Category: Faculty Story

Three Luther College professors, Jane Hawley, Olga Michels and Holly Moore, were granted Luther’s Doris and Ragnvald Ylvisaker Endowment this spring.

Luther College awarded Ryan Torkelson, assistant professor of accounting, the Uwe J. Rudolf Endowed Faculty Fellowship for the 2018-19 academic year. This endowment honors Professor Uwe J. Rudolf for his dedication to Luther College, its students, the liberal arts and the Department of Economics, Accounting and Management at Luther.

This May and June, Luther College professor Dan Davis will take two different groups of Luther students on excavations: Robert Muller, Anna Luber and Zachary Ziarnik, will accompany Davis to Caesarea, Israel, where they will help launch a new, multi-year excavation, and Collin Carpenter and Alex Aakre will help Davis with artifact processing in Southern Greece. Davis is a classical archaeologist who focuses on both ancient shipwrecks and harbor sites in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions.

Using anecdotes from her personal life to encourage readers to become actively engaged citizens and human beings, Luther College Associate Professor of English Amy Weldon has released a new book, “The Hands-On Life: How to Wake Yourself Up and Save the World.”

Luther College Professor Richard Bernatz recently had two pieces published in academic journals. “The Math Inquiry Workshop” was published in Consortium: the newsletter of the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications, vol. 112, in the Spring-Summer 2017 edition, and “A statistical, spatial and hydrologic comparison of gauge-based and MPE-based rainfall measurements” was published in the Journal of Iowa Academic Sciences, vol. 124, in February 2018.

“Making Change,” a collection of works responding to issues of hatred and violence, will be on display in the Center for Faith and Life Gallery March 6 through April 6. David Kamm, Luther College assistant professor of art and Gallery Coordinator, created all of the works in the exhibit.

The Modern Language Association awarded the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English or Spanish in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures to Luther College’s Nancy J. Gates Madsen for her book “Trauma, Taboo, and Truth-Telling: Listening to Silences in Postdictatorship Argentina,” published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Luther College Associate Professor of Communication Studies Thomas C. Johnson, along with Aaron Lurth, director of visual media and art instructor, Brooke Joyce, associate professor of music and composer-in-residence, and Jack Ross, Luther class of 2017 and multimedia strategic fellow, will be featured on the Iowa Public Television series “The Film Lounge.”

Midwesterners think they are all too familiar with ice this time but year, but is there more to ice than just the freezing of water? Luther College Professor Emeritus of Physics Dennis Barnaal will go into depth on the fascinating aspects of ice at 3 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, in the Mott Room of Dahl Centennial Union as part of the Luther Emeriti Colloquium series.

After spending a year as a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department, Todd Green, Luther College professor of religion, will discuss his experience at 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 8, in Valders Hall of Science Room 206 on Luther’s campus. Victoria Christman of Luther’s Center for Ethics and Public Engagement will moderate the conversation.