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Viking alumni: From campus to community

Augustana has 4,163 alumni living in the Quad Cities area. 

Some are transplants who came for college and established deep roots. Others grew up here and stayed. 

Whatever their path, Augustana alumni are known for making an impact, for being leaders and for changing the Quad Cities community, and their workplaces, for the better.

Here are some of their stories:

Augustana Magazine

Aykeem Spivey

→ READ the latest issue of the Augustana magazine.

"I loved my internship experience at WQAD and so I decided to start my career here. That's where I think it made all the difference, because I fell in love with this community."

"It's the best job in the world, just working with the students, trying to get to know them as people. It's the relationship-building that has really helped me in my whole profession, and Augie did that for me."

"I was really all over the place when I was thinking about a career and it wasn't really until I got to Augustana that I was, like, you know what? I like writing."

"I think being a first-generation student and going through Augustana College 
really helped me see what I could offer in our community."

"We can take a bone and we can fix it, but understanding the person in total I think comes from that liberal arts part of Augustana's education I didn't realize I was going to get."

"The fact that I get to actually help people on a daily basis, to be able to make an impact in lives... When people thank me, it's the most humbling experience anyone can ever experience."

"This is one of the things that I think I learned at Augustana: Just the ability to say I can, I can do this."

"They really teach you can have more than one passion. If you look at my life now, those two areas that really got developed at Augie are speech pathology and the performing arts."

"...The inequities that are out there. Everybody doesn't have the same
chance and in a small way I just wanted to try to help fix that if I could."                                                 

"I would say just the confidence in being able to talk to adults. It just kind of gave you an internal confidence that I can talk to you because I went to Augustana College."