Lutheran University Research Articles

Impacts of a continued Mathematics Education program on teaching practice in public schools of Jaguariaíva, Paraná

This article investigates the effects of a continuing education program in Mathematical Education for early elementary school teachers in Jaguariaíva, Paraná. The research, carried out within the Postgraduate Program in Science and Mathematics Teaching at Lutheran University of Brazil, adopted a qualitative approach, using questionnaires, reports, and observations. The training program, grounded in the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) and school demands, emphasized playfulness and the use of digital technologies. The results showed positive impacts on teaching practices, including the acquisition of skills for remote teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. The importance of the BNCC and continuous education to enhance pedagogical practice and the curricular of initial education courses is highlighted.

Court rules against student‐athletes

Case name: Day v. California Lutheran University, et al., No. 22‐55825 (9th Cir. 08/01/23).

Court rules against student‐athletes

Case name: Day v. California Lutheran University, et al., No. 22‐55825 (9th Cir. 08/01/23).

What is the GCPR?

The Conversation puts an ear to current discussion in the field. With scholars reevaluating the legacy of every facet of Religious Studies, the team at the Bulletin thought to check in with what is happening in the world of philosophy. In so doing, we learned about an exciting endeavor known as Global Critical Philosophy of Religion. Philosophers Nathan Loewen University of Alabama), Tim Knepper (Drake University), and Gereon Kopf (Luther College) were kind enough to answer our questions about GCPR.

Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View

Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View

Nordic Connections: Norwegian and Swedish Missionaries in Changsha in the 1920s

ABSTRACT This article explores the interconnections and relations of Nordic missionaries in early-twentieth-century China. Focusing on encounters in the Hunanese province capital of Changsha in and around the 1920s, it discusses ways in which Norwegian and Swedish missionary workers from four Christian associations made sense of their position as Nordic Lutherans within the international community in Changsha. Using both unpublished and published sources it explores the arrival of the Church of Sweden Mission to China in 1920 and plans to establish a Swedish Lutheran university in China. In conjunction it examines the Nordics as part of the international networks in the city, the evacuation of foreigners in 1927, and the ways in which they were affected by national and imperial ambitions and relations. The exploration of Nordic missionaries as ambivalent actors in a semi-imperial arena contributes to our understandings of the connections, co-operations and power dynamics of the transimperial world of the early twentieth century.

"A Desire to Learn": Native-American Experiences in Lutheran Colleges, 1945–1955

Abstract: Between 1945 and 1955, nine Native-American students of the Oneida, Ho-Chunk, and Ojibwe tribes attended Lutheran colleges with the support of Reverend Ernest Sihler, Superintendent of the Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Indian Mission. Four of the students graduated with bachelor's degrees and two went on to attain PhDs. Regardless of their graduation status, all the students demonstrated educational resilience during their time as undergraduates. Based on the examination of correspondence between the Native American students attending Lutheran colleges and Sihler in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as Sihler and college administrators, and Sihler and donors, this article enriches our understanding of Native American experiences in higher education in the immediate postwar period. These sources reveal students' personal motivations and experiences, as well as their institutional practices and priorities. For the students, success at college required navigating competing interests and goals. They had to balance the need to placate and support the interests and norms of the dominant, fundamentally racist, white college cultures with their desire to remain true to their tribal communities and identities. For Sihler and Lutheran college administrators, they had carefully selected these Native-American students and attempted to help them succeed within the umbrella of Lutheran higher education in accordance with its attendant norms and expectations. These efforts proved moderately successful. The article also details the obstacles these students encountered as well as the strategies they employed to overcome these challenges and meet their college goals. The students took advantage of existing support systems available to them, as well as created new support systems, that enabled them to navigate adverse educational environments. Like Native American college students today, their success was due to several factors, including their pre-college preparations, family support, and access to financial assistance. Their motivation to succeed in order to give back to their tribal communities also gave them a larger purpose to cling to when challenges arose.

Postura corporal e o estado de humor em mulheres

Abstract In the clinical practice of health professionals, it is observed that body posture can reveal the current emotional state. Emotional states can generate habitual gestures and postures that continue even after the emotion has ceased. The objective was to identify postural changes and variables found in the mood state in women. After project submission and approval to the CEP of the Lutheran University of Brazil (ULBRA), 15 women with a mean age of 39.6 years, regardless of color, race, or social class participated in the study. The sample was by convenience, being recruited through invitations on social networks. The research was carried out at the Walk Clinic of Exercise, in Charqueadas/RS. The instruments used were a sociodemographic and clinical questionnaire to characterize the sample, the Brunel Mood Scale (Brums), and the DIPA v13 (Digital Image based Postural Assessment) to assess posture. The results were presented in the form of descriptive statistics. It was found that increased tension and mental confusion for women with head changes in the sagittal plane and who also showed decreased vigor. In this study, it was verified that for women with low vigor, there is head alteration and that they present tension and mental confusion. More studies should be carried out with different methodologies in larger samples to enable the mapping and delineation of most postural changes related to emotional states and mood disorders, with due application in the clinical practice of health professionals.

Toward the articulation of mission: Heeding the ELCA's call for affordable mental health care and authentic diversity while guiding students' journeys toward counseling and clinical vocations

AbstractI describe community counseling clinics embedded with a Lutheran University and aligned with Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) values. Our clinics, like many others, serve the underserved and are often dependent upon external support. To ensure operational stability, they must articulate their mission alignment with host institutions and funders. In so doing, funders readily see how their values are enacted and embodied within the supported program. Examples of mission alignment, data supporting alignment, and the benefits of alignment for the program, funder, and those served are provided.

“A Different Kind of Meaning Is Exposed”

“A Different Kind of Meaning Is Exposed”

Sites Of Salvation; Classics And Small Liberal Arts Colleges

Sites Of Salvation; Classics And Small Liberal Arts Colleges Shelley P. Haley keywords endangered Classics, small liberal arts colleges (SLACs), state of SCS as in previous scs/apa presidential address publications, my text is only lightly edited, and footnotes are at a minimum. The Society is financially better off in the fiscal year 2021 than we anticipated. Thanks to the excellent stewardship of our financial trustees and the finance committee, along with the superlative direction and grant-writing skills of Helen Cullyer, our Executive Director, we ended up on more solid ground than we expected after year one of the pandemic. Our first-ever fully virtual meeting was a huge success with very few glitches. We looked forward to an in-person meeting in 2022 in San Francisco; Helen sent out a survey for the membership to weigh on the meeting mode, and you voted for a hybrid model which, while being the most expensive of the options, is the most equitable in terms of access. So, working with our colleagues and members in AIA, we planned for a hybrid meeting. But COVID was not finished with us yet, and the omicron variant threw a spanner into the works: we had to switch to an all-virtual meeting. We all owe a huge thank-you not only to Helen but also to her staff, Cherane Ali, the Director of Meetings and Events, and Erik Shell, the Communications and Services Coordinator. The transition from hybrid to virtual within ten days of the event would have been impossible without the hard work and persistence of these folks. Please send them your thanks in the chat! Furthermore, it is with both great sadness and great pride that we will bid farewell to Erik, who will start a new position in Chicago at the end of this meeting. Erik joined the staff of SCS in 2016 and it has been a great joy to work with him. We wish Erik all the best. [End Page 285] In some ways, the disruption to the planning of the 2022 annual meeting has, at least for me, caused more sadness and melancholy. Plans for a virtual meeting in 2021 were concretized early in 2020, partly because we had never done this before and partly because there was no path out of the pandemic at the time. There was excitement about trying something new and having it succeed beyond expectations. Then came the vaccines early in 2021, and we were all hopeful that we could have an in-person meeting in 2022. That hope persisted even as the rate of vaccinations plateaued, and the vaccines became the victims of politics and disinformation. Although most people living in the United States did get vaccinated, the rate was not high enough to stop variants—first delta and now omicron—from getting established. So the leadership had to adjust and adapt as members changed their registrations. I want to acknowledge that, in addition to the economic costs of having to cancel flight arrangements and hotel rooms, there has also been a psychological cost. Even the most introverted of us still need human contact. We want the networking, catching up with old friends, and the spur-of-the-moment greeting/meeting in an elevator or at the registration desk. Hopefully the 2023 meeting can bring these aspects back. The year 2021 saw Classics in the news: there were articles in the New York Times Magazine, Times Higher Education, and others. The pandemic has put even greater stress on vulnerable Classics programs around the country, as administrations use it as an excuse to eliminate not just Classics but other Humanities programs, especially language-based ones. This is a great segue to the topic of my presidential address: "Classics and Small Liberal Arts Colleges (SLACs): Sites of Salvation?" Being both a participant in and an observer of these very public debates on the discipline and the challenges we face, I felt called upon to reflect on my place in the field. I began my career as a Classics professor at Luther College, a small liberal arts college in Decorah, Iowa. It was the height of economic hard times as a result of the oil...

More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea: A Generation of Lutheran-Muslim Relationships ed. by David D. Grafton

Reviewed by: More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea: A Generation of Lutheran-Muslim Relationships ed. by David D. Grafton Robert F. Shedinger More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea: A Generation of Lutheran-Muslim Relationships. Edited by David D. Grafton. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2021. 212 pp. This book provides an overview of Lutheran-Muslim relationships spanning the last thirty years. Following forewords by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and Sayyid Syeed, head of the Islamic Society of North America, the book begins with four essays focused on official documents produced by Lutheran bodies on the topic of Lutheran-Muslim relationships as well as the influence of Islamophobia on those relationships. This section includes an essay on the 1986 document God and Jesus: Theological Reflections for Christian-Muslim Dialogue and one on the development of the Lutheran-Muslim consultative panel. These chapters lay the foundation for how the ELCA has thought theologically about its engagement with Islam and Muslims. The next three chapters take us inside specific examples of Lutheran-Muslim engagement in the United States. We learn how Lutherans are engaging with the Somali community in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. We learn also about Lutheran-Muslim community connections in Southern California fostered by the Claremont School of Theology and the development of the Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. The final four chapters expand the focus beyond the United States to Lutheran-Muslim encounters in Palestine, Indonesia, Senegal, and India. No doubt, Lutherans have been at the forefront of good faith efforts to build bridges of mutual understanding and cooperation with Muslims around the world. This book does an excellent job of documenting this. But despite all the good work —like the work of the Lutheran World Federation's Augusta Victoria Hospital serving Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza—I think Lutherans, like other Christians, continue to view Christian-Muslim dialogue from [End Page 232] within a specifically Christian worldview. Are Lutherans authentically hearing Muslim voices? We see a hint of this in the Rev. Jane Buckley-Farlee's essay on engagement with the Somali community in Minneapolis. She relates how Trinity Lutheran Church launched a Safe Place Homework Help program in 2001. An average of fifteen Muslim students come to the church each day after school for help with homework provided by tutors from Augsburg University and the University of Minnesota. One day, Rev. Buckley-Farlee relates how a student asked to use her office to engage in one of the five daily prayers. Rev. Buckley-Farlee, who was working on prayers for her Sunday service, invited the student in to pray. "I could see her standing, bowing, and kneeling, praying, out of the corner of my eye as I tried to type my own prayers for Sunday. It suddenly dawned on me that we were doing the same thing" (83). Well, not exactly. Christian prayer is much more akin to the Muslim practice of dua (intercessory prayer). The obligatory five daily prayers (or salat) involving ritual physical prostration are one of the five pillars of Islam and as such are part of a larger Islamic system designed to inculcate submission to God in all affairs of life in a way that transcends the carefully maintained boundaries between the sacred and secular so fundamental to the Western Christian worldview. This same mistake occurs when Christians liken the Islamic pillar of zakat to charity, missing the fact that zakat is really an obligatory wealth tax and the heart of what many Muslims believe is a uniquely Islamic economic system. I hope that as Lutheran-Muslim relationships move forward, there will be a greater interest among Lutherans and all Christians to understand Islam from a Muslim perspective. They might find real common ground, not necessarily theologically, but in a shared vision of the devastating and dehumanizing effects of modern global capitalism. Christians and Muslims can do much together to save the planet from human-caused catastrophe. [End Page 233] Robert F. Shedinger Luther College Decorah, Iowa Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Radical Welcome in the Archives: What Does It Really Mean to Say “You're Welcome Here”?

Radical Welcome in the Archives: What Does It Really Mean to Say “You're Welcome Here”?

Løvdal Stephens, Hilde. Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home. Religion and American Culture. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019. ix+279 pp. $49.95 (cloth); $49.95 (e-book).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsLøvdal Stephens, Hilde. Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home. Religion and American Culture. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019. ix+279 pp. $49.95 (cloth); $49.95 (e-book).Seth DowlandSeth DowlandPacific Lutheran University. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 102, Number 1January 2022 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/717111 Views: 23Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Elisabeth Koren and Her Letters Home

In 2014 an extensive set of written correspondence by well-known Norwegian-American pioneer diarist Elisabeth Koren was rediscovered in Decorah, Iowa. This article provides an overview of what we know about the letters and provides important context to better understand the letters and their meanings. Included are four letters in translation. Elisabeth Koren (1832–1918) was born and grew up in Larvik, Norway, in a family well placed in the upper social class of the small seaside town. She immigrated to Iowa in the fall of 1853 with her husband, Ulrik Vilhelm Koren (1826–1910), well-known pioneer pastor and cofounder of Luther College. They are both buried in the Washington Prairie Cemetery, near Decorah, Iowa.

In Memoriam: Orm ØVerland (1935–2021)

In 2014 an extensive set of written correspondence by well-known Norwegian-American pioneer diarist Elisabeth Koren was rediscovered in Decorah, Iowa. This article provides an overview of what we know about the letters and provides important context to better understand the letters and their meanings. Included are four letters in translation. Elisabeth Koren (1832–1918) was born and grew up in Larvik, Norway, in a family well placed in the upper social class of the small seaside town. She immigrated to Iowa in the fall of 1853 with her husband, Ulrik Vilhelm Koren (1826–1910), well-known pioneer pastor and cofounder of Luther College. They are both buried in the Washington Prairie Cemetery, near Decorah, Iowa.

The Spread of Lutherance in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Its Influence on the Education Development and Music Culture

The purpose of the article is to determine the influence of Lutheranism on education and musical culture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The research methodology includes cultural and historical analysis, which made it possible to analyze and investigate the influence of Lutheranism on musical culture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Source studies and music-theoretical methods were used during the search and analysis of church-singing collections. The biographical method of research was used to systematize information about the life and work of theologians, composers and theorists. The scientific novelty of the research is the thorough analysis of the Lutheranism influence on education, book publishing and musical art. The first church chanting collections have been identified, in which a gradual transition from monody to polyphony is traced. Conclusions. In the process of studying the influence of Lutheranism on education and musical culture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it was established that one of the main ways of introducing Protestant ideas was the education of gentry and bourgeois Ukrainian youth in Western European Lutheran universities. The competition between Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant schools that existed in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania contributed to the development of education in the country. In the 16th century, Vilno was a printing centre of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where printers competed with each other, publishing books in different languages and with opposite religious positions. During this period, thanks to the Lithuanian Protestants, church chanting collections were published. The chants in the first collections combined the stylistic tendencies of Protestant chorales, Czech reformers, and the traditions of local craftsmen.

Robert A. Newton

Robert A. Newton, 98, died April 18 in Brady, Texas. “Bob was born in Oakville, Washington. He began college studies at Pacific Lutheran University. Upon his honorable discharge from the US Navy, he married and continued his education at the University of Washington. Bob retired from Dow Chemical Company after 29 productive years, during which he was awarded 6 patents. He was a member of ACS, Sigma XI, his church, the Bay Area Boy Scouts of America, Men’s Garden Club, and Brazosport Cares Food Pantry. He donated over 100 gallons of blood and volunteered as an ESL tutor. He was an avid reader, a lifelong learner, and a strong advocate for education, giving generously to universities, colleges, and more.”—Janette Newton Tomlinson, daughter Most recent title: Associate scientist, Dow Chemical Company Texas Division Education: PhD, University of Washington, 1953 Survivors: Sons, Kenneth and John; daughters, Joyce Powell and Janette Tomlinson; seven

The Reception of Books from Braniewo in the 17th-century Uppsala University Library

It is well known that Swedish armies took a number of literary spoils of war from Poland in the 17th century, among others, the library of the Jesuit College in Braniewo in 1626. This article discusses how the collections from Braniewo were received and arranged in the first library building of Uppsala University, to which they had been donated by the Swedish King Gustavus II Adolphus. Books with contents related to theology are discussed in particular. As is shown in the article, books from Braniewo by Catholic authors or editors that were of a more neutral nature, such as books on Church history, Bibles and Bible concordances, were generally considered more useful at this Lutheran university than books by Catholic authors containing, for instance, Bible commentaries, sermons and dogmatics.

Moths of Oak-Hickory Forests and Planted Tallgrass Prairies on Luther College Natural Areas in Decorah, Iowa

Moths are often specialists of particular host plants, making them good indicators of what plants are present in a habitat, as well as the overall health and diversity of an ecosystem. Moths are important pollinators, and their caterpillars are an important food source for many species of birds. The objective of this study was to compare the abundance, species richness, and structure of moth assemblages in planted tallgrass prairies and oak hickory forests in Decorah, Iowa. During the summer of 2018, black light bucket traps were set up in three planted prairies and three oak-hickory forests on five nights from early June to mid-September. Moth samples were brought back to the lab, frozen, then sorted and counted. Representatives of each species of moth were pinned, spread, and identified to species. We collected a total of 12,290 moths, representing 468 species and 34 families. There were significantly more moths, families of moths, and moth species in the forests than in the prairies. Among sample dates over the course of the summer, there were no significant differences in either number of moths or species richness. This study provides valuable baseline data for monitoring future changes in moth diversity and abundance in Northeast Iowa.