse, Wis., and Rochester, Minn., for cancer treatments. English is also a member of the Luther College Woman’s Club.

Harman spent four years in the United States Air Force, from 1981 to 1985, while going to school parttime at Northern Michigan University. He graduated from the Graduate School of Banking in Boulder, Colorado, in 1997. Harman worked for Decorah State Bank/Community First Bank for nearly 20 years and then started Harman Realty with his brother Mark. He has served on the Decorah Downtown Better Committee and the Winneshiek County Development Board and led fundraising efforts for projects such as Trout Run Trail and the St. Benedict Church capital campaign. He was named the Business Professional of the Year by the Decorah Area Chamber of Commerce in 2009 and the Volunteer of the Year by the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs in 2010.

Janice (Engle) Gray ’62

John Helgeland ’62

Gray served as president of the Minnetonka Montessori School, tutored for the Bucket Brigade, spent nine years as a Girl Scout leader, and chaired the PAR program, a drug abuse/use program for elementary students. She later served as senior service program manager for the Minnetonka School District. The couple ran an office supply company for many years, and in retirement Gray continues to volunteer, receiving several awards for her service, including the Volunteer Exceptional Award for South Shore Senior Community Center in 2009 and the Hero Award from the Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Chamber of Commerce in 2010 for “relentless volunteer spirit and undying passionate commitment to serve the senior community.” Gray and her husband, John Gray, have been active supporters of Luther as fundraising campaign leaders. Life members of Luther’s President’s Council, they also founded the John P. and Jan (Engle) Gray Scholarship in 1997. 28

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Helgeland earned a master of divinity degree from the Luther Theological Seminary in 1966, a master’s degree in the history of Christianity from the University of Chicago in 1969, and a PhD in early church history in 1973. He taught a semester at Luther and several years at St. John’s University and Divinity School and joined North Dakota State University in 1977, where he chaired religious studies from 1977 to 2015. Helgeland founded the Group Decision Center at NDSU and Northern Plains Ethics, where he is now codirector and board chair. He is also a consultant to the FBI, North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and local law officials. He was the Blue Key Honor Society, NDSU, distinguished educator for 1982 and received the service award from the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at NDSU in 1998. He’s served as class agent for the class of 1962 since 2003, and with his wife, Susan, he belongs to Luther’s Heritage Club.

Sheldon Hermanson ’52 Hermanson completed a master of theology from Duke University Divinity School. He had a 30-year career as an air force chaplain, and his chaplain team was named the Finest Chapel Team for Ministry and Community Outreach Team in the Air Force. Hermanson was awarded three Meritorious Service Awards from the Air Force, three Outstanding Unity Awards, and two Legion of Merit Awards. In addition, he was presented the National Defense Service Medal and Churchmanship Award from the San Antonio, Texas, Council of Churches. In retirement, Hermanson served as the bishop of the Southwestern Texas– Louisiana Synod and as consultant to the bishop from 1986 to 2000. He and his wife, Renee (Aust) Hermanson ’54, are members of Luther’s Heritage Club and life members of the President’s Council.

Sujay Lama ’92 Lama became head women’s tennis coach at the University of Illinois, Champaign– Urbana, in 1995. His team was named ITA All-Academic all eight seasons, advancing to the NCAA team tournament five times. Since 2006, Lama has been head women’s tennis coach at the University of North Texas, which earned Sun Belt Conference championships in 2010, 2012, and 2013. He was named the Coach of the Year each of those three seasons. He was named Coach of Year by the Professional Tennis Registry National College for 2013 and by the United States Professional Tennis Association Texas for 2009 and 2014. Lama founded and directs Project Nepal, which funds schools for poor and orphaned children in Nepal. He is married to Lynne Tan-Lama ’90 and was inducted into Luther’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002.

ALUMNI NEWS

Larrie Wanberg ’52 Wanberg earned a master of social work degree from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1954 and a PhD from the University of Denver in 1973. He was a Fulbright Fellow, 1957–58, at the University of Oslo. Wanberg had a 20-year career as a social work officer/colonel in the United States Army Medical Service Corps, retiring in 1981, when he received the Legion of Merit Award from the U.S. Army Medical Services. He also taught at the Washington University School of Medicine, the University of Maryland, the University of North Dakota, Schiller International University in Strasbourg, France, and the European Institute of International Communications at Castle Well, among others. Wanberg owns Vanberia, a research and development company in Grand Forks, North Dakota; is a curator at the Dakota Heritage Institute in Northwood, North Dakota; and writes and edits for the Norwegian American and Scandinavian Press Magazine. His father, Richard Wanberg, class of 1914, received a Distinguished Service Award from Luther in 1964. His wife was the late Bjorg (Lahlum) Wanberg ’59.

Julie (Braastad) Wurtzel ’77 Wurtzel earned a certificate from the Iowa School of Banking and a master of education degree from Iowa State University. She has worked at Northeast Iowa Community College since 2005, variously as executive director for college advancement, executive director of the NICC Foundation, director of continuing education, and director for alumni giving and annual giving. Before joining NICC, she held positions at Decorah banks. Wurtzel has served on Winneshiek County boards such as Nordic Fest, planning for the Decorah stop of the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride across Iowa, and the Decorah Sesquicentennial Committee. She’s a member of Winneshiek County Development, the Winneshiek County Community Foundation, and Decorah Community School District Foundation, and she is a charter member of the 100+ Women Who Care. Wurtzel is also a member of the Luther College Woman’s Club. In 2015 and 2016, she received the NICC Innovation of the Year Award. She is married to Don Wurtzel ’74.

MUSIC AWARDS Sperati Award David Upham ’92 is director of orchestras at the University of New Hampshire. He earned a master of music in orchestral conducting in 1995 from the University of Northern Colorado and a doctor of musical arts in instrumental conducting at the University of Washington in 2007. Upham spent six years in the public schools of the Kent School District and the Bellevue District. He supervised thriving programs, including the Young Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra in Seattle, the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra Classical Orchestra, and the Debut Symphony Orchestra in Seattle. Upham was also associate conductor of the Rainier Symphony Orchestra in Tukwila, Wash., along with many other orchestral positions that have enriched his orchestral abilities. His father, Leonard Upham ’62, was a Sperati Award winner in 1992. Noble Award Shelly Schaeufele ’92 holds a master’s degree in education from Viterbo University. She has taught music for all elementary, middle, and high school grades and guest conducted honor choirs at both the middle school and high school levels. The Iowa Choral Directors Association named Schaeufele conductor of many of their district honor choir events, and in 2016 she was named one of the conductors of the Iowa Opus Honor Choir Festival. In 1991 she joined Dorian Summer Music Camps as a counselor and now is dean of students.

Hemp Family Prize Charles Craig ’18 is principal clarinet of Luther’s Symphony Orchestra, and, for the third consecutive year, has won the Torgerson Concertmaster Chair in the Concert Band. He appeared as soloist with the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra, was a finalist in Luther’s Concerto Competition, and has subbed in the Northeast Iowa School of Music Chamber Fest Orchestra and the Tri-State Wind Symphony. He also records Austro-Hungarian and Czech band music with George Foeller’s Heritage of the March Band, where he plays E-flat clarinet. Presser Award A member of the Pi Kappa Lambda national music honor society, Christopher O’Connell ’18 has been a member of the Luther Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Combo, Concert Band, and Trombone Choir. He has also worked as an audio technician at Luther for four years, recording student recitals. During the summer, O’Connell has worked as an instructor, musical director, accompanist, and arranger for the Rochester Civic Theatre Musical Theater Camps, the Rochester Catholic Schools Theater Camp, and the Rochester Repertory Theater. In addition to studying applied trombone, he has studied euphonium, voice, composition, and jazz improvisation. Last semester, he was a musical director and conductor with the Luther production of Rent.

LUTHER MAGAZINE

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ALUMNI NEWS

Alumni children who enrolled in fall 2017 CALIFORNIA

Guttenberg: Logan Peterson, son of Candi VanDerWerf and Erikk Peterson ’93, Guttenberg

Falcon Heights: Nicholas Behrens, son of Jill (Schubbe) ’90 and Phil Behrens

White Bear Lake: Samuel Nottleson, son of Betsy Diekema ’90 and Andy Nottleson ’90

Iowa City: Louis Craig, son of Karrie (Knutson) ’89 and Andrew Craig • Erik Smith, son of Lois Holz ’74 and Kent Smith ’79

Fountain: Coranda Vickerman, daughter of Bobbie (Torgerson) Vickerman ’97

Woodbury: Stealth Xiong, son of Malia and Eh Xiong ’89

Gaylord: Alli Harter, daughter of Audrey (Anderson) ’85 and Steven Harter

MISSOURI

Marion: Colton Ironside, son of Carla and Rick Ironside ’76 New Hampton: Kayla Gilbert, daughter of Karla (Orvis) ’96 and Steve Gilbert

Lake City: Polina Duchelle, daughter of Nikki (Wheeler) ’92 and Martin Duchelle

Peosta: Nicholas Lembezeder, son of Jen (Carlson) ’86 and John Lembezeder

Lakeville: Anna Peterson, daughter of Stacey (Gronbeck) ’88 and Marcus Peterson ’88

Ridgeway: Paul Strand, son of Paula (Rothmeyer) Strand ’89 and David Strand, New Hampton, Iowa

Laporte: Margaret Werner, daughter of Kris (Brubacher) ’86 and Tim Werner

Batavia: Justin Knautz, son of Ellen (Krahn) ’92 and Keith Knautz ’92

Waverly: Grace Reyerson, daughter of Sarah Meyer-Reyerson ’96 and Jason Reyerson

Mankato: Kai Storvick, son of Di (Reque) ’85 and Eric Storvick ’85

Coal Valley: Hanna Dodd, daughter of Leah (Schroeder) Dodd ’91 and Eric Dodd ’92, Rock Island, Ill.

Williamsburg: Hanna Jennings, daughter of Michelle (Halse) ’86 and Phil Jennings

Deerfield: Kyle Clough, son of Doreen and Mike Clough ’86

Winthrop: Kimberly Fank, daughter of Michele (Duwa) ’94 and Gary Fank

Northfield: Amelia Reese, daughter of Michele (Wylder) ’81 and Brett Reese ’81

Milledgeville: Gabrielle Betzer, daughter of Liz (Bracken) Betzer ’92 and Todd Betzer, Farley, Iowa

MASSACHUSETTS

Princeton: Thomas Mayerchak, son of Mary and Richard Mayerchak ’77

Oak Park: Spencer Schattauer, son of Marcia and Paul Schattauer ’77

Lexington: Caitlyn Hayden, daughter of Pamella Ford ’82 and John Hayden

Rochester: Kristen Hansen, daughter of Mary (Iverson) ’83 and Ray Hansen ’83

INDIANA

MICHIGAN

Rogers: Tyler Lee, son of Nicole and Pete Lee ’91

Speedway: Cleo Garza, daughter of Esther Garza ’91 and Braulio De La Torre

Farmington: Hannah Nelson, daughter of Kari (Urevig) ’93 and Troy Nelson ’91

Eau Claire: Abigail Pickett, daughter of Julie (Anderson) ’87 and Todd Pickett ’85

St. Paul: Amelia Hornseth, daughter of Kirsten (Jensen) ’90 and Gary Hornseth

Janesville: Andrew Moore, son of Jane Anderson ’87 and Phillip Moore ’87

IOWA

MINNESOTA

Ankeny: Rachel Bartleman, daughter of Angela Allison-Bartleman ’92 and Gregory Bartleman

Duluth: Adam Wold, son of Amy (Fisher) ’92 and Andy Wold ’92

Waconia: Matthew Larson, son of Monique (Nelson) ’93 and Thomas Larson

La Crosse: Chloe Cleven, daughter of Julie (Winga) ’90 and Thomas Cleven

Welch: Kelsey Dinndorf, daughter of Dana (Rehse) ’92 and Dean Dinndorf

Nashotah: Emma Estenson, daughter of Barbara and Dennis Estenson ’94

Irvine: Kari Jacobson, daughter of Marin and Marty Jacobson ’88

COLORADO Larkspur: Svea Smith, daughter of Lisa (Johnson) ’90 and Paul Smith

CONNECTICUT Ellington: Helen Roets, daughter of Jane (Vaaler) ’90 and Jeff Roets ’90

GEORGIA Dawsonville: Jeremy Whalen, son of Laurie Ryan Whalen ’93 and Tom Whalen

ILLINOIS

Cedar Rapids: Jess Myers, daughter of Sheila and Steve Myers ’82 Clear Lake: Kiersten Baalson, daughter of Gayle (Casebolt) ’84 and Brad Baalson ’84 Decorah: Isabel Iverson, daughter of Cathy (Kuehner) ’87 and Greg Iverson ’85 • Henrik Marquardt son of Jill (Johnson) ’91 and Tom Marquardt ’91 Dubuque: Brittany Koontz, daughter of Jackie and Ian Koontz ’85

Edina: Megan Henderson, daughter of Kris (Hahn) ’85 and David Henderson

Minneapolis: Alyse Haugen, daughter of Pam (Brown) ’89 and Dean Haugen ’91

Cape Girardeau: Allie Pujol, daughter of Kelley (Kruse) ’90 and Joe Pujol Grover: Kirsten Berner, daughter of Jessica and Chris Berner ’90

NORTH CAROLINA Raleigh: William Allen, son of Ruth Heuer ’84 and William Allen

OHIO Toledo: Maya Tuff, daughter of Kim Nielsen and Nate Tuff ’83

TEXAS Dallas: Jay Vander Linden, son of Shari and Lance Vander Linden ’79

WASHINGTON Vancouver: Lauren Mahnke, daughter of Jen and Jeff Mahnke ’87

WISCONSIN

Seymour: McKendra Heinke, daughter of Melody and Jon Heinke ’86 Stoughton: Bergen Gardner, daughter of Erin (Russell) Horswill ’97 and Matt Gardner, Waterloo, Iowa

JAPAN

Taizo Heimer, son of Yuki and Pete Heimer ’85

Ely: Blake Krapfl, son of Michelle (Shrader) ’87 and Bob Krapfl

Luther first-year students gathered for a class photo on Legacy Field fall.

30

ALUMNI NEWS

LIVE AT LUTHER What was your favorite concert? Excerpted from a post by Eric Ellingsen ’99 on Luther’s Ideas and Creations blog, shared and written by faculty, staff, and students, at luther. edu YOU KNOW THAT ONE FRIEND? The one who is always on the cutting edge of music from today, tomorrow, and the past? (And despite the fact that I’m a choir nerd, I’m not talking about Eric Whitacre or J. S. Bach. I’m talking Courtney Barnett, Bob Dylan, and, of course, Dave Matthews.) My good friend Dutcher is that kind of friend for me. He is a huge fan of the Dave Matthews Band, and I’m not even sure if he knows how many times he has seen them live in concert. He shared [last fall] that the Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds Live at Luther College album was being released on vinyl for the first time as part of the festivities for National Record Store Day on Nov. 24. When we first met, Dutcher mentioned “Dave” as his favorite band. I told him that I was at the Live at Luther College concert both times—first in 1996 as a wide-eyed first-year student and then in 1999 as a more veteran senior about to move out to the real world three months later. This figuratively blew his mind, and our friendship was forever cemented.

At the time of the concert, when the album was recorded (February 1996), the Dave Matthews Band was a big thing. Their first major studio album, Under the Table and Dreaming, was just starting to get national attention. While we were all excited that he was coming to Luther, a lot of us were disappointed that it was not the whole band. It was only him and some guy named Tim Reynolds . . . little did we know what this concert would become! It was an acoustic concert, but the energy in the room was electric. Dave and Tim played a mix of songs, some well-known and others not even on the radio yet. And of course, you can tell which ones we knew at the time because of the cheers coming from the crowd. (My roommate was the annoying guy throughout the album yelling “Play ‘Pig’!” Maybe he was mad because he was in the back row of the balcony and I was sitting in the front row of the old CFL orange chairs?) Dave talked a little before and after each song, and partway through the concert he introduced a song called “Crash Into Me.” We all sat there, listening, not knowing that this song, about to be released on the album Crash, would become the big hit of the summer of 1996 and be nominated for a Grammy the next year. Fast forward three years, and I was one of the many Luther students who went to the Book Shop during J-term to purchase our copies of the Live at Luther College album.

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds were back on campus a few weeks later to start the tour to help promote the new album. Once the album dropped, it put a big virtual pin on the map for Luther College. If you told someone you went to Luther, they would often ask where it was. Our new response was, “You know that Dave Mathews Live at Luther College album?” This would trigger a barrage of questions about if you were at the concert, had you met Dave, did you have a poster from the concert, and where had he and Tim stayed overnight while in Decorah? I did not get to meet Dave or Tim (but some friends of mine were on the SAC concerts committee and did get to meet them), I don’t know what happened to my poster, and I don’t know where they stayed that night. You can be sure I’ll be listening to the album, though, and remembering what it was like to hear the music live, for the first time, before it was the next big thing.

You tell us! Among all the bands that Luther has brought to campus over the years, which did you enjoy the most? Tell what you remember about the concert. Email your story in 100 words or less to magazine@ luther.edu or write us at Luther Magazine, 700 College Drive, Decorah, IA 52101.

LUTHER MAGAZINE

31

ALUMNI NEWS CLASS NOTES By Annalise Johnson ’18 and Anna Restemayer ’19

’61 Tom Haugen

of Decorah was awarded the Karl L. King Distinguished Award by the Iowa Bandmasters Association. He was recognized for his 38 years as a band director in Minnesota and Iowa, 19 years supervising music education student teachers for Luther, and 45 years of judging concert bands, jazz bands, marching bands, choirs, and orchestras.

indoor track and field. Of the 118 CCIW meets in which the Vikings have competed, they have finished first or second in 94 and have never placed lower than fourth under Olsen’s leadership. In cross country, Augustana has qualified for the NCAA Division III National Championships 25 times and has been in the top 10 a total of 11 times, placing second in 1980, fourth in 1979, and fifth in 1974 and 1992. Olsen is one of the most senior faculty members on campus in the Augustana English Department. He will continue to teach part time in retirement.

’66 Harold Dahlstrand

is executive in residence and assistant professor of business at Elmhurst (Ill.) College.

Roger Kittelson of Forest Lake, Minn., retired as vice president and CFO of Christian Healthcare Ministries.

’67 Bruce Beck

of Madison,

Wis., is retired.

Phillip Johnson of Oregon, Wis., is retired.

’68 Dennis Flatness Glen Huebner of Alexandria, Minn., was recognized for distinguished service and inducted into the Class of 2017 Centennial School District (Minn.) Hall of Fame.

Dick Larson of Castle Rock, Colo., was inducted into the Colorado Music Educators Association Hall of Fame in January 2018.

is chairman for USI Insurance Services in St. Louis and serves on Luther’s Board of Regents.

Stan Kant of Raleigh, N.C., retired as a psychologist and educator for students with dyslexia, ADD, and other learning styles and learning disorders.

George Kuh of Bonita Springs, Fla., retired from Indiana University in 2010 and continues to actively engage in research and service as adjunct research professor of education policy at the University of Illinois. He also directs the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), co-located at the University of Illinois and Indiana University.

’65 Paul Olsen

is retiring from coaching men’s cross country and track and field at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., at the end of the 2017–18 school year. The spring 2018 track and field season will be his 50th and final season with the Augustana Vikings. Upon retirement, Olsen will have been the head coach at Augustana for more than 100 seasons, 52 in cross country and 50 in track and field. His teams have competed in 118 College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) championship meets—52 in cross country, 49 in outdoor track and field, and 17 in

32

WINTER 2018

Lee Olson is the reinsurance manager for CUNA Mutual Group in Madison, Wis.

John Whitham is staff physician at Wellmed at Wooldridge in Corpus Christi, Texas.

’73 Ranae (Keoppel) Gipp James Hockings, who passed away in February 2013, wrote a book, Zen Slaps from a Cancer Warrior: A Pissant’s Perspective, which has been launched in London, Ontario, where he was a portrait and artistic photographer for more than 30 years. The book chronicles his yearlong fight with bladder cancer. The book’s promotional description reads: “Welcome to an irreverent memoir of a passionate photographer/writer fighting cancer on his own terms, while living a love story. James Hockings is a witty and sometimes profound companion for anyone facing a life-threatening disease. He has written a soulful answer to Hitchens’ Mortality.” The book is available through online retailers and a wide range of bookstores. The book was edited and published by Eric Hustvedt ’69 of Mill Village, Nova Scotia, Canada, through his communications company, Talent Bank Communications.

’70 Lee Kidd

lives in London, England. He received a Mansfield College bachelor of arts degree from Oxford University. Kidd is a senior associate at the Royal Society of Medicine and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy.

’71 Roger Bang

is a consultant with First Insurance in Mason City, Iowa, a 96-year-old firm that he has been with for 39 years, 20 as president. He retired from local political office after 20 years—16 as council member at large and four as mayor. Bang never lost an election. His campaign committee consisted of his wife, Peggy, and himself; he never solicited campaign funds and never had a yard sign. Roger and Peggy are residents of the historically significant Melson House. He tries to live a life of gratitude.

Donald Erickson is senior counsel

’69 Aleta (Reckling)

Chossek of Shorewood, Wis., is author of “A New Life: New York to Chicago,” a part of Family Stories from the Attic, an anthology of essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry inspired by family letters, objects, and archives.

of

Decorah is retired.

Jerry Roppe is principal biologist for Permitting and Environmental Group at Avangrid Renewables in Portland, Ore. He has been named International Ambassador to the International Organizing Committee for the fourth Conference on Wind Energy and Wildlife Impacts to be held in Estoril, Portugal. He will also be coauthoring several presentations and posters at the meeting, which expects 300–400 attendees from around the world.

’74 W. D. Foster-Graham

of

Mounds View, Minn., is retired.

Martha Preus is a project team leader for GFA Consulting Group in Hamburg, Germany.

Carl Schultz of Fort Myers, Fla., is a retired emergency room physician. He works part time at an internal medicine clinic, is a licensed yacht captain and commodore of St. Charles Yacht Club, and volunteers with the Admissions Department of the U.S. Naval Academy.

’75 Tom Hellie

concluded his term as chair of the board of directors of the Council of Independent Colleges in January 2018 and will retire from his position as president of Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in June.

Steve Lovick is director of IT at Rheem Manufacturing in Fort Smith, Ark.

’77 Cora Leland

is an accountant in the tax department of Avitus Group in Billings, Mont.

Gregory Nicoll is financial adviser at

at Fryberger, Buchanan, Smith, and Frederick in Duluth, Minn.

Financial Decisions Group in Waterloo, Iowa.

’72 Rick Fromm

Janice Rambow Beatty is a sickle

is managing editor at Decorah Newspapers. He was named the best sports columnist in the weekly division (class III) of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s annual Better Newspaper Contest for the second consecutive year.

cell/thalassemia nurse specialist at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

ALUMNI NEWS

First Person

Hothorpe reunion

Celebrating Luther’s role in service to refugees They were refugees. World War II and the Cold War had driven most to Britain from Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Hungary, and Poland. They were also young people coming to Hothorpe Hall in England’s Midlands from all over Europe and as far away as Japan, young people who had grown up amid postwar dislocation. We were Luther sophomores, juniors, and a few new graduates. Luther’s student congregation had chosen pairs or threesomes of us and funded our round trip for a year’s stay at Hothorpe. For room, board, and a small weekly stipend, we gardened, cooked, cleaned, maintained buildings, and provided camp counseling. We were also those who had paid our own way to staff summer work camps at Hothorpe and elsewhere in Britain. Last August 18–20, in Minneapolis, 44 former Hothorpe Hall volunteers, staff, and spouses, including 21 Luther graduates, gathered for three days of fellowship. Some 20 more, many in Europe, sent greetings and followed the gathering on Facebook. Luther’s role at Hothorpe Hall dates from 1952. That was when the Lutheran Council of Great Britain hired a fresh seminary graduate, Lloyd Swantz ’49, as the council’s youth director. In spring 1955, a London newspaper advertised: “Wanted: One Small Castle,” seeking what the council first saw as a youth center. By early June 1955, the council located an affordable fixer-upper 95 miles northwest of London. It was a dilapidated 27-room manor house and miscellaneous outbuildings on 12 neglected acres. Hothorpe Hall was to be a place for “spiritual refreshment, Christian fellowship, conferences, camps, outings of all types, and meetings.” To help staff the hall, Lloyd Swantz ’49 turned to his alma mater, which from 1958 to 1981 sent a steady stream of Luther students, faculty, and alumni. When sold in 1984, Hothorpe had served the council’s youth and adults for 29 critical years. The earliest Luther volunteer at the August gathering was Jerry Aaker, at Hothorpe 1960–61. Among those sending greetings, Ron Wendshuh stretched Luther’s represen-

August 2017 Gathering of Hothorpe Hall volunteers and spouses (front, left to right): Rick Bloxham ’79, Jerry Aaker ’62, Jim Leistikow ’63, Randy Ouimette ’71. Middle: Will Nordmark ’73, Ruth (Pfeil) Bloxham ’79, Bill Beyer ’66, Karen (Magnuson) Ormachea ’77, Denny Ofstedahl ’76. Back: Ray Makeever ’67, Judy (Larson) Fogdall ’65, Jim Fogdall ’64, Cynthia (Stenehjem) Sparks ’78. (Attendees not pictured: Doug Albertson ’66, Tom Erickson ’77, Loren Esse ’73, John Gatzlaff ’66, John Lee ’67, Roy Prigge ’67, Vanessa Scholl Courtney, Ross Sutter ’76)

tation back to 1958–59. Our schedule left time for informal reminiscing, a musical evening, and even a variety show like those we’d mounted at Hothorpe. On Saturday morning, nine panelists spanning 1960 to 1979 remembered “their” Hothorpe. Saturday afternoon, Roger Willer, a former Hothorpe assistant director and the current ELCA director of theological ethics, led a workshop on ELCA teachings about serving immigrants and refugees. The $1,000 offering from Sunday’s worship has gone to Lutheran World Relief ’s Syria in Crisis fund in appreciation of Hothorpe’s service to another flow of refugees. Before heading home on Sunday, we heeded Ron Wendshuh’s greeting, which ends, “When long-term Hothorpe workers and missionaries readied to leave, we would all gather . . . and sing ‘Blest Be the Tie That Binds.’ . . . We often shed tears all around at those departures. I can’t be joining you in Minneapolis, but I hope you

will close your reunion that way.” And so, we sang again, affirming our ties to each other and to refugees past and present. — Written by Frank Arrowsmith, William Beyer ’66, Raymond Makeever ’67, Pamela Nordmark, William Nordmark ’73, Dennis Ofstedahl ’76, Karen (Magnuson) Ormachea ’77, Cynthia (Stenehjem) Sparks ’78, and Ross Sutter ’76.

Share your first person story Have a story you’d like to share with the Luther community? Contact the editor at magazine@luther.edu.

LUTHER MAGAZINE

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ALUMNI NEWS

’78 Ron Evans

is chief executive officer of White’s Residential and Family Services in Wabash, Ind.

Jennifer (Munn) Saner teaches

published online at theconversation. com.

music at Onalaska (Wis.) High School.

Gregg Hemish is a senior app developer for Blue Cross Blues Shield in Eagan, Minn.

Kris (Thomas) Dreifuerst is

Karen (Thulin) and Brian Rude ’77 live in Coon Valley, Wis. They were

Curt Tryggestad was named

selected as festmaster and frau for the 2017 La Crosse (Wis.) Oktoberfest.

executive director of Perpich Center for Arts Education in Golden Valley, Minn.

’79 Keith Ellingson

David Vohsman is senior site

of

Indianola, Iowa, is retired.

Mary (Hamilton) Schultz of Waseca, Minn., retired from teaching in the Waseca public schools.

Inspired Catering and Events by Karen and Gina Stefani in Chicago.

’82 Pam Helgerson-Dome of La Crosse, Wis., is retired.

retired as village administrator for the Village of Burr Ridge, Ill., after 27 years of service.

Julie (Jensen) McGowan is a manager of compliance and audit at Michael Coglianese CPA in Bloomingdale, Ill.

’90 Brent Asplin

of Cincinnati is chief operating officer at VillageMD.

Vanessa (Grima Baldacchino) Frazier, Malta’s ambassador to Italy,

’83 Dennis Flodeen

appointed executive director of the Nevada Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission.

’84 Tim Selbo

Di (Reque) and Eric Storvick

Jennifer (Graham) Ness is

’85 Ginger (Felland)

Brudos is a clinical psychologist and pediatric neuropsychologist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford Children’s Health in Palo Alto, Calif., and in private practice.

live in Mankato, Minn. Di is community liaison at Educare Foundation, and Eric is a physician and department chair at Mankato Clinic.

’87 Patty Beech

owns Patty Beech Consulting in Duluth, Minn. She is a senior instructor in the social work program at the University of Wisconsin–Superior.

Kristi (Sprague) Glesne is senior learning and development coordinator for Lands’ End Business Outfitters in Dodgeville, Wis.

Matthew Teslow is a sales associate at Bieber Insurance and Real Estate in Waukon, Iowa.

’88 Sandro Raniolo

is president of retail and vertical e-commerce EMEA at Ralph Lauren in London, United Kingdom.

’89 Brent Benrud

is senior associate general counsel at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

DeeAnne (Schultz) Marlow ’88 of Dublin, Ohio, is senior vice president for human resources at Greif, Inc. She rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2017 in honor of Greif’s 140th anniversary.

WINTER 2018

Lynda, a mother of 10 children, published a book, Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes into Successes, which looks at the parenting journey and lays a firm foundation to help navigate the daily struggles of parenting. More information can be found on her website, parentingsensibly.com.

received the Pigna d’Argento prize, given annually by the Academia di Sicilia and the mayor of Palermo to people who have excelled in their field while focusing on Sicily.

is senior pastor at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls, S.D.

34

Lynda (Hedrick) and Dave Satre ’90 live in Mount Airy, Md.

Brad Lewis of Las Vegas, Nev., was

of San Diego retired from teaching at Adams Five Star Schools in Thornton, Colo.

is a professor of music education at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. His article “Stop Obsessing over Talent—Everyone Can Sing” was

Charlie Hoven is director of sales at

reliability engineer for Agilent Technologies in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Steven Stricker of Berwyn, Ill.,

’81 Steve Demorest

tenured associate professor of nursing at Marquette University in Milwaukee and serves as president of the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning.

Tim Jacobsen is cofounder and executive producer of FuseFX in Burbank, Calif. He received the 2017 David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television at the Producers Guild Awards for his work in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

director of client output management at Ameriprise Financial in Minneapolis.

Sarah Tobiason is district director of special education and elementary principal at Decorah Community School District.

Craig Yarde is pastor of Canton (Ill.) Assembly of God Church.

’91 Reynolds Cramer

was presented the Iowa Egg Council Partner Award. He is chief executive officer of Fareway Stores in Boone, Iowa.

’92 Shari (McCallister)

Bruck teaches at Zion Lutheran School in Denison, Iowa.

Dirk Buettner of Glendora, Calif., is a home services specialist II at Bank of America.

Kate (Spencer) Klimesh works in business development at Aase Haugen Homes in Decorah.

Jon Kohnen is a Q-comp peer evaluator at Anoka-Hennepin (Minn.) School District 11.

Cathy (Severson) Sedacca is principal and EVP director of sales and marketing at Sage Business Credit in in Minneapolis. She was named a 2017 Finance and Commerce Top Women in Finance honoree.

“

ALUMNI NEWS

PHOTO COURTESY OF LORRAINE BOROWSKI

“The library equalizes everything,” Borowski says. “When people walk in that door, they need to know that, whatever their walk of life, philosophy, political background, it’s acceptable.”

Borowski ’70 elected mayor of Decorah Lorraine (Carter) Borowski ’70 was elected mayor of Decorah in November.

Decorah’s new mayor, Lorraine (Carter) Borowski ’70, got the training she’ll need for the post through her 27-year career with the Decorah Public Library. She advanced through the ranks from library assistant to director, a post she held for 16 years, retiring last June. Through her library work, she became skilled at governance, learning how to put the right people together to make things happen in the community. By the time she retired, Decorah residents had already started suggesting she run for mayor. Borowski thought the library should be a center of services for Decorah. The library’s mission

and services provide positive partnerships for meeting community needs, the former Luther sociology major says. Service groups found space there to meet, talk, and share, thus developing key partnerships. Borowski met with them, helping to shepherd their good ideas into reality. During her tenure, the library began sponsoring the Northeast Iowa Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, and a U.S. Department of Education grant provided the technological base for bridging the digital divide in the rural community. “The library equalizes everything,” Borowski says. “When people walk in that door, they need to know that, whatever their walk of life, philosophy, political background, it’s acceptable.” As library director, Borowski fostered services that included children’s after-school programming and book delivery for elderly and disable readers. Accomplishments that she holds especially dear include establishing a large-print book distribution collection of more than 10,000 volumes of large-print books that are distributed to more than 160 libraries throught the state, and helping create the Friends of Decorah Public Library Endowment Fund. Making things happen for her community seemed second nature for Borowski, but through the years she also realized that she actually enjoyed the inner workings of government. While she served on the board of the Iowa Library Association, the group developed a plan to reorganize the regional library system. Borowski was hooked by the process. “I liked working with a bill from scratch and

then having to promote that bill, going through all the various committees and the legislature,” she says. “It was fascinating.” Borowski served as president of the association’s board for a time and was named 2016 Member of the Year. Over the past 20 years, Borowski presented the library board budget to the Decorah City Council, becoming experienced in the fiscal intricacies of the city budget. For 14 years she filmed the council meetings for the public access channel run by the library. She developed a consuming interest in and understanding of that body. “I’d be getting into one of the discussions and forget to move the camera when different people were talking!” she says. So when Decorah friends and acquaintances suggested Borowski run for mayor, she realized this was something she could do. The Decorah mayor is a moderator position and has no vote, she points out. It would be Borowski’s job to bring people of different points of view together to figure out issues—a perfect position for her, she thought. Most Decorah voters thought so too, electing Borowski the city’s first female mayor with nearly 70 percent of the vote. Borowski is the mother of Sarah Borowski and Beth Borowski ’05. She joins several other Luther graduates currently in Decorah government: Kirk Johnson ’82, Dan Bellrichard ’01, Ross Hadley ’95, and Johanna Bergan ’09 are all on the city council. —Ellen Modersohn

LUTHER MAGAZINE

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ALUMNI NEWS

’93 Mark Bjerke

is regional sales manager of LogRhythm in Decorah.

Jose Carballo of Pella, Iowa, is an international customer service manager for IPP.

Brent Hill is a professor and chair of biology at University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

Tim Nybroten is evangelism pastor at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Oro Valley, Ariz.

Nathan Potter is senior product strategist at Underwriters Laboratories in Laramie, Wyo.

Anjie Shutts is a partner and

Mike Speck ’01 (center), who graduated from Luther with a theatre major, coaches students in the Hamlet/Laertes duel for Southwest Minnesota State University’s production of Hamlet.

Wait—my Hamlet’s left-handed!

attorney at Whitfield and Eddy in Des Moines, Iowa. She received the Polk County Bar Association Award of Merit at the group’s annual meeting and law clerk luncheon on June 13, 2017. The award is given by the PCBA Board of Directors and is the highest honor in the organization. Anjie achieved board certification in family trial law by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Board certification is the highest honor an attorney can achieve.

Tales of a stage-fight choreographer His senior year at Luther, theatre major Mike Speck ’01 and three fellow students staged an independent production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). “There are fake sword fights galore in it,” Speck says. “They’re supposed to look fake, but I wanted a better idea of what I was doing, so I ordered a book, Swashbuckling, by Richard Lane.” Under Speck’s tutelage, the trio used dowel rods for swords and Speck ended up breaking a light somewhere in Farwell. While it sounds like an inauspicious—though hilarious—start, the project launched Speck on a choreographer’s journey. Since earning his master’s degree from Western Illinois University, which has an acting program with a strong stage-combat component, Speck has staged fights across the country. A certified teacher with the Society of American Fight Directors, he’s worked in Chicago, Atlanta, Virginia Beach, Iowa, North Carolina, Wyoming, and in his hometown of Winona, Minn., where he works full-time at Winona Volunteer Services. In 2008 he founded an annual stage-combat workshop in Des Moines called Carnage in the Corn. In 2014 he cofounded another in Minneapolis called the Brawl of America. Speck is drawn to the constraints of stage fighting: Who are the actors? What are their capabilities? What can they use for weaponry? What is the space like? What does the script say? Speck works his magic within those parameters. Of course, there are always obstacles, like finding out after you’ve already staged a scene in your

36

WINTER 2018

mind that your lead is left-handed or that an actor is struggling with past trauma and can’t handle certain kinds of contact. As he explains, “Sometimes we need to come up with a solution, whether it’s tweaking the stage direction or finding a way to hide things better so that we can tell the story of a choke without actually touching that actor’s neck.” Speck contends that fight directing is basically project management. “It’s always about people, time, space, and resources,” he says. “In some ways, all the work we do is about asking the right questions and minimizing surprises.” So how does an actor make a punch look real? “A lot of people start with the misconception that if you’re doing unarmed combat, you want to swing and then stop at the last possible moment,” Speck says. “But what this does from an acting perspective is create a situation where you’re trying not to pursue an objective. Your character wants to do one thing, but what you’re trying to do is a negative, is not this. That makes your life tricky. What we’ve found is that it’s generally better to find a physical action that is safe and play that as hard as you can. So I’m not going to punch an actor in the face; I’m going to punch the invisible parrot on his left shoulder. I can punch that parrot as hard as I want because he’s invisible and he doesn’t have a lawyer.” Speck recently created fights for Theatre du Mississippi’s Endwaters and Southwest Minnesota State University’s Hamlet. In addition to continuing to run workshops and choreograph, he will teach a class on stage fighting at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona this spring. —Kate Frentzel

’94 Sarah (Ruble) Sladek

is author of Talent Generation: How Visionary Organizations Are Redefining Work and Achieving Greater Success, released by ASAE.

’95 Cynthia Farrell

is senior vice president of human resources at ABILITY Network in Minneapolis.

Bethany (Bierman) Krepela is a major gifts officer for Fraser in Minneapolis.

Steve Smith is information technology director for Winneshiek County in Decorah.

’96 Kari (Gjerde) Kempf

is a behavior consultant at Grant Wood Area Education Agency in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Derek Lee is owner of Bear Creek Archeology in Cresco, Iowa.

’97 Brian Berg

of Mission Viejo, Calif., is director of sales technology for Pacific Life.

Jesse Boeding is director of product marketing at Blackboard in Washington, D.C.

ALUMNI NEWS Jean (Nietz) Ciola is a chiropractor

Elisabeth (Marvin) Sandersfeld

at Agada Chiropractic and Integrative Health Center in Minnetonka, Minn.

is senior vice president and chief financial officer of GuideOne Insurance in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Kirsten (Alworth) Doescher is the community support agent for PerBlue in Madison, Wis.

Jared Johnson is director of worship, music, communications, technology, and children’s ministries at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Chippewa Falls, Wis.

Kristi (Carlsen) McConnell is

’01 Shelly (Harried)

Barness is regional planner for Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission in Decorah.

Kim Eversman is an instructional coach at Rochester (Minn.) Public Schools.

an ESL specialist at Dauphin County Technical High School in Harrisburg, Pa.

Rebekah Gilmore is director of

Chris Mitchell teaches eighth-

Jenny (Lindemann) Hoefer

the Cathedral Choir School in Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle.

Breastfeeding USA, serving the north metro area of the Twin Cities.

Jenn (Smith) and Pete Hoesing live in Sioux Falls, S.D. Jenn works with Stockyards Ag Experience and opened a museum at the Falls Park horse barn in February 2017. Peter is director of sponsored programs for Dakota State University and maintains an active scholarly profile in ethnomusicology and African studies. He has two articles forthcoming in two journals, Nova Religio and History of Africa, as well as a book due out soon with the University of Illinois Press.

Ross Larson is a software

is senior organization development and learning consultant at Children’s Minnesota in Minneapolis.

developer for WTS Paradigm in Middleton, Wis. He was an invited speaker at That Conference 2017 on the topic of imposter syndrome.

quality manager, CPD, at Clearwater Paper in Shelby, N.C.

Tara Kuckkan is payroll coordinator

Molly (Krol) Sandgren is an

Beth Shumate has been named

Meghann Ovre-Kriesel is a

Montana state parks administrator. She has served as manager of Hell Creek State Park and most recently as the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks state trails program manager. She lives near Clancy, Mont.

Heather (Mills) Palermo of

grade science at Oregon (Wis.) Middle School.

Jill (Monis) Schwanz is senior

at Staffco in Minneapolis. senior contract analyst for Medtronic in St. Paul, Minn. Zimmerman, Minn., is a case management assistant for Hennepin County Child Protection.

advanced practice nurse practitioner in family medicine at Gundersen Health System in Prairie Du Chien, Wis.

Jen (Strum) Schuller is a broker associate at Iowa Realty in Ankeny.

Jonathon Struve earned a PhD

is a business analyst for VGM Homelink in Waterloo, Iowa.

Mark Potvin is visiting instructor of music at Luther. He is conductor of Norsemen and Cathedral choirs.

in music with an emphasis in vocal literature from the University of Iowa in May 2017. He is an adjunct voice instructor and Paideia professor at Luther College.

Pawan Sharma of Keller, Texas, is

Sara Scholtes is chair of Krannert

Esther Washington of Rochester,

’98 Jeff Driver

the senior clinical report development specialist for Medtronic Core Clinical Solutions in Minneapolis. She is in charge of global clinical data solutions.

School of Physical Therapy at the University of Indianapolis.

Matt Titus is a portfolio manager for Invesco in Houston.

Minn., earned a master’s degree in holistic health from St. Catherine’s University.

Courtney Wooge is president of

Carolyn (Johnson) Vreeman

FCIS Insurance in Forest City, Iowa.

is executive president of Vreeman Consulting and consultant for Public Works Water in Minneapolis.

’03 Amber (Rislow) Harder

’99 Andy Eley

Angie (Demmer) Hietala is an

is a communications specialist at enCompass Church in St. Paul, Minn.

teaches vocal music at Anamosa (Iowa) High School.

instructional support coordinator with the Department of Instruction for Learning for the Kodiak (Alaska) Island Borough School District.

Lena Johnson is a social worker at

’02 Heidi (Helling) Barr

has published a book, Woodland Manitou: To Be on Earth, a collection of essays rooted in the natural world. The book is available through Homebound Publications and on amazon.com.

Rebecca (Olson) Sjöwall lives in Los Angeles. Her singing was featured on the band Sparks’ album Hippopotamus. It debuted on the United Kingdom album charts at number seven.

’00 Katie (Aarestad) Fergus is owner and president of Medical Billing Services Iowa in Des Moines.

Kim (Turner) and Kevin Frantz own Twin Cities Escape Rooms in Burnsville, Minn. Kevin is co-owner of Gulliford Sales.

Lynn Dalhed is associate director of training at Optum in Eden Prairie, Minn.

Molly Goodwin of Davenport, Iowa,

CHI Franciscan in Tacoma, Wash.

Ed Martin of Denver completed the level 4 WSET diploma through the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust. It is among the most sought-after qualifications in the global wine trade and is universally accepted as the prerequisite to the master of wine designation.

Carrie (Walling) and Jake Nimrod ’01 live in Decorah. Carrie

Gingrich ’88 new Vatican ambassador Callista (Bisek) Gingrich ’88 was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as ambassador to the Vatican on Oct. 16, 2017. She had an administrative swearing-in on Oct. 19. She and husband Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and 2012 Republican presidential candidate, planned to move to Rome in November, where she would present her credentials to the pope shortly afterward. Callista Gingrich has been CEO of Gingrich Productions, which produces historical and public policy documentary films. She is also the author of the Ellis the Elephant series of children’s books. A music major at Luther, Gingrich has been a longtime member of the Choir of the Basilica at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. She has also played French horn with the city band in Fairfax, Virginia. She serves as president of the Gingrich Foundation, which, among other charitable contributions, established the Newt L. and Callista L. Gingrich Scholarship to benefit instrumental music majors at Luther.

is touring Singapore, the Philippines, China, Japan, and South Korea as the production stage manager on the international tour of Sister Act: The Musical.

is an associate at West Side Early Childhood Center, and Jake is associate principal and activities director at Decorah Middle School.

Andrea (Dunker) Tiwari is an

Lindsay (Lehmann) Reiten

Becky (Wedekind) Hanson

earned a PhD in curriculum and instruction (math education) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is an assistant professor of math education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

facilitator at Blueprint Software Systems in Chicago.

is principal clinical quality and compliance specialist at Medtronic in St. Paul, Minn. She is also a breastfeeding counselor through

applications engineer at TSI in Shoreview, Minn.

Jason Trost is an educational

’04 Meredith (Eilertson) Azeem is a pharmacist at Mayo Clinic St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minn.

LUTHER MAGAZINE

37

ALUMNI NEWS Lauren Christel is an elementary school principal for the International School of the Peninsula in Palo Alto, Calif.

of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis.

Amanda (Ellson) and Leif Madsen ’08 live in Bloomington,

teaches third grade at Lisbon (Iowa) Elementary School.

Courtney Kupfer is education

Ind. Amanda is an assistant athletic trainer for Indiana University, working with the volleyball team. Leif earned a PhD in human performance at Indiana University in August 2017. He is a clinical assistant professor and the clinical coordinator of the athletic training program at Indiana University.

Jennifer (Lambrecht) Silverman is a senior R&D scientist

manager of Specpro Environmental Services in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

director of CenterPoint Massage and Shiatsu Therapy School and Clinic in Minneapolis. She is pursuing a master of arts degree in Adlerian counseling and psychotherapy with an emphasis in clinical mental health counseling at Adler Graduate School in Richfield, Minn.

Carrie (Morris) Miller is associate

Mike Lopez is a senior financial

Kendra (McGill) Evans teaches preschool for Riceville (Iowa) Community Schools.

Joel Hollenbeck is project

director of the Academic Advising Center at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Aubrey (Connolly) Nelson is youth and family programs coordinator for Bloomington (Minn.) Public Schools.

accountant at Manitou America in West Bend, Wis.

Aaron Murphy is the owner and principal designer of Aaron Murphy Interiors in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He specializes in residential and commercial interior design consulting.

Lyndsey (Ludwig) Wedll is an

Jason Rude was selected to be

’07 Kristin (Maiers) Eide

Amy (Hoodjer) Updegraff earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instructional technology from Iowa State University in Ames and is a graduate assistant and PhD student in curriculum and instructional technology at the university.

’05 Ross Kurth

is an assistant professor in the department of family medicine and community at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.

Elena Geiger-Simpson earned a doctor of nursing practice degree with a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner specialty from the University of Minnesota and a certificate in integrative therapies and healing practices from the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. She is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in Minneapolis.

Matthew Hagen is vice president

is general manager of ARCH Motorcycle in Los Angeles.

of finance operations at Monster in Weston, Mass.

Megan (Hillesland) and Paul Mackie ’06 live in Chicago. Megan

respiratory therapist at Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minn.

is author of The Finder of the Lucky Devil, and Paul is a senior business consultant at John Galt Solutions.

Danielle Schmidt is a recovery resolution consultant at Optum in Eden Prairie, Minn.

Cara Stone is an instruction librarian at Iowa State University in Ames.

’06 Chris Bellinder

is a sales professional at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices in Charleston, S.C.

Sarah (Olson) Cutcliffe is

Kimmie Hall is a registered

Zach Klobnak earned a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana– Champaign.

Daniel Le Guen-Schmidt is executive assistant to the associate vice chancellor of human resources at West Valley–Mission Community College District in Saratoga, Calif.

Tom Lindsley is a senior interaction designer at Workiva in Ames, Iowa.

Amanda (Schmall) Lorentz is a

a business systems analyst and specialist for University of Chicago Medicine in Darien, Ill.

shareholder of Fredrikson and Byron in Minneapolis.

Kristen (Strandell) Kesslar is

of statistics at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.

a registered nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University

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WINTER 2018

Beth Pfotenhauer is the head

the University of California, Davis. accounting specialist at Twin Cities and Western Railroad in Glencoe, Minn.

named a member of the 2017 class of the AARP Iowa Executive Council, a team of volunteers from across Iowa who provide leadership to support accomplishments of AARP state and national priorities.

of Phoenix, Ariz., earned a master’s degree in literacy curriculum and instruction from Arizona State University. virologist at the Milwaukee Public Health Department and founder of Traveling Microbiologist and Friends, a nonprofit that provides developing community water quality testing and training.

Erika Strandjord is a lecturer at

Susan Olson of Ames, Iowa, was

Kelsey (Cochrane) Martinez

Adam Loy is an assistant professor

a part of the Fords Theater National Oratory Fellowship, which focuses on bringing oratory to the classroom. Fellows work with teaching artists throughout the year and attend workshops in Washington, D.C., twice a year to plan and share work. Jason teaches seventh- and eighth-grade social studies at New Hampton (Iowa) Middle School.

Amy (May) Teigland earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Minnesota State University, Moorhead. She teaches pre-kindergarten at MSUM Early Education Center in Moorhead, Minn.

’08 Nicole (Egan) Aloia

is director of urgent care and general pediatrics at University of Wisconsin Health in Madison.

Denise Clark is development director for Two Rivers YMCA in Moline, Ill.

Ryan Fordice is campaign and engagement manager for the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.

Katherine (Kennon) Gales instructs English and Latin at Xavier High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Heather (Elwood) Gierut is communications director of LepicKroeger Realtors in Iowa City, Iowa.

Katie (Curran) Hallman is executive director of Theatre Cedar Rapids in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Scott Jennings is a patrol officer for the City of Decorah Police Department.

Danny Lee is the major gifts director at Be The Match in Minneapolis.

David Quam is operations manager of Wells Fargo Bank in Des Moines, Iowa.

Kelly (Wood) Robertson earned a master’s degree in literacy education from Graceland University. She

at MilliporeSigma in St. Louis.

Jordan Stracke is associate research scientist at DOW Chemical Company in Collegeville, Pa.

’09 Natalie (Schultz) Barria is director of human services and payroll for G.O. Fresh in Minneapolis.

Erin (Torkelson) and Jesse Bunge ’11 live in Gypsum, Colo. Erin teaches K–5 music at Gypsum Elementary School. Jesse earned a master’s degree in music education from the University of Kansas and is the 9–12 vocal director at Eagle Valley High School.

Ashlee (Wicks) Carpenedo earned a master’s degree in ESL from Hamline University. She teaches ESL at South Washington County Schools in Cottage Grove, Minn.

Andrea (Schenk) Dye teaches fifth grade for the Minneapolis (Minn.) Public Schools.

Kyle Lilly of Minneapolis received certification as a professional soil scientist by the Soil Science Society of America Soils Certification Board.

Andrea (Johnson) Mierau is the lead physical therapist at the National Dizzy and Balance Center in Blaine, Minn.

Matt Myers earned a master’s degree in choral conducting from Northern Arizona University. He is a doctoral student in choral conducting at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Danielle (Armbruster) Walters is the accounts manager at Maxim Healthcare Services in Madison, Wis.

Mandy (Wubben) Weister is a career counselor in the Career Development Center at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Kristin Youngmeyer is a city manager fellow for Hamilton, Ohio, and a program compliance intern at the Ohio Housing Finance Agency in Columbus.

’10 Meghan (Matthison)

Byrnes is an immigrant paralegal at Anderson and Anderson Law in Minneapolis.

Sky Macklay of Chicago composed “Dissolving Bands,” an orchestral piece that won the Leo Kaplan Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). Her string quartet piece “Many Many Cadences” also received an ASCAP award.

Perran Wetzel V ’13 (left) and Ben Kofoed ’12 work at the Collective Action Lab, an organization that addresses complex social challenges and facilitates big-picture systemic change.

Tackling the big problems Structural racism. Food insecurity. Long-term health care. Systemic change in these areas can feel intimidating, too large for one organization to tackle alone. But Ben Kofoed ’12 and Perran Wetzel V ’13 of the Collective Action Lab in Minneapolis aren’t afraid to dive in and help make it happen. Collaborators

The Collective Action Lab is a uniquely modern enterprise. Its small, agile staff partners with community groups to address complex social challenges. Sometimes this means helping to draft a strategic plan. Sometimes it means research, grant proposal writing, project management, or facilitating communication between stakeholders. Kofoed explains: “Our organization recognizes that in order to tackle the big problems, collaboration between sectors or different organizations is really important, and it’s really hard to do that well. A lot of times people come together in grand ideas and projects and it doesn’t work out because everyone has a day job and it lacks this sort of backbone support to sustain it. The Collective Action Lab tries to serve as that supporting infrastructure. Kofoed, a biology major, came to the Lab after earning a graduate degree in public health from the University of Minnesota and working for over a year in local public

health administration in the northern part of the state. “So where I was doing really basic administration of public health programs,” he says, “the Lab was working on big-picture change around the health care space. It was an opportunity to do what drew me to studying public health policy but work on it in a much bigger way.” Kofoed has played a large part in initiatives such as Silos to Circles, which brings health care organizations together to share learning, pilot new ideas, and generally think about health care questions in innovative ways. Wetzel, an anthropology major, came to the Lab after he and his wife, Emily Griffin-Wetzel ’14, moved to Minneapolis from Chicago, where he’d been a teacher’s aide and substitute teacher at a special-needs school. When the Lab’s founder, Olivia Mastry, offered him a position, he jumped at the opportunity to be part of large-scale change. Wetzel works primarily with an initiative called Mill City Kids, which focuses on improving the health and well-being of African

“

ALUMNI NEWS

“We bring these collaborators who all have day jobs together, figure out what they want to do together, and figure out how they’re going to get there.” American and Native American children age five and under. “The initiative has been around for two years,” Wetzel says, “and the organization has grown to focus on increasing awareness around historical trauma and structural racism in all sectors that may influence or interact with children, such as health care and government.” Wetzel and Kofoed are also engaged in additional collaborations, such as the Minnesota Hunger Initiative, a network of more than twenty hunger-relief organizations currently working to explore new and compelling ways of understanding need and new models for hunger relief. Liberal artists

It seems an incredible coincidence that two Luther alumni who graduated with such different majors would end up doing the same kind of work at a tiny specialized company, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Wetzel explains, “Luther’s model of having to take so many credits outside of your major really made me open to this kind of a job, where I’m doing so many things outside my comfort zone.” Kofoed agrees: “Jumping from topic to topic and diving in on hunger relief one week and rural aging the next week and structural racism another week, you have to be pretty good at not being one-dimensional. We draw on that a lot.” Wetzel also points to his anthropology background as good preparation for facilitating conversations and engaging small groups on difficult subjects, a skill that Kofoed also picked up at Luther. “For me, what really helped were the classes where you inevitably bumped up against things that people feel really strongly about,” he says. “Wherever there were strong beliefs or deeply held opinions, we had to bring that into a reasoned discussion. I think of my senior seminar, Secularization in the West. People had passionately different views, but there was healthy discourse about that in class every day, and that’s a lot of what our work is now. We’re bringing groups together that sometimes have pretty different perspectives on these issues and creating formats that can hold that conversation in a way that’s respectful but also facilitates real conversation.” —Kate Frentzel

LUTHER MAGAZINE

39

ALUMNI NEWS Ben Schori is pastor at Nativity Lutheran Church in St. Anthony, Minn.

Meg (McCormick) Slindee is

nongovernmental organization Paigaam: A Message for Peace and as a counselor at a private school.

business development manager at LinkUp Job Search Engine in Minneapolis.

Jaclyn Ohnemus is the vocal

Robbie (Kjelland) Wanderman

Kelly (Schneider) Sheldon is an

music director at Linn-Mar Community Schools in Marion, Iowa.

is resident physician of anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

elementary teacher in Frankfort, Ind.

Liz Winter is grant accountant

field coach graduate assistant at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis.

and executive assistant to the CFO at Upper Iowa University in Fayette. She is also pursuing a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in organizational development at the university.

’11 Aleesa Baako

is the Allamakee County victim-witness coordinator in Waukon, Iowa.

Katie Deaver earned a PhD in systematic theology from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC). She is associate director of admissions at LSTC.

Emily Ellson teaches first and second grade at Riverside Central Elementary School in Rochester, Minn.

Sylvie Hall earned a master of public health degree from the University of Iowa College of Public Health and a doctor of pharmacy degree from the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy. She is a clinical pharmacy resident at the Cleveland (Ohio) Clinic Health System.

Ellie (Neubauer) Kuennen is a registered labor delivery nurse at Northfield (Minn.) Hospital.

Tyler McCubbin was appointed the Social Studies Department head at Colegio Americano de Torreon (Mexico) for the 2017–18 school year. He is also the United States history teacher, and the Social Studies Department head, and teaches an online sociology class through a program called the Virtual High School.

Vaughn Tackmann is a track and

Marybeth (Cannon) Wheeler is a nurse practitioner at Yakima (Wash.) Neighborhood Health.

Kelsey (Anderson) Wilson of North Liberty, Iowa, is an account manager at Dartlet.

’12 Allison Alpers

is a speech-language pathologist and voice specialist at Fairview Rehabilitation Services in Edina and Maple Grove, Minn.

Nick Barkve is a data reporting analyst at SPS Commerce in Minneapolis.

Amy Behrman is pricing and receiving coordinator at Walt Churchill’s Market in Maumee, Ohio.

Joe Berg earned a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Houston and a master’s degree in physics from the University of California–Los Angeles. He works in R&D and S&E computer science at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.

Erin Brown is a school social worker in the Osseo School District in Maple Grove, Minn.

Rachel Conway is a clinical psychology postdoctoral resident and fellow at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

Jonathan Grieder earned a master’s degree in political science from the University of Nevada–Las Vegas. He teaches social studies at Waterloo (Iowa) West High School.

Kelsey Hunerdosse earned a master of arts degree in education and an education specialist graduate degree from the University of Northern Iowa. She is a school psychologist at Heartland AEA in Johnston, Iowa.

Trevor Ketterling is a certified personal trainer at Lifetime Fitness in Fort Washington, Pa.

Meghan McCall is executive

WINTER 2018

at Renovo Financial Partners in Rochester, Minn.

Kelsey (Brown) Legore is codirector of choirs at Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Prairie High School.

Jevita Poer is new business developer at Philips Research in the Netherlands.

Kaitlin (Maas) and Sam Meyers

Denise Richter earned a master’s

live in Brooklyn Park, Minn. Kaitlin teaches special education in the St. Paul (Minn.) Public Schools. Sam earned a master’s degree in education—school counseling from the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, and is a school counselor at Robbinsdale (Minn.) Middle School.

Therese (Thompson) Nelson is an abstracter at Home Title in Andover, Minn.

Andrew Ratekin is in the Third Battalion Fourth Marines in the U.S. Military in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

relationship manager at Forte Research Systems in Madison, Wis. degree in business administration from the University of Iowa. She is an internal auditor for Deere and Company in Moline, Ill.

Rachel (Jungwirth) Rigdon is account executive of Holmes Murphy and Associates in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Peter Sandstedt earned a master’s degree in communication from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and is a vendor project specialist at the university.

Katie (Schwartz) Vogel of

La Crescent (Minn.) High School.

Maplewood, Minn., is a staff accountant at Northern Tool and Equipment.

Jaci Wilkinson is an assistant

Isaac (Van Bruggen) Warner

Ryan Vinzant is football coach at

professor and web services librarian at the University of Montana in Missoula.

is an assistant property manager at Zeller Realty Group in Minneapolis.

’13 Emily Banitt

is associate vocal music director at Pleasant Valley High School in Bettendorf, Iowa.

is a psychometrist at Minneapolis Clinic of Neurology.

’14 David Baxter

Kelsey Bies teaches fourth grade for the Waverly–Shell Rock (Iowa) Community School District.

Skylar (Carney) Bohr is a reading

is a senior associate consultant at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City.

resource teacher for grades 4–6 at Notre Dame Elementary in Cresco, Iowa.

Lauren (Meintsma) Dosland is a communications associate at Jones Lang LaSalle in Minneapolis.

Marisa (Johnson) Faas teaches Tyler Hagy earned a master’s

Nicholas Fisher of Cedar Rapids,

40

Evin Lantz is a financial planner

Hannah Ranum is a customer

Maggie (Michenfelder) Erikson

dental surgery degree from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry and is in the second year of his orthodontic residency at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

the Kashmir region of India and works with women and children through her

Kaylee is an RN at Mayo Clinic Hospitals. Trent is a prosthetic and orthotic practitioner at Limb Lab.

assistant to the president and policy advocate at Ploughshare Fun in Washington, D.C.

Paul Meyer earned a doctor of

Ufra Mir is a peace psychologist in

Kaylee (Helgemoe) and Trent Kerrigan live in Rochester, Minn.,

Iowa, won the International Business for a Better World Case Competition (held alongside the World Economic Forum) in Davos, Switzerland, with his team of three other Middlebury Institute MBA students, taking home $6,000 and a crystal trophy. Nicholas earned a master of business administration degree from Middlebury College in 2017.

degree in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music. He teaches vocal music at Linn-Mar High School in Marion, Iowa.

Leah Hanson earned a master’s degree in forensic psychology from the University of Denver and is a doctoral trainee in clinical psychology at the university.

Bridget (Rouse) Johnson of Decorah is a registered nurse for Mayo Clinic Hospitals.

K–3 special education at Westside Elementary School in the Reedsburg (Wis.) School District.

William Foley is a substitute teacher in the Dallas–Center Grimes School District and Johnston School District in the Des Moines, Iowa, area. He also works at the Waukee YMCA and is an assistant site supervisor at After School Care.

Logan Hjerleid teaches kindergarten for the Solon (Iowa) Community School District.

Jordan Jensen is director of retreat ministries at Rainbow Trail Lutheran Bible Camp in Hillside, Colo.

ALUMNI NEWS Tyler Crowe of Davenport, Iowa, earned a master’s degree in biomedical sciences from Iowa State University.

Jessica Dobson teaches eighthgrade physical science at Freeport (Ill.) Middle School.

Gabriel Dorn is a research assistant at Washington University in St. Louis.

KIRK JOHNSON '82

Connor Goetz teaches eighth-

Luther Alumni Council All Luther College alumni are automatically members of the Alumni Association. There are no dues or other fees to maintain that membership. Members receive class agent letters and the Luther Magazine. The Alumni Council, pictured here, is the governing body of the Alumni Association. Members are chosen to represent a cross-section of Luther’s graduating classes and the geographic areas where alumni live. Nominated by a committee within the council, members may serve two three-year terms. Members of the Alumni Council also host alumni events, recruit students, and provide internships and job opportunities for Luther students. Members return to campus at Homecoming and one additional time each year for meetings in which Luther administrators elicit their advice and counsel. If interested in serving on the council, please contact the Alumni Office.

Members of the council present for the Homecoming 2017 meeting were, front row (left to right): Harleigh Boldridge ’18, Madilyn Heinke ’19, Erin (Brooks) Croll ’99, Roger Krahn ’68. Second row: Lisa Small Steinbauer ’88, Eric Johnson ’79, Nick Mozena ’13, Serina (Norvold) Bentley ’94, Liesl Koehnen ’09, Hannah King ’20. Third row: Jon Bunz ’87, John Vaaler ’94, Ryan Fordice ’08, Sarah (Quick) Olejniczak ’07, Jim Kowitz ’03, Brian Larson ’00, Julie (Gangstad) Grotnes ’85, President Paula Carlson, Denise Davismckennie ’82. Back row: Tim Fleming, Sr. ’67, Joe Lindsay ’75, Willie Davismckennie ’84, Sam Weyers ’08, Brianna (Helland) Weyers ’08, Heather (Buckner) Wilensky ’06. Members not pictured are Lisa (Schneider) Strube ’87, Christina (Gaard) Baumgart ’07, Nina Catterall ’08, Matt Evans ’98, Corey Hoodjer ’99, Jay Kautt ’98, Ross Kurth ’05, Stacey Sundet ’01, Belal Krayem ’18. New members elected at Homecoming are Steve Bailey ’08, Elisabeth Sandersfeld ’00, Austen Smith ’13, Hans Thurmer ’04.

grade global studies at Minnetonka (Minn.) Middle School.

Alex Hain teaches English at Stewartville (Minn.) Middle School.

Marlon Henriquez teaches kindergarten at Pilsen Community Academy in Chicago.

Madison (Norell) Jaeger is an academic interventionist at CAL Community Schools in Latimer, Iowa.

Amanda Johnson teaches K–2 special education for the Byron (Minn.) Public Schools.

Michael Kaiser is a financial analyst at HNI Corporation in Muscatine, Iowa.

Karly Karst is staffing coordinator for Park Nicollet Health Services at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minn., and is a nursing student at Herzing University. She received the Nurse Corps Scholarship.

Krista (Konrad) Liveringhouse teaches fourth grade in Hillsborough County (Fla.) School District in Tampa.

Abby Lobdell teaches fifth grade at Merrill School in Rock Falls, Ill.

Ann (Okoneski) Lund is executive consultant at Rodan and Fields Dermatologists in Edina, Minn.

Jess Landgraf is assistant service

Brita Moore is public relations

Anna Showers teaches second

manager at Erik’s Bike Shop in Roseville, Minn.

director of Minnesota Farmers Union in St. Paul, Minn.

grade for the Faribault (Minn.) Public School District.

Brittney Leemon earned a

Kayla Nelson teaches multi-

Cydney (Roelandt) Weitzel

master’s degree in arts management and nonprofit management at the University of Oregon and is marketing and development manager of the National Lutheran Choir in Minneapolis.

categorical special education at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

is employed by Circa 21 Dinner Playhouse in Rock Island, Ill.

Ty Pharaoh earned a master’s

for the Muskego–Norway (Wis.) School District.

John Melzarek is senior accountant at CliftonLarsonAllen in Minneapolis.

Aaron Mertzenich is a web user experience designer and developer at Promega in Madison, Wis.

Laura Mesadieu is agile scrum master at Fastenal Company in Winona, Minn.

Samuel Molzahn earned a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He is an adult reference librarian at the North Shore Public Library in Glendale, Wis.

degree in K–12 special education and teaching from the University of St. Thomas and is a student teacher and SUTR resident at SPPS in Minneapolis.

Chase Racek teaches first grade at the American School of Kuwait in Hawalli.

Sara (Pecinovsky) Richert is the 5–12 band director for the Cochrane– Fountain City (Wis.) Schools.

Becca Rudquist teaches high school English for the Dover–Eyota (Minn.) Public Schools.

Seth Rumage is an intern pastor at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Spokane, Wash.

Emily Wilson teaches fourth grade

’15 Caitlin Almer

teaches fifth grade for the Littleton (Colo.) Public Schools.

Alex Barker is account executive of membership sales for the Minnesota Timberwolves in Minneapolis.

Emily Betts is a project manager at Anytime Fitness in Woodbury, Minn.

Brianna Blum teaches first grade at Archibald Alexander Elementary School in Iowa City, Iowa.

Leah Broderick of Brighton, Mass., is a regional admissions recruiter for the University of Alabama.

Ellie Magner teaches sixth grade at Robert J. Elkington Middle School in Grand Rapids, Minn.

Hayley (Pirsig) Maher earned a master’s degree in business administration from American Military University and is administrative assistant for Freeborn County in Albert Lea, Minn. She also owns a small business, the Hayley Anne.

Jessica Mara is a registered nurse at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Katharyn Marlow is a client service manager at Reising Radio Partners in Columbus, Ind.

Sara Maronde is clinical assistant and medical scribe at Twin Cities Orthopedics in Burnsville, Minn.

Nicolle Martin is a communications assistant at CaptionCall in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Connor Mattison is a relocation specialist at Plus Relocation in Minneapolis.

LUTHER MAGAZINE

41

ALUMNI NEWS SNAPSHOTS

1

3

2

4

1

Keith ’69 and Mary (Bay) Johnson ’69 of Pine Hill, N.J., hosted a visit from some classmates: Janet (Storhoff) ’69 and Larry Weber, Catherine (Turner) Boulanger ’69, Connie (Adams) Georgiu ’69, Diane Hanson ’69, and Cindy (Lee) Bleich ’69. They visited Independence Mall, Longwood Gardens, Old New Castle, the Brandywine Museum, the planetarium at Rowan University, and other favorite places in the Philadelphia area.

2

Ruth (Krumm) Price, age 101, who earned an education certificate from the Decorah College for Women in 1934, visited with music education students during a reception for her in Koren last October. The women’s college students were able to attend classes at Luther when it became coed in 1936. Price lived most of her life in Decorah. Among others at the reception, Price spoke with Sarah Bauer ’18 (in the red shirt) and Katie Koenning ’18, both music education majors. Price shared stories about her early years teaching in Decorah. She started the student orchestra at the Decorah Middle School. To get students at the middle school interested in learning instruments and joining an orchestra, she says, she simply played her violin for them.

42

WINTER 2018

3

Janet (Hernes) Mathistad ’83, Jeff Hernes ’85, and Melissa Hernes ’14 completed the 2017 CANDISC (Cycling around North Dakota in Sakakawea Country) bicycle tour, a 416-mile, seven-day tour the first full week of August. This was the final year of CANDISC’s 25-year run in North Dakota.

4

Hannah Butler ’16 and Kevin Olson ’93 worked together in Chicago on a Lifetime movie titled My Daughter Is Missing, which aired in fall 2017. Butler was a production assistant, and Olson worked on the shooting crew as the key grip.

ALUMNI NEWS

5

7

6

8

5

Erik Berry ’96 played a concert in Marty’s, in the Union lower level, on Nov. 3. Berry performs original instrumental mandolin music inspired by Irish, bluegrass, and old-time music, as well as experimental electronic music. He also performs with the Minnesota band Trampled by Turtles.

6

At the Iowa Athletic Trainers Society (IATS) awards banquet last June, Rachel Reimann ’17 and Kris Agena were awarded IATS 2017 Graduate Scholarships. Reimann will be attending AT Still University in Mesa, Ariz., to earn a master of athletic training degree, and Agena is working toward a doctor of athletic training degree, also at AT Still University. Attending the banquet were (left to right): Brian Solberg ’88, Luther athletic training program director/HPE chair; Kristin (Jensen) Reimann ’88; Reimann; Agena, Luther athletic training clinical education coordinator; and Amber Suckow, Luther head athletic trainer.

9

7

Nikki Thompson ’15, Brianna Blum ’15, Katie Hale ’15, and Robert Morris ’09 (not pictured) were involved in the production of Grease at Theatre Cedar Rapids in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Other 2015 grads—Madison (Norell) Jaeger, Micki Kruse, Hannah Kielly, Laura Hayes, Matthew Helm, and Lindsey Colyer—attended the production on the same night.

8

Three generations of a Luther family took a legacy photo at Luther’s 2017 Homecoming. Chuck Mahnke ’62 (father) attended his 55th reunion, Jeff Mahnke ’87 (son) attended his 30th reunion, and Lauren Mahnke ’21 (granddaughter) is a current first-year student.

9

Katie (Bachelder) Stracke ’08 sent this photo of her husband, Jordan Stracke ’08, taken while they were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary in Tromsø, Norway, last fall.

LUTHER MAGAZINE

43

ALUMNI NEWS

Michaleen Melby is a substitute

Hannah Parker is case manager at

Maia Pugh is program coordinator

Greg Scott is project manager at

teacher for the Portage (Wis.) Community School District.

Easter Seals of Iowa in Des Moines.

at Blue Mountain Center in Blue Mountain Lake, New York.

UnitedHealth Group in Plymouth, Minn.

Morgan Melton is a

nurse at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Jake Putnam is a fine art consultant

Emily Sena is a business and legal

at Iowa Artisans Gallery in Iowa City.

Hiliary Pennington is a teacher

Megan Richason earned a master

associate at Khalifeh and Partners Lawyers in Amman, Jordan.

Alise Miller is senior demand

assistant at Van Meter (Iowa) Elementary School.

Andrew Sharot is data analytics

forecast analyst at Best Buy in Minneapolis.

Katie Peterson earned a master’s

of science degree in athletic training from Ohio University. She is an athletic trainer for Gundersen Lutheran Clinic in Hillsboro, Wis.

Allison Richman is a

Spectrum Screenprinting and Embroidery in Plymouth, Minn.

Kara Pedersen is a registered

telecommunicator at Williamson County Department of Emergency Communication in Franklin, Tenn.

degree in addiction prevention and treatment from Hazelden Graduate School of Addiction Studies. She is a youth services master of social work intern at Alexandra House in Anoka, Minn.

Derek Mueller is an ecological restoration technician at Stantec Consulting Services in Cottage Grove, Wis.

Bailey Mulholland is publications

Mavis Phiri is a financial services

specialist at the Kent (Ohio) Historical Society.

representative at University of Iowa Credit Union in Cedar Rapids.

Elsie Muronzie is assurance staff

neighborhood services coordinator at Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity in Waterloo. literature, and writing at Hutchinson (Minn.) High School.

Martin Stalberger is sales

Kaia Sand is an oboe graduate

Kayla Naber teaches first grade at

Sleep Number by Sleep Comfort in Plymouth, Minn.

teaching assistant at the University of Oklahoma School of Music in Edmond.

Shelby Pofahl is a registered nurse

Mary Schmidt is a registered nurse

at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Ellen Pritchard is executive

Sarah Schutz is a registered nurse

manager at Butte Toyota in Butte, Mont.

at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

nurse at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Sam Olson is associate account executive of SPS Commerce in Minneapolis.

Aime (Karam) Smith is account executive of iHeartMedia in Minneapolis.

Hunter Pleschourt is a planner at

Jessica O’Brien is a registered

Joe Simonelli is an artist at

Annika Ring teaches English,

at Ernst and Young in Minneapolis. Ekstrand Elementary in Dewitt, Iowa.

senior consultant at Deloitte in Minneapolis.

associate at M and M Lawn and Leisure in Rushford, Minn.

Kasey Thorson teaches seventhand eighth-grade social studies and language arts in the Austin (Minn.) Public School District.

Emily Tope is a world language production editor at EMC Publishing in St. Paul. Two of her short documentaries have been official selections in 11 film festivals since

MARRIAGES

’92 Lisa Blatti

and Charlie Ratgen, July 2, 2016

Ali House and Jeff Tuttle, Jan. 6, 2017 Andrew Mangion and Adrianna Zammit, June 4, 2016

’97 Curtiss Hella ’98 John Raney ’99 Rachel Vohs ’01 Rebekah Gilmore ’03 Elizabeth Dreier ’04 Aubrey Connolly ’05 Maren Hadley

and Jennifer Dragich, Aug. 4, 2017

and Devonne Fisher, Sept. 15, 2017 and Eric Nead, Oct. 20, 2017 and Tyler Morse, Oct. 7, 2017

and Martin Nicchetta, April 9, 2016 and Christopher Nelson, Oct. 8, 2016

and Dylan Kioga, July 7, 2017

Ellie Valeta and Nicholas Wiltgen, Oct. 7, 2017 Erin Walding and Russell Heitman, Oct. 15, 2016

’06 Helissa Stevens ’07 Anna Bingham

and Timothy Bell, Aug. 11, 2017

and Michael Yearous, Aug. 12, 2017

Johanna Crock and Tyler Warner, Sept. 9, 2017 Carly Greenwood and Cory Bauer, Sept. 3, 2017 Denise Kirchhoff and Kevin McCarty, July 15, 2017 Amy May and James Teigland, Aug. 19, 2017

44

WINTER 2018

’08 Jessica Anderson

and Colin Stoerzinger, Oct. 13, 2017 Erin Claussen and Nick Cincotta, Oct. 19, 2017 Nicole Egan and Anthony Aloia, May 28, 2016 Jordan Jensen and Deja Dircks, Feb. 4, 2017 Jolene Mockler and Peter McDermott, July 29, 2017 Cale Nelson and Brooke Robbins, Sept. 3, 2017

’09 Robbie Coe

and Amber Svoboda, July 22, 2017

Ashlee Wicks and Tom Carpenedo, April 8, 2017 Mandy Wubben and Joshua Weister, Oct. 8, 2016

’10 Carrie Albrecht

and Travis Tacheny, June 25, 2016

Mallory Marlatt and Tim Hanson, Sept. 16, 2017 Meghan Mathison and Patrick Byrnes, Sept. 17, 2016 Meg McCormick and Luke Slindee, Oct. 14, 2017

’11 Amber Hendricks

and Junichi Takano, March 25, 2017

Will Layton and Hannah Simpson, June 24, 2017 Paul Meyer and Rachel Gerber, Oct. 14, 2017 Kelly Schneider and Addison Sheldon, June 24, 2017 Rachel Schutter and Matthew Nielsen, Sept. 24, 2016

’12 Courtney Bergey

and James Swanson, Oct. 21, 2017 Matthew Christoffersen and Rebekah Carlson, June 17, 2017 Danielle Gibbs and Drew Frees, Sept. 30, 2017 Kate Schletty and Nik Barkve, Oct. 28, 2017 Emma Spoon and Shane Steele, Sept. 3, 2017 Elissa Stevens and Zachary Edwards, June 17, 2017 Hannah Swanson and Matthew Booth, July 29, 2017 Abby Switzer and Chris Reynolds, Sept. 24, 2016 Therese Thompson and Gradon Nelson, Aug. 19, 2017

ALUMNI NEWS 2015. One documentary won the Best Student Film Award at the World Arts Film Festival in May 2017.

Peter Lillibridge is a footwear

Erin Ellefsen is a teaching fellow

sales leader at Dick’s Sporting Goods in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Danielle Uhlenhake teaches first

Ervin Liz Andela is the founder

and master’s degree student in mathematics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

grade at St. John’s Elementary School in Independence, Iowa.

Ellie Van Der Griend teaches kindergarten at John F. Kennedy Community School in Berlin, Germany. at Bayview Elementary in Waconia, Minn.

Kari Ylvisaker teaches kindergarten

Alayna Nelson teaches eighth

for the Grundy Center (Iowa) Community Schools.

’16 Kai Hedstrom

is executive director of the Northeast Iowa Peace and Justice Center in Decorah.

Hailey Johnson teaches social studies and coaches girls tennis at Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora, Colo.

Jenna Johnson is an MD/PhD graduate student the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

engagement coordinator at the Greater Milwaukee (Wis.) Foundation.

Jake Martin played in the Midwest Basketball League for the Twin Cities Elite and in the Australian semipro BigV League for the Bulleen Boomers. He has been signed by the Goldfield Giants and will join them in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, in January for their preseason campaign.

Blake Wragge teaches fourth grade

Laura Johnson is a community

of Colombian Coffee Connection in Hutchinson, Minn.

grade at Lower Kuskokwim School District in Bethel, Alaska.

Hannah Sackett is a Young Adult in Global Mission volunteer serving on behalf of the ELCA in Kibungo, Rwanda.

Clare Slagel is a doctoral student at Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ames.

Alanna Spencer teaches middle and high school math at Lower Kuskokwim School District in Bethel, Alaska.

Justin Kreiter is a doctoral student

’17 Janna Akkerman

teaches English as a second language for the Austin (Minn.) Public School District.

Emily Alcock is a member services specialist for the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago.

Hannah Bernatz is a merchandiser at Breakthru Beverage Group in Hartland, Wis.

Matthew Chlebek is account executive of Midwest Insurance Group in Delafield, Wis.

in physical therapy at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.

Jennifer Martin is a graduate student in the coordinated master of library and information science and master of music in music history and literature degree program at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She works in the music library at the university’s Golda Meir Library.

Gabi Meirick is a senior research analyst at Optum Health in Minneapolis.

Eshetie Tarekegn is a data analyst at Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Cody Duncan is a payroll customer care advocate at Gusto! in Denver. He is also a graduate student at Southern New Hampshire University.

BIRTHS AND ADOPTIONS

’13 Karla Dietmeyer

and Gavin Colahan, June 3, 2017 Kaylee Helgemoe and Trent Kerrigan, Aug. 12, 2017 Ginny Morrell and Cody Miller, Sept. 2, 2017 Alyssa Schutter and Jordan Jackson, Aug. 19, 2017 Katie Schwartz and Ethan Vogel, July 22, 2017 Caitlin Shoemaker and Siphamandla Simelane ’14, July 8, 2017 Isaac Van Bruggen and Nate Warner, Sept. 10, 2017

’14 Cate Anderson

and Seth Duin ’12, July 29, 2017

Samantha Cuvelier and Brett Van Sloten, May 28, 2016 Meggie DeJong and Ben Bjertness, Sept. 2, 2017 Hannah Delzer and Paul Christenson, July 13, 2016 Emily Griffin-Wetzel and Perran Wetzel V ’13, Oct. 5, 2016 Rachel Roe and Joshua Stevens, June 23, 2017 Liz Sankey and Andy Ruud, Oct. 9, 2017 Eleanor Schuman and Aaron Mertzenich, June 23, 2017 Kiersten Swenson and Cory Kralovetz, June 24, 2017

’92

’03

Yuki Ip and Eric Monson, a son, Lars, May 2017

Auny (Kerndt) and Ethan Pole, a

’93

Lena (Johnson) and Aaron Pulver,

Adrianna and Andrew Mangion, a son, Miles, Oct. 2017

Rachel and Nathan Potter, a daughter, Levy, July 2016

’00 Jodi (Wenner)

and Dave Nixon, a son, Bennett Keith, May 2017

’02 Emma (Otis) and Matt Czechowicz, a son, Andrew Matthew, March 2017

daughter, Ingrid Doris, Nov. 2017 a son, Otis, March 2016

’04 Rachel (Miller) and

Dave Bleich, a daughter, Annika JeLaine, Oct. 2017

Sara (Goudschaal) and Terry Blessing ’05, twin daughters, Ada Marilyn and Edith Jean, March 2017 Elizabeth and Cody Tigges, a daughter, Eleanor Claire, Oct. 2016

’05 Kelly (Ries) and Chris Dahl, a son, Eli Joseph, Oct. 2015

’15 Ashley Brown

and Joshua Swanson, Aug. 12, 2017 Aime Karam and CeDric Smith, Sept. 1, 2017 Stephanie Lake and Nicholas Eliason, Oct. 21, 2017 Libby Marcus and Grant Bell, Jan. 7, 2017 Maddi Norell and Tanner Jaeger, Sept. 10, 2016 Caity Nowosatka and Caleb Sander, Oct. 8, 2016 Hayley Pirsig and Blane Maher ’14, July 29, 2016 Sophia Ristau and Henry Jungbauer, May 19, 2017 Jennifer Schmidt and Alex Lundell, July 1, 2017

Paula and Tom Berg, a son, Jackson Thomas, Oct. 2016

Erin (Radke) and Mike Flaherty, a son, Silas Timothy, May 2017

Lauren Mayfield and Mitch Gerads, a son, West, Sept. 2017

Jane (Hoover) and Viren D’silva, a son, Jonathan, born July 2016, adopted Nov. 2016

Becky (Wedekind) and Jon Hanson, a son, Isaac William, July 2017

Missy (Knott) and Shane Huff, a son, Sawyer Gregory, Aug. 2017

Amy (Kennedy) and Alex Junk, a daughter, Louise Alice, Sept. 2016

Brenda (Riha) and Jason

Sarah (Sawyer) and Mike

Mueterthies, a son, Walker Bradley, June 2017

Zahradnik, a daughter, Megan Kathryn, Dec. 2015

LUTHER MAGAZINE

45

ALUMNI NEWS BIRTHS AND ADOPTIONS

IN MEMORIAM

’06

Lynn and Ryan Ahlers, a daughter, Wynnifred, July 2017

Elizabeth (Spencer) and Hans Finanger, a son, Ruben Hans, Oct. 2017

Kristen (Strandell) and James Kesslar, a son, Nolan, Aug. 2017

’07 Christina (Gaard)

and Jamie Baumgart, a son, Andrew James, June 2017

Mandy (Wubben) and Joshua Weister, a son, Oliver James, Sept. 2017

Amy (Ekland) and Phil Worden ’08, a son, Baer, May 2017

’10 Anna Bullard

and Stephen Kaufman, a daughter, Ellie Beatrice, Nov. 2017

Lindsey (Palmer) and Tim Lund ’04, a daughter, Ella Renee, Aug. 2017 Megan (Anderson) and Joseph Beatty, a daughter, Hannah Marie,

Kristen (Lindholm) and Taylor Nelson, a son, Charles Eugene, Aug. 2017

July 2017

Amanda (Pohlman) and Michael Janke, a daughter, Hallie Jane, May 2016

Amanda (Schmall) and Brian Lorentz, a son, Luke, June 2017 Rachel and Matt Pyle, a son, Finnigan, Nov. 2016

Katie (Kruse) and John Rather, a son, Jack, May 2017 Anne and Brett Scheetz, a daughter, Luka Rose, Oct. 2017

Rachel (Little) and Sam Schmidt, a

’11 Michelle (Voigts) and

Ryan Bouslog, twins, a daughter, Sophie Joy, a son, Charles Jeffrey, July 2017

daughter, Abigail Gladys, July 2017

’08 Lisa (Savre) and

Matthew Busche ’07, a son, Micah Savre, Oct. 2017

Carol (Reece) and Mike Ludeking ’07, a daughter, Emily Louise, Feb. 2017 Allison and David Quam, a son, Bennett Matthews, Oct. 2017

Kelly (Wood) and Chris Robertson, a son, Noah Patrick, Sept. 2017

Kristen (Learman) and Thomas

’12 Mikaela (Belland) and

Nick Devine, a son, Quincy Thomas, Sept. 2017

Stengl, a daughter, Audrey Leigh, April 2016

Hilary (Garringer) and Alex Klyn ’14, a son, Griffin Alexander, Nov. 2017

’09 Andrea (Johnson) and

Paige (Ofstedahl) and Andrew Knight, twins, a daughter, Page

Alex Mierau, a daughter, Madelyn Mae, May 2017

Munya, a son, Andrew William, March 2016

Ashlie (Patten) and Cory Lee ’09, a son, Bode, Aug. 2016

’13

McKenzee and Alex Byom, a daughter, Larkyn Lee, June 2017

46

WINTER 2018

Professor emeritus Paul Solberg, 79, of Decorah,

Iowa, died Tuesday, Nov. 28. A graduate of Spring Grove High School, Solberg was a 1961 graduate of Luther. At Luther, he lettered three times in football and four times in track. He was on two Iowa Conference championship track and field teams, and the football team went 29-5-1 during his career. Solberg taught in Buffalo Lake, Minnesota, 1961–65, and returned to Luther to teach and coach in 1966. He earned a master’s degree in 1969 from Mankato State University and studied toward a doctorate at the University of Iowa. For more than 35 years, Solberg held positions as professor of health and physical education and assistant football coach, assistant track coach, head wrestling coach, and head baseball coach, also serving as head tennis coach. In addition, he was assistant director and then director of athletics. Under Solberg, the Norse wrestling program won three conference championships and had its first national wrestling champion. The Paul Solberg Wrestling Complex was dedicated in 2005. Solberg was IIAC Coach of the Year seven times. He entered the Luther College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001 and the NWCA Hall of Fame in 2005. He established and taught the Adapted Physical Education program that pairs Luther students with special needs children and it is still a favorite among students. Solberg retired with emeritus status from Luther in 2001.He is survived by his wife Carolyn (Myhre) Solberg ’71; daughter Jean Solberg ’85 of Dixon, Ill.; son Brian Solberg ’88 and wife Denise (Doyle) Solberg ’88 of Decorah; and a large extended family.

Professor emeritus Edward Anthony Kaschins,

78, died n Nov. 1, 2017, from complications of cancer at Mayo Clinic Hospital, St. Marys Campus in Rochester, Minn., with his wife, Elizabeth, and sons, Edward and John, at his side. Kaschins was born March 5, 1939, in Chicago. He earned a bachelor of science degree in business and economics from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1961 and a master of arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1964. He taught for two years at Luther, then left to earn a PhD from the University of Iowa. While pursuing his PhD, Kaschins was invited to return to the Luther faculty in the fall of 1970. He served as chair of the Department of Economics and Business and was the first recipient of the Dahl Chair in Economics, 1994–2004. He retired in May 2004 as an emeritus professor of economics. Kaschins was known for his sense of humor and for being the quintessential superfan: a lifelong Chicago White Sox fan, he later adopted the Cubs. He was a supporter of Luther’s men’s and women’s athletic teams and performing arts ensembles, Decorah High School co-curricular activities, and his son’s endeavors. He completed two Grandma’s Marathons in Duluth, Minn., and several shorter races during his jogging-running years. He enjoyed spending summers with family and friends at their cabin in Colorado’s Pikes Peak region and winters in San Diego’s Ocean Beach. In 1971, after settling into life in Decorah, Kaschins and Elizabeth became members of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. He also joined the Decorah Rotary Club, Oneota Golf and Country Club, the Norse Athletic Association, and became an on-stage member of New Minowa Players.

ALUMNI NEWS IN MEMORIAM Notices as of Nov. 19, 2017. Obituaries are posted at luther.edu/in-memoriam.

’37 Eleanor Rud

of Decorah died Aug. 15, 2017, age 102.

’39 A. Mark Call

of Quincy, Wash., died Dec. 13, 2015, age 98.

Ruth (Roseth) Heimdahl of Cottonwood, Calif., died March 31, 2016, age 96.

Irma L. (Butz) Lockrem of Thompson, Iowa, died Aug. 1, 2017, age 98.

’40 Mildred Jeanette “Milli”

Kenneth “Kap” Howard Kastner

Andrew H. Larsen of Rochester,

Karen Ruth Dahlen-Lacivita of

of Rochester, Minn., formerly of Lamberton, Minn., died Jan. 26, 2016, age 91.

Minn., died Oct. 13, 2017, age 88.

Kewadin, Mich., died Aug. 31, 2017, age 77.

Fern Murray (Johnson) Nelson of Woodbury, Minn., formerly of Joice, Iowa, died Dec. 19, 2016, age 88.

’48 Bernt I. Dahl Jr.

of Clifton, Texas, died Sept. 8, 2017, age 92.

Janet (Jerdee) Forde of Cambridge, Minn., formerly of Golden Valley, Minn., and Pequot Lakes, Minn., died Oct. 25, 2017, age 91.

Karen Fisher White of Rochester, Minn., died June 17, 2016, age 82.

Leigh R. Wold of Golden Valley,

Albertson of Spirit Lake, Iowa, died

Minn., died Aug. 3, 2017, age 86.

Sept. 1, 2017, age 74.

’54 Lavonne Adeline

(Hanson) Ramsay of Blaine, Minn.,

’56 Harlan Bang

’68 Mary (Martz) Nordstrom

of Albert Lea, Minn., died Oct. 1, 2017, age 86.

Rapids, Minn., died Oct. 21, 2017, age 94.

Minn., died Aug. 4, 2016, age 85.

of Marshalltown, Iowa, died Oct. 31, 2017, age 97.

’49 Marian Anderlik

Edgar L. Hanson of McMinnville, Ore., died Aug. 24, 2017, age 83.

Ramona Augusta Elizabeth (Schultz) Krambeer of Monona,

Richard “Dick” Larson of

’41 Ray E. Glynn

of Cresco, Iowa, died April 24, 2017, age 89.

Iowa, died May 23, 2016, age 95.

Montevideo, Minn., died May 28, 2016, age 92.

Phyllis (Dahle) Paulson of

Paul B. Nelson of Iron Mountain,

Wausau, Wis., died Dec. 12, 2016, age 97.

’42 Karen (Hansen)

Landerud of Stoughton, Wis., died July 29, 2017, age 95.

’43 E. Dovre “Bill”

Gottschalk of Austin, Texas, died May 28, 2017, age 93.

Joyce Marilyn (Smith) Headington Erickson of Harmony, Minn., formerly of Burr Oak, Iowa, died April 1, 2017, age 95.

Roy M. Johnson Jr. of Verona, Wis., died May 30, 2017, age 94.

’44 Iva E. (Peterson)

Martindale of Oelwein, Iowa, died

LaVern L. Johnson of Malden, Ill., died April 2, 2017, age 81.

’50 Margaret M. (Schroeder)

Paul Lewison of Anamosa, Iowa, died Oct. 30, 2016, age 85.

Ridgeway, Iowa, died Aug. 9, 2017, age 88.

Wayne J. Havey of Sheboygan Falls, Wis., died July 29, 2016, age 88.

Margaret Lois Herbrandson of Mounds View, Minn., formerly of Edina, Minn., and Brooten, Minn., died July 19, 2017, age 88.

Carl Oscar Myhre of Rolette, N.D., died Aug. 19, 2017, age 90.

Betty Jane (Moore) Wallis of San

Norbert John Nelson of Austin,

Antonio, Texas, died Sept. 15, 2017, age 93.

Minn., died July 13, 2017, age 92.

’46 Pearl J. (Thorson)

of Princeton, N.J., died Sept. 5, 2017, age 87.

’51 Robert W. Jenson

April 17, 2017, age 91.

Beatrice Marjorie (Johnsrud)

Bernice Ann (Blockhus) Baird

Stoddard of Amery, Wis., died Aug. 6, 2017, age 88.

of Reno, Nev., formerly of Ventura, Calif., died Sept. 5, 2016, age 88.

Judyth Ivyle (Thoma) Hahn of Anamosa, Iowa, died June 3, 2016, age 89.

’52 Kenneth William Gilster of Onalaska, Wis., died Oct. 3, 2017, age 87.

’47 Stella Mae (Cleveland)

Mary Ellen (Grue) Iverson of

May 24, 2017, age 89.

Robert Knutson of Longville,

Gilbertson of Mundelein, Ill., died

Elene N. (Hanson) Henrikson

Minn., formerly of White Bear Lake, Minn., died April 25, 2017, age 89.

Helen (Lund) Blekeberg of

Hot Springs, Ark., died Sept. 29, 2017, age 85. Minn., died Aug. 26, 2017, age 89.

Iowa, died Aug. 18, 2017, age 71.

Sept. 4, 2017, age 69.

Donald R. Skaar of North Oaks,

2017, age 89.

Victor Noel Olson of Van Meter,

Jenkins of Sioux City, Iowa, died

Mich., died July 2, 2016, age 91.

March 28, 2017, age 95.

Enockson of West Bend, Iowa, died

of Viroqua, Wis., died Oct. 26, 2017, age 82.

’58 Kenneth J. Anderson

of Chatfield, Minn., formerly of Rochester, Minn., died July 4, 2017, age 70.

’70 Joan C. (Biondahl)

’57 Jean Ann Ellefson

of Coon Rapids, Minn., died Oct. 19, 2017, age 82.

Amo of Grinnell, Iowa, died Sept. 7,

of

died Aug. 21, 2017, age 84.

Donald “Rufe” McDowell of Park

Minn., died Feb. 14, 2017, age 96.

’67 Michael R. Conradson

Santa Ana, Calif., died May 17, 2017, age 70.

Donald G. Gandrud of Glenwood,

(Telford) Johnson of Roseville,

’65 Bonnie (Sanderson)

of

Charlotte, N.C., died Aug. 31, 2017, age 85.

’59 Loren C. Behm

of Las Vegas, Nev., formerly of Decorah, died Oct. 12, 2017, age 84.

Roger Sherwood Edgar of Lakeville, Minn., died Oct. 19, 2017, age 80.

Ardis Georgianne Fiskerbeck Christen of Rochester, Minn., died Sept. 15, 2017, age 79.

Diane Marie (Iverson) Nordgaard of Red Wing, Minn., died Oct. 2, 2017, age 79.

Glen Awalt Rosendahl of Roanoke, Va., died Sept. 7, 2017, age 85.

’59 William “Bill” Tjaden

of Denver, Iowa, died Oct. 15, 2017, age 81.

’60 Adrian Ploegstra

of Elkhart, Iowa, died Aug. 17, 2016, age 84.

’61 Roger Allan Enge

of Vista, Calif., died July 26, 2017, age 78.

’72 Cletus L. Houdek

of Florida City, Fla., died Feb. 28, 2017, age 65.

’73 Phyllis Gray

of Decorah died Nov. 2, 2017, age 66.

’76 Bradford J. Krambeer

of Waukon, Iowa, died Sept. 2, 2017, age 67.

’77 Vincent Edward

Hamilton of Centerville, Bahamas, died Dec. 23, 2016, age 61.

Kyle A. Marquard of Greene, Iowa, died Aug 24, 2017, age 62.

’78 Ian Divertie

of Rochester, Minn., died Nov. 14, 2017, age 61.

’86 Janet Kay (Strong)

Helgerson of West Union, Iowa, died Oct. 27, 2017, age 55.

’91 Carolyn Koester

of West Union, Iowa, died Nov. 4, 2017, age 70.

’92 Valerie Kay (Sandman)

Sanders of Spring, Texas, died Aug. 27, 2017, age 49.

’93 Kirsten June (Tokheim) Wrieden of Keokuk, Iowa, died Oct. 3, 2017, age 46.

’13 Trygve Butler

of Fort Collins, Colo., died Sept. 13, 2017, age 26.

’62 Jane (Niemeyer) Lindner of Winona, Minn., died Dec. 13, 2015, age 75.

LUTHER MAGAZINE

47

AARON LURTH '08

COLLECTIONS

The artifacts and artwork in Luther’s Archives, Ethnographic/Archaeological Collections, Fine Arts Collection, Geology Collection, and the Hoslett Museum of Natural History give students access to original materials for instructional and research purposes.

THE ART OF CONSERVATION These objects are part of a collection of 76 ceramic figurines from the 1890s to the 1910s from the West Bengal region of India. When institutions on the East Coast decided to part with them, Destiny Crider, Luther’s Anthropology Lab and collections manager and museum studies instructor, saw an opportunity for student learning. Crider used the figurines in her spring 2016 Collections Management class, where students learned to catalogue, prepare condition reports, and research the objects by comparing their textiles, facial expressions, bases, and other elements with better-documented objects. The students determined that the statues depict common figures in India’s caste system and were intended for sale to tourists. This academic year, senior Frøydis Rønneberg, a double chemistry and classics major and museum studies minor from Oslo, Norway, has been working in the Anthro Lab to stabilize and repair the figurines. Rønneberg and Crider visited the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis to get tips on object conservation, and Rønneberg has been repairing shattered elbows and headless wet nurses ever since. Rønneberg wants to pursue an object conservation career. “I like chemistry, I like history, I like the arts, I like working with my hands. It just fit,” she says. “That was actually my reason for coming to Luther. In Norway, you have to choose. You do a bachelor’s degree in only chemistry or only history. You may take a class or two in another field if you’re lucky, but in general you can’t combine interests.” Rønneberg, who is in the process of applying for graduate programs in object conservation, worked on an independent study with professor of chemistry Brad Chamberlain last semester to create three labs for the Chemistry Department that focus on analytical techniques used in art conservation.

48

WINTER 2018

C A LENDA R

Mid-Winter Community Day

Luther Evening Prayer Service

Saturday, January 20 Luther College

Friday, March 23 Tuscany Falls Golf Club at Pebble Creek Goodyear, Arizona

Nassau, Bahamas Reception

13th Annual Kent Finanger ’54 Golf Classic

Tuesday, January 23 British Colonial Hilton Nassau, Bahamas

Saturday, March 24 Tuscany Falls Golf Club at Pebble Creek Goodyear, Arizona

Nordic Choir Receptions Thursday, February 1 St. Patrick’s Catholic Church Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Des Moines Area Lunch Connection

Monday, February 5 Augustana Lutheran Church Denver, Colorado

Friday, April 20 Windsor Heights Community Center Windsor Heights, Iowa

Saturday, February 10 Our Savior’s Lutheran Church Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Twin Cities Lunch Connection

Sunday, February 11 Christ the King Lutheran Church New Brighton, Minnesota Saturday, March 24 Bethlehem Lutheran Church St. Cloud, Minnesota

Symphony Orchestra Receptions Thursday, February 1 Valley High School West Des Moines, Iowa Sunday, February 4 Sun Prairie High School Sun Prairie, Wisconsin Monday, February 5 Stillwater Area High School Stillwater, Minnesota Tuesday, February 6 Grace Lutheran Church Eau Claire, Wisconsin

Friday, April 27 Roseville Lutheran Church Roseville, Minnesota

Nordic Choir Companion Tour A group of alumni take a tuk tuk (motorbike) ride to Hai Ho Family Restaurant in Ben Tre, southern Vietnam, during an alumni tour to Vietnam and Cambodia in November. From left to right: Rolfe Nervig ’70, Kirstin (Monson) Monick ’68, Duane Monick ’68, Vanessa Abbe ’04, Stefani (Monson) Lee ’62.

Des Moines Area Lunch Connection

Des Moines Area Lunch Connection

Friday, February 16 Windsor Heights Community Center Windsor Heights, Iowa

Friday, March 16 Windsor Heights Community Center Windsor Heights, Iowa

Twin Cities Lunch Connection

Twin Cities Lunch Connection

Friday, February 23 Roseville Lutheran Church Roseville, Minnesota

Friday, March 23 Roseville Lutheran Church Roseville, Minnesota

Wednesday, May 28— Friday, June 8 Throughout Germany to Prague, Czech Republic; hosted by President Paula Carlson and Rev. Dr. Thomas Schattauer

Iowa State Fair Booth Thursday, August 9– Sunday, August 19 Iowa State Fair Des Moines, Iowa

Sicily and Malta Tour Monday, October 7— Saturday, October 20 Hosted by Uwe Rudolf and Ruth Caldwell

Homecoming Friday, October 26– Sunday, October 28 Luther College Decorah

Luther alumni events are open to all alumni and friends of the college, including parents and other family members of graduates and students. Please note that some dates listed are tentative; specific information about upcoming events will be mailed or emailed to alumni, friends, and parents who live near the event sites. If you need more information or if you’re interested in planning an event in your area, call the Alumni Office at (800) 225-8664. We’d love to hear from you!

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Luther College, 700 College Drive, Decorah, Iowa 52101-1045

Then and now: These six women have been friends ever since they roomed together in Miller Hall, 1985–87. They reprised their first group photo some 30 years later while in Decorah for Homecoming last fall.

Front row (left to right): Michelle (Forde) Nesteby ’88, Wendy (Bockhaus) Lamos ’87, Julie (Egeland) Toomey ’87. Back row: Lisa (Elsinger) Finch ’87, Kristine Ellefsen ’87, Kim (Dieckman) Huffaker ’88.

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