Luther College News

Luther junior Janet Irankunda has received the Krahn Family Student Life Service Award for her extensive contributions to student life at Luther through her service to the community. Irankunda, daughter of Clarise Kabasinga and Callixte Habimana of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, is a 2015 graduate of Coon Rapids High School. She plans to graduate from Luther in 2019 with a major in music and a minor in K-12 music education.
The Dorian Choral Retreat, in its inaugural year, will be hosted at Luther College from June 29 through July 1 with the culminating event, “Livssang,” at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 1, in the Center for Faith and Life Main Hall.

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.

Luther junior Rebecka Green from Decorah, Iowa, won a scholarship essay contest through the organization “Tolerance Means Dialogues” with her essay, “Seeking Intentional Pluralism.”

Six Luther College students have each received a $1,000 Steven Mark Anderson Scholarship for the 2018-19 academic year. Recipients of the scholarship were announced during the Luther College TRIO Celebration Banquet on April 11. Recipients include Italee Castellon, Anneleise Frie, Brooke Johnson, Marissa Kruse, Colten Lowley and Linh Luong.

Luther sophomore Joshua Burniece of Burnsville, Minnesota, won the 2018 Rosholt Distinction scholarship in Collaborative Keyboard Performance Sunday, April 29, in the amount of $1,250.

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.

Luther College junior Ananda Easley was awarded the Psi Chi Regional Research Award for her collaborative research on the psychological and social development that occurs in middle adulthood and how it correlates with alcohol use.

Including Academy Award nominated “Heroin(e),” and Luther College Professor Thomas C. Johnson and Luther Director of Visual Media Aaron Lurth’s new short film “Marieke,” the 2018 Oneota Film Festival will be held April 19-22, on the Luther campus and in downtown Decorah.