The Chaplains’ Office plans to use the funds toward several on-campus events focused on social justice issues, sustainability, and faith. Plans for the grant include inviting both a national and local speaker to campus, hosting an art exhibit, and convening a panel of alumni whose jobs have social justice components to them.

The Philip N. Knutson Endowment provides special funding for programs, exhibits, and conferences that address timely life issues and concerns facing Christians in higher education, including the subject of human sexuality and the church.

Philip Knutson was deeply devoted to the education of young people and to fostering discussion of issues facing Christians in today’s world. After graduating from St. Olaf College, Knutson became a pastor, and then served in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Division of Higher Education.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

Darrell Jodock has taught at Gustavus since 1999.

Dr. Darrell Jodock, the Drell and Adeline Bernhardson Distinguished Professor of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College, will help administer a $150,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation’s Science for Ministry Initiative awarded to the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research.

Jodock, along with colleagues Charles F. Rodell and Thomas Sibley from St. John’s University and Donald Ottenhoff from the Collegeville Institute, will implement the grant over a three-year period to develop written materials that will help clergy integrate the findings of science with faith’s reasoning about “the way the world is.”

The grant recipients intend to select a team of scientists and theologians that will develop the written materials for clergy to use in congregational settings, sermons, adult education programs, as well as articles and essays written for external audiences.

The Templeton Foundation started the Science for Ministry program with the belief that pastors, in the course of their preaching, teaching, writing, and care, are key catalysts in developing a more fruitful integration of science and faith among their parishioners. The initiative invites organizations to develop programs that will help ministers and the congregations they serve to move away from simplistic solutions to the tensions between science and faith.

Jodock came to Gustavus in 1999 after teaching at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., from 1978 to 1999. Prior to 1978, Jodock taught for seven years at Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul. He also served for two years as a parish pastor on the staff of Grace Lutheran Church in Washington D.C.

Jodock is the author of several books including Covenantal Conversations, Catholicism Contending with Modernity: Roman Catholic Modernism and Anti-Modernism in Historical Context, Ritschl in Retrospect: History, Community, and Science, and The Church’s Bible: Its Contemporary Authority.

In 2007, Jodock was the recipient of Gustavus’s Covenant Award, which annually celebrates the efforts of individuals who have made distinctive contributions towards strengthening the partnership between the College and member congregations of the Gustavus Adolphus College Association of Congregations.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

Dwight Stoll doing work in his laboratory.

Gustavus Adolphus College Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dwight Stoll has been selected to receive a prestigious Faculty Start-Up Award for 2008 from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation in New York. Stoll is one of eight individuals to receive this $30,000 unrestricted grant given to faculty members beginning their first full-time academic appointment in the chemical sciences to help initiate their independent research programs.

Stoll, who will begin his first year of teaching at Gustavus this fall, plans to use the award to support the development of a new technique that will allow scientists to analyze low levels of important molecules in environmental and medical research.

“The Dreyfus Faculty Start-Up Award will provide exciting opportunities for students and will boost my own professional development as I begin my career at Gustavus,” Stoll said. “The award will provide critical support to my research students as they pursue cutting-edge problems in collaboration with researchers at the University of Minnesota, and allow them to travel to conferences to present their results on a national stage.”

Specifically, Stoll and his students will collaborate with researchers at Gustavus and the University of Minnesota who are studying the breakdown products of common personal care products (such as hand sanitizers) and agricultural chemicals (such as pesticides) and the effects of those products on various lakes and rivers in Minnesota.

Stoll and Gustavus students will also work with a University of Minnesota expert in lung diseases to better understand the causes of common lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic rejection after lung transplantation.

Stoll attended Minnesota State University, Mankato where he obtained a B.S. in plant biology and biochemistry. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in analytical chemistry. Stoll served as a visiting instructor at St. Olaf College during the 2005-06 academic year. More recently he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota in the departments of biochemistry, molecular biology, and biophysics.

The purpose of the Camile and Henry Dreyfus Foundation is to advance the science of chemistry, chemical engineering, and related sciences as a means of improving human relations and circumstances. Since its founding in 1946, the foundation has contributed more than $100 million to support these fields.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

Professor of Chemistry Larry Potts works in the lab with students.

Gustavus Adolphus College has recently been awarded $1 million for science education over the next four years from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Chevy Chase, Md.

Gustavus is one of 48 undergraduate institutions in the country and one of two institutions in Minnesota to receive a grant award from HHMI this year.

The award will support a variety of programs that seek to transform the first-year student experience in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) disciplines — particularly through collaboration between the departments of biology and chemistry.

“Gustavus’s proposal to enhance first-year student learning reflects a faculty commitment to transforming the curriculum, a support structure, and culture across STEM departments on campus,” said Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Mary E. Morton. “These innovative programs will prepare our students to be leaders in the sciences and in science education. This award also enhances Gustavus’s role as a resource for the region and state of Minnesota through a collaboration with high school science teachers in conjunction with our Nobel Conference.”

Some of the college’s planned initiatives through the HHMI grant include the following:

• Increased participation of first-year students in academic and summer on-campus research.
• Collaborative development of innovative introductory biology and chemistry courses that utilize visualization and imaging to allow students to “see” science.
• Establishment of a Visualization and Imaging Center to help realize curricular innovations at the introductory level, support interdisciplinary research, and ultimately pervade our STEM curriculum.
• Development of a new collaborative outreach program that utilizes the college’s two-day annual Nobel Conference to help high school science teachers from rural south central Minnesota and an inner city Minneapolis high school integrate resources and advanced content preparation related to the conference topic into their teaching.

The largest private funder of science education in the United States, HHMI’s grant program works to enhance science education for students at all levels. It has invested more than $1.2 billion in grants to reinvigorate life science education at both research universities and liberal arts colleges and to engage the nation’s leading scientists in teaching.

“The undergraduate years are vital to attracting and retaining students who will be the future of science,” HHMI President Thomas R. Cech said. “We want students to experience science as the creative, challenging, and rewarding endeavor that it is.”

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

At its December meeting, the Greater Gustavus Fund Board of Trustees announced an additional $50,000 challenge grant. The new grant will match new and increased unrestricted gifts of $5,000 or more made by May 31, 2008. Gifts at this level qualify for the President’s Leadership Circle giving society. The goal is to encourage 10 new members to join this society which currently has 54 members.

Unrestricted gifts to the Gustavus Fund play an important role for the College as they provide Gustavus students with needed financial assistance. “While supporting the Gustavus Fund may not be the sexiest thing, it is the true nuts and bolts of what makes a college great,” said Brett and Gretchen Taylor, parents of three Gustavus alumni and supporters of the Gustavus Fund. “Long ago, we decided to support education and Gustavus continues to surpass our expectations.”

For more information about this grant or to make a contribution call the Gustavus Fund office at 866-487-3863 or go online at gustavus.edu/giving.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

Rebecca Andert made a big impact during an internship in Rice Lake, Wisc. (Photo by Pat Christman of the Mankato Free Press)

by Robb Murray
Mankato Free Press

Looks like the Rice Lake site of Habitat for Humanity made a wise move in hiring Gustavus Adolphus College student Rebecca Andert as an intern last summer.

She did tons of research. She put together a business plan. She traveled around Wisconsin to tour other Habitat sites. She represented the Rice Lake site at a conference in Texas.

Oh, and on her first-ever attempt at grant writing, she scored $110,000 — enough money to allow the Rice Lake, Wis., site to start up a Habitat for Humanity Restore, a business that sells furniture and other materials for home building or remodeling at greatly reduced prices.

“It feels amazing, and I don’t think I understand the full impact of what I’ve done yet,” Andert said.

The higher-ups at Habitat, obviously, are thrilled.

“It’s the kind of project we never could have accomplished with just volunteers,” says Terry Warren, executive director with the Rice Lake Habitat site. “It’s the perfect project for a summer intern, and we were fortunate to get the perfect person.”

Andert, from Benson, Minn., came to Rice Lake through a program with the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs. The Rice Lake Habitat site applied for an intern from the consortium and ended up with her. The program is competitive: About 500 nonprofits apply for one of between 17 and 22 interns. About 500 students apply for the internships as well.

Getting the big grant wasn’t the first line of business for Andert. Her main job at first was to help research what it would take for the site to launch a Restore, which more Habitat sites across the country are using to have a steady income source.

While working on a viability study, she came across a grant program run through the Department of Natural Resources. The program sought proposals for waste-reduction projects. Andert put that on the back burner and decided to pursue it when the business plan was finished.

“I put everything together and came up with a final draft of the grant — 45 pages, single-spaced,” Andert said.

Without the grant, the Restore wouldn’t have happened — at least not yet. Habitat could have spent months or, more likely, years to raise the money it needed to start up a Restore.

The grant made things much easier for Habitat to start up a business venture that, in the end, helps reduce waste and offers goods to people at low prices.

Andert’s success with the grant is somewhat surprising. She had no experience writing grants, although she said she loves to write, likes doing research papers and has gotten quite good, she says, at writing papers that have many specific requirements.

Ultimately, every internship is about learning. And Andert says she learned plenty.

“I learned a lot about the structure of nonprofits themselves,” she said. “For a seemingly small nonprofit, I was like a paid person in the office.”

She learned grant writing, obviously, self-taught though it was. And she also learned something about the good that can happen when your heart is in the right place.

“A family from a local church adopted me,” she said. “I went to church with them got to know the whole family … I’m actually going back there for a dance recital of my host sister.”

Andert says she’s formed a bond with Rice Lake and the people she met. The feeling, Warren says, is mutual.

“We knew where we were headed, and basically she just ran with it for us,” Warren said. “It was just such a pleasure to have her here.”

The Rice Lake Habitat for Humanity Restore is set to open in February.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

The funded project is a multi-faceted, comprehensive program designed to significantly increase the number of underrepresented minorities graduating with a baccalaureate degree within the grant period. Examples of funded initiatives include community-building conferences, bridge programs, peer-to-peer learning and mentoring, undergraduate research opportunities, industry internships, and course development workshops.

The grant program’s first activities will take place at Gustavus during the upcoming Nobel Conference on Oct. 2-3. Eligible LSAMP students from each of the participating colleges and universities will attend the conference, featuring the world’s leading authorities on energy, and begin to establish a sense of community among the individual campuses through a number of planned activities.

Gustavus is one of five private colleges in the alliance, along with Augsburg, Carleton, Macalester and St. Olaf. The University of Minnesota is providing project leadership for the alliance and overall fiscal oversight.

Faculty or others who have questions about this grant program or the college’s participation in it, should contact assistant professor of biology and chemistry Brenda Kelly at bkelly@gustavus.edu or 507-933-7039. Kelly is serving as coordinator of LSAMP activities at Gustavus.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

Gustavus Adolphus College has been awarded a three-year, $29,003 CHOICES program grant from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Through the CHOICES program, the NCAA provides funding to member institutions to integrate athletics into campus-wide efforts to reduce alcohol abuse. Gustavus is one of 15 NCAA institutions nationwide to receive a CHOICES grant in 2007.

“This is the first NCAA CHOICES grant that Gustavus has received and we plan on taking full advantage of this support from the NCAA,” said Judy Douglas, Director of Alcohol and Drug Education. “We view this as a unique opportunity to partner with athletics in the development and implementation of alcohol-education projects that will help all of our students to make healthy and responsible choices.”

The goal of the Gustavus CHOICES program is to implement systematic across-athletic-team education and prevention initiatives that will include interactive alcohol education workshops for all teams, development of an athlete-based social norms campaign, and athletic team leadership and participation in promoting healthy lifestyle choices to the general campus population.

Gustavus has 25 intercollegiate varsity sport teams that are affiliated with the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) and the NCAA Division III. Gustavus has approximately 700 students who participate in varsity athletics, which is roughly 27 percent of the student body.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510