Another Echo Sample

Because Augsburg prides itself on its community engagement, leadership and vocation, it is gratifying to see Auggies who have long since graduated doing their part to spread Augsburg’s mission in their professional careers around the country and the globe.

Recently the Echo received a message from a retired Augsburg Professor, Lyla Anderegg, telling us about one Augsburg Alum in particular who is faithfully representing Augsburg’s mission in much warmer part of the country. His name is John Ennen and he is running a small chain of coffee shops in McKinney, Texas. In an interview with the Echo, Ennen tells about his experience at Augsburg, what brought him to Texas and his hopes for the future of his family business.

                Ennen is a Minnesota native who grew up in Minneapolis. His family owned and operated the Ennen Supermarket formerly located where the Target Center now stands in downtown Minneapolis. Ennen attended what is now Totino Grace High School and started his college career at the University of Minnesota.

Turned off by the extremely large class sizes at the University, Ennen transferred to Augsburg in 1981 where his younger brother Bill Ennen was also studying. He mentioned that he and his brother often engaged in friendly competitions to see who could earn the highest grades. Ennen specifically recalled a course they both took at Hamline through the ACTC program in which they each strived to score the higher grade. “We both got A’s,” Ennen said.

                Ennen studied business at Augsburg at a time when the business program was just starting out. In 1981, the business degree was possible largely in part to the consortium program (ACTC) which allowed him to take many of his business courses at other schools while still getting the Liberal Arts Foundation at Augsburg. Ennen also received minors in Psychology and Economics. Ennen attributes his psychology interests to his respect for Professor Anderegg, with whom he took five courses to receive his minor.

                “[Anderegg was] one of my favorite professors and the reason I hung around and got my minor in psychology…she had a great perspective on involvement in social causes,” Ennen said. “A lot of what she taught became a part of me.” Ennen mentioned that he and Anderegg still keep in touch and that she recently attended a surprise party of his in Minnesota.

                Ennen finished his degree at Augsburg in 1984 and took a job in Canon Falls for almost two years. He then sought an MBA in Texas which eventually brought him to the Historic town of McKinney. After receiving his Master’s degree Ennen entered the corporate world working for several Fortune 100 companies. He met his wife Mary while they were both working for the Four Seasons Hotel Corporation. 

                With the help of Mary’s background in Architecture, the Ennens developed and launched their first coffee shop in McKinney called Coffee N Cream. This coffee shop features high end coffee served fresh or in take-home bags as well as Blue Bell ^tm brand ice cream, a flagship brand of Texas. Coffee N Cream is also a friendly place to sit and enjoy free Wi-Fi internet access.

                Ennen says this whole coffee shop idea started because “ [he] could never get sweets in the afternoons” at his job downtown. “The concept grew and took hold [from there],” he said.

                The Ennen’s now have two Coffee N Cream locations, one in McKinney and one in Allen, TX. They are also in the process of opening a second shop in Allen.

                “We want to prove the concept with this new [Allen] store,” says Ennen, “in the hopes of breaking out of corporate America.” Ennen’s concept for Coffee N Cream is to create an environment “where neighbors and friends meet,” this is also their store motto.

                The Echo asked Ennen if Augsburg has influenced him in his business career and his mission for Coffee N Cream.

                “Undoubtedly,” Ennen said. “Augsburg’s always been important to me.” Ennen says that Augsburg has really stuck with him over the past twenty years. He and his wife are dedicated to serving their community through their faith and their involvement in charities. They see Coffee N Cream as a way to give back to the community while becoming an important part of the community.

                Ennen looks to his father and grandfather’s example when running his business and wants to really bring the “family into [his] family owned business.” The Ennen’s have been married for nineteen years now and have four sons, Zachary, Jacob and twins Tanner and Garrett. Ennen’s Brother Bill, is now in the commercial real-estate development business in Naples, Florida.

                Coffee N Cream features the work of local artists and musicians in their shops and also started  a Beans for Troops program last holiday season where customers could purchase one-pound bags of their premium coffee to be shipped to the troops in Iraq. 

                The Echo asked Ennen if he had any advice for Augsburg’s graduating class this year.

Ennen replied, “[Don’t] be afraid to really pursue something that inspires you…[don’t] listen to nay-sayers,” and “step out and take that risk for reasons only you understand.”

                

Augsburg Professors at the Forefront of Space Physics

Professors Mark Engebretson and David Murr are continuing to put the Augsburg Science Department on the map through their extensive research on space physics. Engebretson and Murr are being sponsored by the National Science Foundation and NASA to research the patterns and impacts of weather in space. Their studies have been recognized internationally at world conferences, as well as locally in a recent Star Tribune feature. Engebretson has also had a peak named after him in Antarctica for the research he has contributed in that region and in his field (you can look it up on Wikipedia!).

Engebretson has been interested in space physics since graduate school and had the opportunity to continue his studies when he became a staff member at Augsburg. He met up with Murr while Murr was still in high school as a part of a science-related mentorship program. Murr then came to Augsburg and studied space physics with Engebretson for four additional years until he graduated in 1992. Murr was student body president in his Augsburg years and also a writer for the Echo. After he graduated, he joined the Peace Corps, received his PhD in space physics and after working for the State Department, ended up back at Augsburg to return to his space research with Engebretson.

The field of space physics sounds a bit intimidating, but what Engebretson and Murr really focus on is space weather, that is, patterns of waves of electrons, protons and magnetism from the sun that shoot through space. You can almost think of it as magnetic fronts that originate from the sun and depending on the size, can travel through our solar system and affect the planets.

So why do they study space weather and how does it affect you? The answer is mainly through satellite technology. These surges of radiation from the sun can blow out GPS data for pilots and drivers, it can knock out your satellite TV and radio signals, but most importantly it can affect the power grids of cities in vulnerable locations.

An example of this happened in 1989 when a giant wave of radiation left 130 million people in Quebec without power. The surges can knock out large networks of transformers, if power grids are not strategically networked to try can contain the damage. The surges also pose a significant threat to the navigation systems in planes flying over the poles.

“One of the biggest threats of space weather,” says Engebretson, “is that it’s just going to knock out one of our satellites.” In a society that is becoming increasingly reliant on satellite technology, it is important to know how to protect our investments in space from radiation surges. The study of space weather actually began initially in order to engineer better space instruments.

 “If you’re going to send people to the moon, you have to know something about the environment you’re going to be exposed to,” says Murr.

Because the surges are so powerful and so far impossible to harness, Engebretson and Murr are working to develop more sophisticated ways to predict when and where the surges coming, thus enabling countries to better prepare for imminent danger. They likened their research to hurricane research. “The gulfstream occasionally has hurricanes…and you like to know when the hurricane is coming,” says Engebretson. “Satellite operators like to know when severe weather is coming from the sun [so] they can turn down the voltages and make it less likely that the satellite is going to be damaged.”

The ways that space physics can affect you have to do with the magnetosphere around the Earth.  “Basically the magnetosphere is invisible,” says Engebretson, “so we have to figure out how to study invisible things.” But fortunately for them, there is one way you can observe the magnetic waves: auroras. Auroras are ever-present rings of electrons coming down from outer space and crashing into the earth’s atmosphere. When the electrons collide with the atmosphere they create the ambient colorful light show that most people associate with them.

Engebretson and Murr have received a million dollar grant just to monitor the activity of these auroras through instruments that they have placed in the arctic areas of Northern Canada. Murr and Engebretson actually have the second largest collection of instruments, second to a Japanese researcher, to collect data about these auroras. They also collect data from satellites in space.

Through the culmination of this and other data, Murr and Engebretson have come to the conclusion that space weather, like earth weather, has a cycle. Earth’s weather cycle lasts one year, but the sun’s weather cycle lasts about 11 years to repeat.

“At some rough level,” says Murr, “there’s the seasons of space weather…one’s more active and one’s quieter, but just like [Earth] weather… you’re more likely to have storms during one season than another, but every once and a while you get a freak snow storm in May.”

The two have also been involved with research that looks at sunspots as an indicator of particular kinds of weather. “Sun spots are kind of rough indicator of solar weather. They’re not what drives it,” says Engebretson, but they are the only thing you can see from the ground.

There isn’t as much variation in types of weather in space like there is here with different types of precipitation. The main variations of solar weather pertain to the size of the radiation storm and the location where the storm will affect Earth. Their main goal is to be able to predict with greater precision the magnitude and location of a radiation threat.

Murr noted the technological irony that tends to stifle their progress. “I think one of the interesting things is that you have this 11 year cycle of activity and at the same time you have this increase in technology that’s continuously going on…the fact that it’s eleven years, it’s just long enough that people can forget about it. Each time we get surprised.”

What Murr is saying is that as technology advances and becomes more complex it becomes harder to cover all the areas of vulnerability within our technological world. Every time the most turbulent part of the solar weather cycle peaks, there is new technology that we don’t know how to protect. Murr used the example of how the surge in GPS usage in the past few years that could cause a potential problem during another major radiation surge because the technology was not as wide spread during the last solar cycle.

Engebretson and Murr are on the forefront of their field, but they say that overall, their area of study, given its global nature, is very interactive. They look forward to future international conferences where they share their findings with other countries. But in the long run, Augsburg has served as a nurturing home for their studies. As Engebretson said at the start of our interview, they are not just teachers, they get to be ‘real scientists’ as well.

 

 

Michele Bachmann says Latin on money is anti-American

This is not a real news article, this was for the 2009 Joke Edition of the Augsburg Echo. 

In addition to Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s recent support of an amendment that would ban the U.S. from ever replacing the U.S. dollar for foreign currency, the well-revered Republican Congresswoman is also authoring a bill that would ban the use of Latin on the current United States currency. Bachmann defends her proposed bill, which has yet to receive any approval from introductory committees, saying that she is tired of U.S. citizens being taken advantage of by the illegal Latino community in this country and is calling the use of Latin on U.S. Currency “anti-American.”  

            The bill would seek to ban the line “E Pluribus Unum” from the U.S. quarter dollar, meaning “out of many, one.” This phrase, added to U.S. currency in 1795, was first coined by the Virgil (famous for the Aeneid) in his poem, Moretum. Other phrases that would be omitted by the bill would be “Annuit Coeptis” and “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” meaning “he approves our undertakings” and “new order of the ages,” respectively. Both phrases were also coined by Virgil and are included on the one dollar bill inside the Great Seal of the United States. Details on how to reconcile the inclusion of Latin in the Seal, but not on the dollar, have yet to be released.

Bachmann declined to comment on this discrepancy, but instead stated, “If the illegals won’t pay our taxes, we won’t be paying homage to their ancestors. Our forefathers wrote the Constitution in English for a reason,” says, Bachmann. Also, in the bill is a clause that would change the official pronunciation of ‘tortilla’ to include the phonated ‘L’ sound.

            Bachmann, who claimed earlier this year that the United States is running out of rich people, is certainly appealing to her staunch constituency of the dying affluent nature. Certainly the liberals can identify with protecting an endangered species.

Bachmann first received wide-spread press coverage when she questioned the patriotism of the now President Barack Obama on Hardball with Chris Matthews. More recently Bachmann channeled her efforts towards stopping other anti-American legislation such as universal health care for children, which is obviously just a ploy to cheat hard-working Americans out of their tax dollars so illegal immigrants can have free health care, claims Bachmann.

With regard to her most recent bill on anti-Latin currency, Bachmann is gearing up for harsh opposition. “This will be a tough battle, but we have to show those Latin-loving liberals that we Patriots have will not stand for this system abuse,” said Bachmann earlier this week. Afterwards she was seen posting a “Vote Democrat, it’s easier than working” bumper sticker on the back of her limited edition Lincoln Navigator.

What’s next from the Minnesota Congresswoman? Besides touting to the New York Times that global warming is nature’s fault, our capitol correspondents say there is talk of a birth certificate verification process for imported vehicle purchases, international money wiring and employment in the restaurant industry. Will any illegal immigrants be able to free-load off the United States tax dollars in this country? Not under Rep. Bachmann’s watch. 

Jungle Sheds Sinister Light on Hitchcock

Coming from a theater student who knows little about the history of film, Hitchcock Blonde (written by Terry Johnson, Directed by Joel Sass) at the Jungle Theater was an enlightening glimpse at the contributions Alfred Hitchcock made to the movies we see today.

This play about film employs a unique integration of film into theater that goes beyond moving pictures projected on a screen. The set (design by Joel Sass) transports the audience to three different places at three notable points in time. Scenes in 1919 show Hitchcock when he is just starting out. The scenes in 1959 show Hitchcock after his recognition as a pioneer of the film genre. Finally, scenes from 2003 show how film buffs of today are still fascinated and influenced by the work of Hitchcock in both the artistic and personal realms.

                Warning, plot details are revealed in this review, but we don’t spoil the ending.

                The show begins in 2003 with the story of Nicola (Heidi Bakke) and her Professor, Alex (J.C. Cutler). Alex takes young Nicola as his apprentice to restore his most recent discovery: never released Hitchcock films from Hitchcock’s personal library. He coaxes Nicola, despite her initial reluctance, to come with him for a summer in Greece to restore the films.

Though the two do discover some of Hitchcock’s previously undocumented film breakthroughs in the process, the disturbing motivations behind Hitchcock’s signature blonde ingénues begin to transcend into the mind of Alex. As Nicola and Alex dissect the lost archives, they catch a glimpse into the psyche of Hitchcock where an allusion can often be more desirable than the real thing.

                Playwright Terry Johnson emphasizes the autobiographical nature of Hitchcock’s works and sheds lights on a man who preferred to remain behind the scenes. The play also pays tribute to Hitchcock’s technical breakthroughs in the film genre. For those who know more about film, perhaps less of the technical jargon will fly over your heads. But understanding the film vernacular is not necessary to comprehend the motives of the playwright or the director.

                The lighting (design by Barry Browning) in the 1959 segments portrays the dramatic tones of this film era. The shadows and contrasts are sharp and dramatic, highlighting specific elements on the stage much like frames of film distinguish one shot from another. There is also a distinct sinister tone in the lighting that is emphasized by the chilling performance of Hitchcock himself (Tom Sherohman).

                Heidi Bakke’s portrayal of Nicola makes the character extremely easy to fall in love with, as the script demands. The script is a pleasant mix of education and entertainment that is likely to engage a wide variety of audiences.

                The show runs through March 8 at the Jungle Theater. More information on this play and ticket availability can be found at jungletheater.com. 

Online Journalists Fight for Equal Status in House

This article was originally featured in the Augsburg Echo

A battle over access to the Minnesota House of Representatives has been waged by the Online Media community in the Twin Cities after finding that on Feb। 9 of this year, Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein was called on by President Obama at a White House press conference। This display angered many Minnesota online journalists who currently do not have the same privileges in the Minnesota House of Representatives that Stein was awarded in the White हाउसCurrent House policy in Minnesota prohibits online-only media from obtaining the same press credentials as their colleagues who work in television, print, or radio।

The current House Majority Leader, Rep। Tony Sertich, DFL, told the Minnesota Independent last week that the House doesn’t have a “fully defined policy of what online media is. If it’s somebody who designs their own Web site and comes down to the Capitol… we could be deluged with www.anybody.com walking through the door saying, ‘I’m the online media, let me have floor access.’ You think the House chamber is a ruckus … now, wait till all the bloggers get here and show up en masse.”

Despite opposition from House leaders, the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists released a formal statement in support of Online-only media equity, saying that “If the Legislature is concerned about the conduct of individual reporters, existing rules and procedures can be utilized। If the problem is one of space, then the criteria for distributing media passes should be equitable for all journalists, not arbitrarily discriminatory based on an outlet’s medium.”

Independent online journalist and producer of MyFreeRadioNation।com, Martin Ownings, shared his experience at the Minnesota House with KFAI Radio news this week. On two separate occasions, Rep. Sertich’s staff asked Owings leave events which did not require any press credentials for admittance. Owings says there are no current rules restricting cameras at these types of public meetings, but that the discomfort with the presence of his camera was palpable. When Owings resisted their request he said he was told,” if you don’t come with me, I’ll have you physically escorted out.”

“A representative from the Sergeant at Arms office approached me and said ‘You’re gonna have to come with me’,” said Owings। When asked if Owings thought the reason for his dismissal had to do with his well-known online video blog (or vlog), he replied with a resounding “yes.”

Last week, several members of the online media community gathered to lobby the Minnesota House of Representatives for equal access to press credentials for the House press conferences। Owings, who attended the hearing, said that the sponsor of H.R.A 007 (the rule amendment that would include online media in the House) was temporarily dismissed because the chief sponsor, Rep. Steve Smith, Rep., could not attend the proceedings that day. Owings has received no personal responses to his calls to Rep Sertich, but his legislative aide, Lisa Radick, told Owings “that they are trying to do everything they can to come up with some rules that would pertain to online journalists.”

Owings maintains that this issue “transcends political ideology and speaks to our first amendment rights to freedom of the press.” He added that “these are public institutions that, for better or worse, need to be transparent in their dealings,” and that the House members’ current policy is an “injustice to the people of Minnesota.”

Dr. Dale Taylor Talks Music and the Brain

Dr। Dale Taylor, the Interim Music Therapy Director at Augsburg College, will be holding a seminar on Music and the Brain on March 25 at 3pm on the Augsburg campus. While concrete location and format of the seminar are still being decided, the seminar will focus on explaining the biomedical theory behind music therapy. In addition to Dr. Taylor’s extensive research background in the area of music and the brain, he also ran his own practice for many years and taught music therapy at the University of Minnesota. In preparation for this event, Dr. Taylor spoke with The Echo about the fundamental components of why music therapy has proved successful.

Dr। Taylor first noted the advantages of using music, rather than simple speech commands, to engage the brain during speech therapy. He went on to explain how using music therapy for speech development works by using a complex stimulus (music) to activate more areas of the brain than only talking. “Any use of language symbols will activate certain specific parts of the brain such as the visual memory centers, the primary auditory cortex, and then the main language centers,” says Taylor, “but when you add music…it uses any and all of those structures plus a lot of [association and cognitive area] that is not activated when music is not there.” This fact, Dr. Taylor says, has been confirmed through the use of brain scanning technology.

Dr। Taylor also added that research shows a positive correlation between the total amount of brain activation during an exercise and the success of completing the goals of that particular therapeutic exercise effectively.

But how and why is music so effective at activating brain functions? Dr। Taylor says research shows that “when music is played, even if [the person is] just listening to music, but certainly when the person is actively involved in the music production, the auditory cortex in a sense broadcasts that information to the rest of the brain and the different parts of the brain respond according to their normal jobs.” In this way, Taylor explains, “music changes the neuro-impulse pattern of the brain,” like generating an external heartbeat for the body.

Dr। Taylor refers to the common foot-tapping reaction people have when music is played. He points out that many people respond this way without even being aware of it and without trying to consciously control it. This foot-tapping is an example of how the auditory cortex, which is responsible for creating the concept of sound in our minds, can activate other parts of the brain which then respond through their respective functions. In this case, the foot-tapping would be attributed to a response from a signal sent to the motor cortex.

Essentially, the richness of most musical stimuli (as opposed to more common simple stimuli) causes a chain reaction initiated from the auditory cortex in the brain that increases total brain activity। The effects of this increased brain activity allow easier access to important brain functions, like critical cognition, and in turn help patients access their brain’s full operating potential. In this case, one can see why the brain/muscle metaphor is so appropriate in explaining brain functioning; the more you work out your brain, the stronger it gets.

There are a wide range of treatment areas where music is utilized for therapy and rehabilitation including cognitive therapy is the case of memory loss, speech therapy, physical therapy and chemical dependency treatment।

Dr। Taylor explained that “in working with people who have cognitive disabilities or learning disabilities, or neurological disorders…without music they may be calling upon certain parts of the brain that may be damaged or may be decreased in function…but when we involve them in music, the brain can re-learn those tasks using much more brain tissue than it would normally be using without the music.”

He also mentioned the issue of functional neuro-plasticity, which basically translates to your brain’s degree of flexibility in handling tasks। Some therapeutic methods are designed to increase this flexibility of the brain among the different cognitive structures. By increasing this flexibility, Dr. Taylor says we can “transfer jobs that are normally done in damaged parts of [the brain] to undamaged parts…[shifting] jobs to parts of the brain that are functioning normally, even though those parts would not normally be involved in that task.”

Chemical dependency treatment differs slightly from other music therapy treatments in that the activities are directed more towards distracting the brain from damaging thoughts and redirecting the source through which the brain receives gratification for certain cravings।

“With chemical dependency, our goals and objectives primarily are to get the person to realize that they can function well without the reliance on the chemical dependency without needing to escape to the altered state that chemical dependency give them,” says Taylor।

Another technique Dr। Taylor mentions is used by some music therapists is encouraging patients to use “music to enhance the brain’s own production neurotransmitters which stimulate parts of the brain that generate feelings of pleasure…and those neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin will do somewhat the same thing as the illegal drugs or pharmaceuticals that people take.”

Another tactical variation a music therapy involves the type of music a therapists uses to achieve a particular result। Dr. Taylor says, “For instance if we’re working with someone with a gate disorder, all we need is [a click] to help organize the rhythm and tempo of the patient’s responses. However, when we hear and entire symphony or an entire orchestra playing symphonic progressions of chords, that will not only involve the parts of the brain that have to do with music, but it will also activate long and short term memory and the limbic system of the brain.”

The limbic system controls the brain’s conscious and unconscious emotional responses to outward stimuli through changes in chemical production। In this way, music directly affects an individual’s emotions because these chemicals change when music stimulates a change in our outward neuro-impulse cues.

In addition to an apple a day, Dr. Taylor advises the use of music as a preventative measure to control stress and to promote good emotional health. For more information on this music therapy research, visit musictherapy.org or other resources are available in the Lindell Library.

Private Review, Silenced Protest

On Saturday, October 4, the Board of Regents held a private meeting in which they voted ‘yes’ to extend President Paul Pribbenow’s contract for another six years। This decision took place after the faculty had voiced concerns about the Board’s lack of consideration for faculty input in the decision-making process.

In an interview with President Pribbenow just after the decision was made, Pribbenow was asked to comment on the review process which led to his contract renewal and his thoughts about the faculty and students’ roles in such decisions।

“It’s not my process,” Pribbenow said “[The Board’s] contract with me is not a public deal…we have to draw some lines of governance, it’s about how we deal with authority।” Pribbenow’s understanding is that the board’s job is to act in Augsburg’s best interest and that they must review “all aspects of the college, not just faculty concerns.”

He also mentioned that faculty had more input in his review than other presidential review proceedings in the past। This was the first year that the Faculty Senate Chair was asked to give input for the review and two other faculty members, Robert Groven and Matthew Rumpza were also consulted.

In past reviews, Pribbenow said the review was conducted solely by the Board of Regents using a rubric-style evaluation where the President would be rated on specific areas of performance on a scale of 1-5।

When asked if Pribbenow thought there should be further consultation of the faculty and student body in the review process he responded that he agreed their opinions should be heard, but that was why they included the Faculty Senate Chair as a representative of those opinions। Faculty Senate Chair Vicki Olson confirmed that she was never explicitly asked to consult her fellow senators for their input.

“Opening up [the process] more generally is turning the review of the President into a public opinion poll,” said Pribbenow।

Faculty member, Kathy Swanson, in an earlier interview with Echo said “[she wished] there had been opportunities for extensive conversation among representatives of many constituencies…[Faculty] Senators did not seem to know of the evaluation by the Senate President until [Olson’s] response to the Board had been written and the process was nearly completed।” The President responded that this was “not something that gets announced.”

There was, however, and e-mail sent out by Board Member Mike Good on October 1, three days before the vote to renew Pribbenow’s contract। Good stated that “Although the Board understands that some may differ about who should participate in the process, it has no reason at this time to consider any changes in this year’s process.”

According to Article IX of the Augsburg Faculty Handbook which states that “The Faculty will consult with the Board of Regents, at the discretion of the Board of Regents,” there has been no apparent violation of Augsburg’s officially observed policies। Despite this careful observance of the verbiage, Good still prefaced his e-mail by saying there had been “some apparent confusion among some faculty members about the recent performance review process.”

Though several members of the faculty told the Echo that they had concerns about the amount of say they were given in the review, they asked that their concerns remain anonymous.
In an e-mail from Faculty Senator, Christina Erickson, Erickson noted that the faculty had two ways by which they could express their comments and concerns about the review of the President to the Board। They could either send their comments to their division chairs who would then forward them on to Chief of Staff, Christine Szaj, or they could send their comments to Szaj directly. Szaj would then report these concerns to the Board.

Faculty Senator, Mark Engebretson, when asked what the faculty’s specific concerns and comments were, replied, “We haven’t seen those letters [or] a summary of them.”
According to Engebretson, the channels that were set up through Szaj for reporting faculty concerns during the review process were not linked to the Faculty Senate। “No one came up and volunteered to me any of their concerns,” said Engebretson, and “I didn’t go knock on doors asking ‘are you concerned?’”

Engebretson express his confusion when asked whether he thought Augsburg faculty felt comfortable expressing their opinions on these presidential matters Engebretson replied, “That puzzles me, something is causing some fear। Augsburg speaks out much more than other places and that’s our strength. We want to be the kind of place where people can express their frustrations.”

But Engebretson offered his best guess concerning the current stifled discourse on campus। “Whenever there’s a president change, there’s a change in the comfort zone… the perception is that things are broken, but the structure hasn’t changed a bit.” Engebretson also added, however, that “the perception matters, [we] can’t just say there’s no problem…but how are we going to find out things if you don’t talk to [the Senators]?”

In an e-mail response to this same issue Professor Kathryn Swanson responded, “While it is true that there have been many colleagues who have disappeared from campus in the past few years, responses of "I prefer not to" and "I dare not" (respond) remind me of Bartleby in Melville's story and the compact majority in Ibsen's, Enemy of the People. These responses are worrisome because they indicate a chilly climate rather than an open environment, inviting to varying and differing responses. Indeed, this questioning of process and assumptions underlies the very model of critical thinking we work to inspire in our classrooms. Instead, we are reminded of Senator Bachman's recent (and regrettable) call to "make a list" of colleagues who seem out of sync. I argue that, in fact, these colleagues who do dare to ask questions and request authentic transparency represent the spirit of free inquiry that is at the heart of all academic work.”
The concerns that were reported to the Echo anonymously were from tenured and non-tenured faculty and addressed the President’s managing style, ability to raise funds for the college, a $400,000 renovation of the President’s house and a budget deficit between six and seven hundred thousand dollars for the 2007-2008 fiscal year।

Financial Services Director, Tom Haglund, commented that “[Augsburg] is basically a break-even institution” and that President Pribbenow was hired specifically for his fund-raising abilities। When asked about the budget deficit for 2007-2008, Haglund responded that under President Frame there was a perceived surplus. Haglund was hired in October 2006, three months after President Pribbenow. Haglund said that over time the new accounting team under Pribbenow “chipped away” at the perceived million dollar surplus which “evaporated under different scrutiny.”

The funds allocated for the $400,000 renovation of the President’s mansion were approved in early 2006 when the million-dollar surplus was still perceived to be real.
Engebretson does not directly blame Pribbenow for the current financial concerns. “Whenever the messenger delivers bad news, he [has] to beg not to be beheaded…Pribbenow has been the bearer of bad financial news.”