Augsburg College - Augsburgian Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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FROM DEAN CHARLES ANDERSON: “On building bridges I would like to suggest two important characteristics of bridges - first, they provide avenues for movement and second, they bring and hold things together. Let me draw out the comparison between education and bridge building a little bit. One function of a bridge is to provide an avenue for movement. At a very basic level it might be agreed that education helps provide for mobility in one's life work. This mobility is seen as both vertical and lateral. The possibility of moving upward on the socio-economic ladder has always attracted some. Although this theme is muted today by the job market, it is still true that in general the college graduate will, in the long run. be better paid and have more personally rewarding work than a person not fortunate enough to have had the same opportunities. Senator Walter Mondale, speaking at Augsburg's commencement last May, told the graduates that they could expect to pay about $100,000 more in taxes than those without college credentials. Higher tax payments are hardly an incentive to study, unless one remembers that they are based upon significantly higher income. In many instances an educated person has developed avenues not only for vertical but also for lateral movement. More and more people are changing careers, not once, but several times during their lifetimes. If a school can concentrate not only on what to learn - the details and concepts of the various disciplines, but also on how to learn, the student will possess bridges to new endeavors. The complexity of modern technology and social organization, along with the fantastic rate of innovation and change, requires a developed capacity for innovation, an openness to change and a readiness for situations and problems which do not yet even exist. An educated person will have bridges for movement in a time when, as always, standing still means stagnation and death. We are trying - all of us - to build bridges that will take us, in some areas, from ignorance to knowledge, from not-knowing to knowing - avenues of movement from where we simply perceive something to where we understand it. Even if we grant, with the Apostle Paul, that our knowledge is imperfect, still it is better to know something - even in part - than to know nothing. To move again and again from ignorance to knowledge, from simple perception to understanding, is to cross bridges which are meant for us - and always there is the final promise - the moment when in Christ ‘we shall understand fully, even as we have been understood.' We’re talking about bridges - about ways in which we can move from meanness to wealth of spirit and from mere existence to life. In this place we have the opportunity to build avenues to new situations in which ideas are not ‘inert,’ as Whitehead put it, that is merely received - 'but where they are utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.’ We can move together over the span where we do more than simply fit ourselves for a world that is already, in some senses, hostile to human living - and to the space of condition - of - mind where we are aware of the world and its contradictions - 24

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“The Office of the Registrar serves a wide spectrum of the Augsburg community - faculty, students, ad- ministration. and staff. The office collects and maintains information vital to the education and administrative interests of the college.” -Bev Wegge ABOVE LEFT: Financial Aid Staff: ROW ONE: L TO R. V. Luthi. J. Reiten. A. Hanson. ROW TWO: L. Boethin. L. Carlson. T. Anderson. J. Goheen. H Johnson. BELOW FAR LEFT: Director of Admissions. D. Benzel. LEFT: Admissions Staff: CLOCKWISE: D. Benzel. H. Christensen. J. Harvey. K Lange. M. Mohr. R. Dahlof. ABOVE: Director of Admissions. H. Johnson. BOTTOM: Registrar. B. Wegge. 23

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and by naming it we act to transform it for the liberation of all persons. (Friere) Bridges for movement - just one more suggestion: each of us is afforded the opportunity to move to the point where we educate ourselves. 'The ultimate goal of education is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his or her own education.’ (Gardner) Learning is a solitary and difficult process - no friend, parent, teacher or colleague can do it for us. When we discover that the responsibility is ours and that the process is not limited to the schoolroom, lab, or four years of college - then we will have crossed a great bridge indeed. I want a bridge - a connection, not just a fleeting contact, with the past, for I am impoverished if I am alone. I want all of us to meet and think with the philosophers - to see how our time and theirs is alike. Is it not true, as Socrates noted, that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living?' And Plato - ‘He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age. but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.’ I need bridges to the masters of the spoken and written word, to those who can uplift my spirits and give shape to my dreams. Finally, and most important, I want the bridge for myself and you which we do not build, but which is offered to us - the bridge which joins us to God. This is why the words of II Corinthians 5 have a particular meaning when we are considering avenues for movement and means of holding things together. ‘All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.' Be reconciled - cross over. Why all of this concern about bridges to the past and present, to other persons, cultures, and thoughts? Because through connections with all before and around us and through the careful use and sharing of our own gifts we become, not simply the result of the past and the object of inexplicable and relentless forces working on us • but rather the makers of history, the shapers of the present - those who prepare for a future that is open and inviting. I am. in summary, calling for a community of educated persons marked by a network of bridges by which we can move and by which we are held together and share our gifts and ourselves. Reach up - and out - for it shall also be true of us. not once but many times, as John Bunyan wrote in another context - 'so he crossed over - and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.” Excerpts from Dean Anderson's opening convocation speech. September 10. 1976. 25