Nearly 200 alumni and staff gathered in the Gavle rooms on Feb. 14 for the one-year celebration of Augustana’s Bold and Boundless strategic plan. The celebration highlighted key programs such as Augustana Possible and was followed by celebratory remarks from President Andrea Talentino.
The Gavle rooms were broken up into four zones to showcase the different stages of the strategic plan. The first zone included signature achievements of Bold and Boundless where Associate Vice President for Retention and Success Kristin Douglas talked about success teams.
Douglas said these teams consist of a peer mentor, first-year advisor, financial aid counselor, community advisor, well-being coach and a career/vocation coach.
“The student success team is really designed to help students get to know Augustana in their first year, but the success team changes over time,” Douglas said. “The people who students would be working most directly with will change from the time that they’re a First-Year student to the time they’re a junior or a senior.”
Zone one also included Augustana Possible, where Associate Director of Financial Aid and Augustana Alum ‘09 Tyler Vens spoke about the program. Over the past two years, Augustana Possible has provided students with financial aid allowing them to pursue an education.
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Finance and Administration Kirk Anderson also spoke on the campus master plan in this first zone. Renovations including Erickson B and D wings are a part of this plan, he said.
Within the next five to 25 years, Anderson said the Augustana community will see changes including new or newly renovated residential halls called “student villages.” This also includes plans for a new welcome center that would house admissions as well as a new bookstore, he said.
“Some of the plans would be to develop what we call student village across the street from the House on the Hill right now because that is a pretty large area of land that would allow us to maybe move some things around,” Anderson said. “Either renovating the existing places there or possibly even building brand new buildings from the ground up.”
Zone two, known as initiatives in motion, showcased various ideas that are soon to take place. Director of Counseling Bill Lavarone has been participating in Bold and Boundless to create a peer support recovery network on campus.
Lavarone said this program would allow students who have recovered to support other students who may be going through a tough time. The position of peer supporter will open this upcoming spring and the program will be running by the fall of 2025, he said.
“Our hope is that through having a peer support recovery network, we can engage the changes in help-seeking behavior that students are experiencing,” Lavarone said. “They’re going to peers more, they’re engaging in those outlets more, and so we can be more intentional and have peers that have lived experience and are current students engage them and talk about their recovery.”
Assistant Vice President of Marketing and Brand Communication Irene Boyrus also spoke at zone two about potential plans to reinvent the Viking Score. Boyrus said she has been working alongside the Center of Careers, Opportunities, Research and Exploration (CORE) through Bold and Boundless since she started at Augustana six months ago.
“We asked ourselves, ‘how do we reimagine the Viking Score to students?’ First, to ensure that we are leveraging all the things that engage Gen Z, that we know about our target audience,” Boyrus said. “What elements of gamification can we apply that will unlock access to skill-building activities?”
At zones three and four, faculty such as Director of the Entrepreneurial Center (EDGE) Doug Tschopp discussed ideas in development, such as pre-semester immersion programs and expanding impacting programming with family businesses and the EDGE center. Zone four also opened the floor for attendees to share their own ideas and contribute to the Bold and Boundless plan moving forward.
Executive Vice President for Strategy and Innovation Kent Barnds helped plan the celebratory event and said he is looking forward to seeing these initiatives come to fruition.
“As we look forward, there are a lot of exciting things on the horizon. The work of the design teams in re-imagining credit, thinking about interdisciplinary connection and also thinking about the reinvention of the Viking score to make it more meaningful. I think that we’ll ultimately see some initiatives surrounding those in the coming months,” Barnds said.
Tyler Vens previously worked for the Observer.