Welcome to Students

One of the things that I often hear from our students and recent graduates is that University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus is a place to call home. True, we offer a rigorous academic environment, innovative degree programs and top-notch teaching – the kinds of things you should expect from a university. But at Augustana we also know that learning happens best in the context of friendship and community. That’s because a university education is much more than a four-year intelligence test. It’s a time for asking questions, testing ideas, risking new experiences, and putting together a life for yourself. On our picturesque campus, located in the small city of Camrose, relationships with professors, staff and student-peers help make all that possible. This atmosphere leads many students to think of Augustana as home – even years after they have graduated.

 

Because of our campus size, we provide students with plenty of practical opportunities to develop leadership, communications and cross-cultural skills. Our students regularly find themselves in places like Mexico, Germany, Costa Rica, India and the high Arctic. Just as important, they are encouraged to take their learning into the local community. As our mission statement says, we want students to be “more than narrow specialists, spectators, or strangers”; we want the Augustana experience to be “life-changing.” That’s an unusual way for a university campus to talk about itself, but I think it describes what really happens here. Our graduates consistently impress me as well-rounded, well-prepared and well-connected people – principled people – who, in many different ways, are making their mark on the world.

 

This is an exciting time for our campus. Construction is underway on a $30-million project that will include a state-of-the-art library and lots of community gathering space. Augustana is also a partner in the new Edgeworth Centre, near campus, that houses a large fitness centre and an exercise-science lab for teaching, research and testing. We have just been accepted as the first Canadian member of the prestigious Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges. Our professors are building reputations as researchers, performers and artists as well as teachers. And our students are reaping the benefits of a small campus environment in which big things happen.

 

Augustana is a place to be if you don’t want to get lost in the crowd. It is a place to discover who you are, who you can become, and what you can contribute to the world. We are here to help you find your way.

"...I needed to claim that home as what the American rural philosopher Wendell Berry calls a “beloved country”—that is, a point of reference outside the university, filled with real people, good people, to whom I am also accountable in every dimension of my work as a scholar. For me that beloved country is the rural prairie West..." - Roger Epp

"We who comprise Augustana acknowledge today that we are the recipients of at least five great gifts..." - Roger Epp