Company Profile
Augustana University
Company Overview
Augustana University is a community in which to create your bold future. Mission driven and guided by five core values, employees are engaged in fulfilling careers of meaning and purpose — dedicated to preparing students for leadership and service in their professions and communities. Here, faculty, coaches, administrators and staff are encouraged to work collaboratively, think creatively and pursue innovative ideas which support the progress and success of our Viking Bold: The Journey to 2030 strategic plan.
Mission
Inspired by Lutheran scholarly tradition and the liberal arts, Augustana University provides an education of enduring worth that challenges the intellect, fosters integrity and integrates faith with learning and service in a diverse world.
Vision
Augustana University aspires to become one of America’s premier church-related universities.
Core Values
Central to the Augustana University experience are five core values. The community lives them and honors them, and they infuse the academic curriculum as well as student life. These five values are identified below, followed by a phrase that sums up the essence of the word as it informs the university's mission. These phrases are, in turn, followed by how the value is expressed in the daily life of the university and its people.
Christian "As a university of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America"
- Centering on worship
- Welcoming all faiths
- Nurturing the search for a mature religious faith
- Relating Christian faith and ethics to learning and service
Liberal Arts "By providing an education of enduring worth"
- Affirming teaching and learning as central and lifelong
- Fostering a broad understanding of humans and their interactions
- Enriching lives by exposure to enduring forms of aesthetic and creative expressions
- Developing broad knowledge and skills crucial in a changing world
- Creating awareness of one's own religious and ethical beliefs and those of others
- Cultivating health and wellness
Excellence "By committing to high standards and integrity"
- Practicing faithfulness in teaching, learning, supporting, administering
- Nurturing potential
- Challenging the intellect
- Acting ethically
- Recognizing achievement
Community "By caring for one another and our environments"
- Responding to needs
- Respecting human differences
- Empowering one another
- Tending to the ecology of place
Service "By affirming that wholeness includes reaching out to others"
- Accepting the call to servanthood
- Promoting justice
- Integrating career and service
- Serving church and society
Rooted and Open
- Augustana is part of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU), which share a common calling, "Rooted and Open," to equip graduates who are called and empowered in order to serve the neighbor, so that all may flourish.
Company History
On June 5, 1860, Norwegian and Swedish church leaders met in Jefferson Prairie, Illinois, to form the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod. The controversial move paved the way for Professor Lars Paul Esbjorn and a group of followers to establish a completely new institution — the Augustana Seminary. Christened in the basement of the Norwegian Lutheran Church on Franklin Street in Chicago, the Seminary’s name was drawn from the Augsburg Confession in 1530, during the time of the Reformation. The document’s Latin designation was the “Confessio Augustana.”
Augustana Seminary held its first class on Sept. 1, 1860 — a founding date shared with Augustana’s sister-college, Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Today, the two schools are among the oldest of the 40 colleges and universities affiliated with the Lutheran Church.
By 1863, Rev. Tuve Hasselquist, president of the Augustana Synod, lobbied for another move. Hasselquist believed that moving the Seminary to a rural area populated primarily by Scandinavians would be in the best interest of the growing school. Plus, the Illinois Central Railroad promised land if the school relocated. After a vote, the Seminary moved from Chicago 100 miles southwest, to Paxton, Illinois, and Hasselquist became the school’s second president.
Craving their own identity, the Seminary’s Norwegian leaders made the decision to separate from the Swedes. They purchased a building in Marshall, Wisconsin, and in 1869 formed the Augsburg Seminary and Marshall Academy (photo on left). Wisconsin farmer and Norwegian immigrant Endre Endresen Eidsvaag gave a bell to the school. A year later, in 1870, the Norwegian Augustana Synod was founded. In 1875, Augustana Seminary moved from Paxton to Rock Island, where it has remained since.
By the late 1870s, the nation’s western frontier was bulging. In 1881, leaders of the Norwegian Augustana Synod made the decision to “follow the people” and settled in Beloit, Iowa. While in Beloit, the school reclaimed the name, Augustana Seminary and Academy. In 1884 with the institution needing more room, a group of Canton, South Dakota, citizens across the Big Sioux River pooled their money and bought the Naylor Hotel and offered the building to the Augustana Synod — with the condition that the school move from Beloit to Canton. The Seminary remained in Beloit and the name of the school was changed to Augustana College. By 1903, the College moved into a permanent home, its first in 43 years, on the east side of Canton along with the Eidsvaag Bell.
Twenty-five miles to the north in Sioux Falls, the Lutheran Normal School opened its doors in 1889. Housed in what is now known as Old Main, the Lutheran Normal School’s mission was to prepare teachers.
By 1918, city and business leaders lobbied hard for Augustana to relocate to Sioux Falls. Church leaders made the decision to merge Augustana College in Canton with the Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls under the name Augustana College and Normal School (ACNS). The Eidsvaag Bell was installed in the school's belltower. In 1926, "and Normal School" was dropped from the name and the site in Canton eventually became Augustana Academy. Despite the similarities in name, it was no longer affiliated with the college and ultimately closed in 1971. (In front of Ladies Hall. Inset: Ladies Hall and Normal School above.)
The 2010-11 academic year marked Augustana College’s sesquicentennial. Campus officials and the school’s nearly 1,800 students planned a number of commemorative events to celebrate the College’s 150th year. On June 5, 2010, Augustana President Rob Oliver and Augustana-Rock Island President Steve Bahls commemorated the 150th anniversary of the formation of the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod during a ceremony at Jefferson Prairie Lutheran Church in Poplar Grove, Illinois. Oliver and Bahls gathered at a table used by the original founders during the creation of the Augustana Synod’s first constitution to sign a Sesquicentennial Compact — a document that affirmed each school’s academic mission and desire to remain committed to the mission of Lutheran higher education.
On Sept. 1, 2015 — 155 years to the date of the institution's founding, the name was changed to Augustana University to better reflect the broadening of Augustana's academic mission.
Augustana’s storied past is just as exciting as its future. Over the next decade, the university will continue to implement its strategic plan — Viking Bold: The Journey to 2030 — passed by the university's Board of Trustees in December 2019.
For more information, please visit: https://www.augie.edu/about/history-augustana and https://www.augie.edu/about/strategic-plan-viking-bold
Benefits
Tuition Assistance, Life Insurance, Recreation Center, Event Attendance Access
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