Campus update for March 20

March 20, 2020

Dear students,

Thank you for your patience as we worked out this new credit policy for room and board charges for the remainder of the semester.

Please read it carefully; your parents also will receive this information. We realize you will have questions: Send them to studentaccounts@augustana.edu.

Many of you had followup questions to yesterday's information about housing. We answered all that we could but if you are still unsure about anything, please contact residentiallife@augustana.edu for clarification.

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Many of you have written to say you miss Augustana. (Same to you!) But by now, you probably are getting plenty of messages from professors. They are training and gearing up for distance learning in a big way!

Here is a video that should cheer you up: Comm 101: Where did everyone go?

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Stay in touch, a message from Chaplain Richard Priggie

One of my favorite sports books is "Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior," by Phil Jackson, who had the good fortune to coach Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls to six national championships in the early 1990s.

Jackson writes, "Most leaders tend to view teamwork as a social engineering problem: take x group, add y motivational technique and get z result.  But working with the Bulls I've learned that the most effective way to forge a winning team is to call on the players' need to connect with something larger than themselves."

The current global pandemic invites us all to connect with something larger than ourselves, with some great purpose, some communal value that we all share, such as working for the good of the whole, whether the whole is Augustana College or our country or our fragile planet.

"This isn't always an easy task in a society where the celebration of ego is the national pastime," writes Coach Jackson. "Yet even in this highly competitive world, I've discovered that when you free players to use all their resources —  mental, physical, and spiritual — the joy they experience working in harmony is a powerful motivating force that comes from deep within."

How can you connect with something larger than yourself this weekend, this lifetime?

Pastor Richard W. Priggie
309-794-7478 
 
Please send comments, questions or suggestions to covid19info@augustana.edu.