Higher education
Halloween to paying bills and shop- ping for groceries), and resettlement staff couldn’t address every question. For Tkachuk, that was a match. “Imagine going to a U.S. gro- cery store after you’ve been living in refugee camps where you had no choice of what to eat,” he said. “Cans of greens beans and corn are labeled with pictures of those vegetables. Cans of dog food show dogs. Cans of baby food show smiling babies. If you don’t read English, what are you supposed to think is inside that baby food jar?” His students are required to spend three hours—but tend to give six to eight hours a week—helping newcomers through these and other daily challenges. “It’s mutually beneficial, messy and something you can’t measure, Tkachuk said. “And this course is now a capstone for our core
curriculum.”
In Minneapolis, the Augsburg Col- lege Church Basketball Youth League involves about 1,000 kids from con- gregations in games where everyone gets equal playing time, points are given for good sports behavior and high-schoolers remain or become involved in a congregation. Augsburg also attracts new students. The league began 21 years ago when campus pastor Dave Wold became concerned “about youth who fell away [from a congregation] after confirmation” or lacked a church home. He gathered congregational youth directors, and they began holding games in dozens of unused church gyms around the Twin Cities, beginning and ending each game with devotions. “It’s not without problems because some people don’t under- stand what we’re trying to do,” Wold
said. “But someone once told me if you’re not having problems, you’re not reaching far enough.”
Walking humbly
Tickets on sale Oct. 31 West Des Moines, Dec. 2
and Waverly, Dec. 3-4 Order online at
www.wartburg.edu/christmas Call 866-339-7915
Reaching a lofty goal can take years, as it did for Jim Martin-Schramm, a professor of religion at Luther Col- lege, Decorah, Iowa, and research chair of its Center for Ethics and Public Life. But college staff say it’s largely through his efforts—although this humble Christian ethicist will tell you otherwise—that the school has a $3.4-million wind turbine project and a $750,000 grant from the Depart- ment of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America program to fund energy conservation work at Luther. “I beat the drum for many years, but this would not be happening with- out so many people at Luther, includ- ing President Richard Torgerson and the Board of Regents,” Martin- Schramm said. Staff at St. Olaf Col- lege, Northfield, Minn., which has long had a wind turbine, also helped by talking “with us about repair, replacement and more,” he said. What difference will it make? Not only does it lessen pollution and the draw on nonrenewable resources, but it will shave Luther’s $1 million a year electrical costs by a third. “There’s a payback of less than 10 years, and from 2003 to 2013, we hope to have cut our emissions by 40 percent,” Martin-Schramm said. “Torgerson talks about it in terms of modeling good stewardship for our students economically and environmentally.” Incidentally, Luther is one of only eight U.S. colleges to get an A on the Green Report Card.
This is just a glimpse of commu-
• Music scholarships up to $5,000 per year • Majors in music education, performance, therapy, church music • 14 music ensembles available to music and non-music majors
Wartburg College is a selective liberal arts college of the Lutheran Church (ELCA) 40 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
nity efforts at ELCA colleges and uni- versities. All are doing community- building work—and making it part of students’ service-learning experience. Future issues of The Lutheran will focus on other efforts. M
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