Tuesday Tip

Posted on October 15, 2019

NOTICE PAST DUE: If you have not done so already, please remember to complete Luther Seminary’s Title IX training at your earliest convenience. This training is required annually by the federal government for all enrolled students, and focuses on the prevention of sexual assault and harassment. You can register a new account or access your existing account at

http://www.everfi.com/login by using the code 87a7cafb

to access the training, entitled Sexual Assault Prevention for Graduate Students (SAPGS). When doing so, please remember to use your entire email address (@luthersem.edu). If you do not remember your password from last year, please enter the site and request a password reset be sent to your seminary email address.

Anyone completing the training after October 4th, 2019, will have a registration hold on their account, so please contact Peter Susag, the Title IX Coordinator, to have the registration hold removed upon completion (psusag001@luthersem.edu or 651-641-3465).

For more information, please refer to the email entitled “Mandatory Title IX Training,” which you should have received on September 13th, 2019, or contact the Title IX Coordinator.

WHY JESUS? A SPIRITUAL FORMATION EXPERIMENT

Posted on October 15, 2019

Tomorrow, Wednesday Oct 16th after chapel, come join us for Why Jesus? It is an experiment from our community on spiritual formation and story sharing. This event is supported by Aus Memorial Lecture on Evangelism and Spirit Lab. We will have The Rev. Dr. Joy Moore, Associate Professor of Homiletics, sharing her story of faith and answering these two key questions: Why are you a Christian? What difference does Jesus make in your life?

Come and join us in Dining Room C from 11:45am-12:30pm. Soup and bread will be provided.

*Not on campus? The faith stories will be posted in a Special Moodle module and live streaming through Community Life Facebook.

Questions? Reach out to Professor Mark Granquist (mgranquist001@luthersem.edu)
Professor Alan Padgett (apadgett@luthersem.edu)
or Spirit Lab (spiritlab@luthersem.edu)

Bright Stars of Bethlehem Event

Posted on October 14, 2019

The office of the Seminary Pastor invites all to a Short film viewing of “In Praise of Wounds,” a film made by a student at Dar al Kalima University in Bethlehem, Palestine.

October 22
7pm
OCC dining room

Hannah Johnsrud, bright starts member and Jerusalem/West Bank YAGM alum will be in attendance!

Snacks will be provided.

Chapel Schedule for the Coming Week

Posted on October 14, 2019

11am Monday, October 14
Discernment Day Service of Word & Song
Please join us for this service as we welcome to campus participants in the October 13-14 Discernment Weekend, designed to help prospective students to discern their call to Christian public leadership and learn about seminary programs and life on campus.
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11am Tuesday, October 15
Service of Word and Song: Preacher, Jeni Grangaard,
Seminary Pastor
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11am Wednesday, October 16
Service of Holy Communion
Preacher: Munib Younan, Bishop Emeritus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and former president of the Lutheran World Federation.
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11am Thursday, October 17
Hymn Sing, led by chapel staff musicians Zach Busch
and Tom Witt.
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11am Friday, October 18
St. Luke’s Day Service of Healing – led by Dr. Beverly Wallace, Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care, and others.

Website content management system transitions

Posted on October 11, 2019

The shared services marketing and communication and IT departments have been working together since summer 2017 on a staged transition to move the seminary off our legacy content management system for web properties. The CMS is a custom-built system that faces stability issues and challenges with adding new functionality (because it doesn’t have access to an ecosystem of compatible components). It is also expensive to maintain.
We are transitioning to WordPress, a CMS used by many colleges, universities, and graduate schools. The system is intuitive for content managers, and extensive training and support materials are available. 
The first items to be moved were those needed to ensure continuity of operations in the event of a catastrophic failure of the legacy CMS. Fortunately, Seminary Relations already used a third-party system to accept philanthropic gifts online. Admissions has been moved to WordPress (admissions.luthersem.edu), so we would still have the ability to collect prospective student inquiries and applications as well. Lifelong Learning moved to the new faith+lead site (faithlead.luthersem.edu), which is also hosted in WordPress. The Festival of Homiletics (festivalofhomiletics.org) has transitioned, and a project to move Working Preacher is under way. The new inside.luthersem.edu site is also hosted on the new system.
The time has now come to move the rest of the primary external site, www.luthersem.edu, into the new system. (The admissions site will be re-integrated with the rest of the seminary website as part of this project.) A “test” or staging site has been built, and marketing and communication is currently in the progress of migrating the current content from the existing site onto that platform. We will then connect with each site content manager or department to discuss whether any of that content should be edited or revised before the launch of the new site. Of course, changes and revisions can continue after the new site launches as well. Our goal is to launch the new site in early 2020.
Please reach out to me; Laura Swanson Lindahl, director of marketing; or Joe Mann, web manager, with any questions, concerns, or advice about this effort. Thank you!

Stephen Jendraszak, Associate Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Augsburg University and Luther Seminary

Collecting Warm Winter Outer Wear for Our Community!

Posted on October 11, 2019

The dropping temperatures seem especially cold to our newest students unused to Minnesota’s quickly changing seasons. And, since most international students arrive from warm weather countries, they have no cold weather clothing to bring to Luther.

Thus, International Student and Scholar Affairs (ISSA) is collecting warm winter gear in good, usable condition for our international students. Along with winter coats, most needed are hats, scarves, gloves, mittens, boots, sweaters, and sweatshirts. Adult sizes only, specifically men’s M/L/XL; no additional clothing accepted at this time.

You may bring your donations to Student Affairs in NW 120, or leave them in the tub outside the office suite.

Remaining items will be distributed to our seminary community through the seminary Food Shelf. Any items not used will be donated locally to those in need. Thank you!