Augustana College

Augustana College is a private institution that was founded in 1860. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 2,497, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 115 acres. It utilizes a trimester-based academic calendar. Augustana College's ranking in the 2016 edition of Best Colleges is National Liberal Arts Colleges, 105. Its tuition and fees are $38,466 (2015-16).

Augustana College is a private school that sits just across the Mississippi River from Iowa, in the city of Rock Island, Illinois. Known for its picturesque, wooded campus, Augustana offers more than 50 undergraduate majors and pre-professional degrees. On campus, students can get involved in a wide variety of student clubs, more than 10 Greek-letter organizations or recreational sports. Augustana students can also try out for one of the more than 20 Vikings varsity sports teams, which compete in the NCAA Division III College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin.

Other campus activities include River Readings by visiting literary artists, gallery openings at the art museum and productions by the theater and music programs. Students are also just a short drive from the pedestrian Davenport Skybridge, a botanical garden and a zoo. Notable alumni include actor Dave Allen, who has often played hippie characters in TV shows such as "Freaks and Geeks" and "Gilmore Girls."

Augustana's mission statement is: "Augustana College, rooted in the liberal arts and sciences and a Lutheran expression of the Christian faith, is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit and body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership and service in a diverse and changing world." In equal measure, the words of Augustana's mission statement honor tradition and a future-focused aim to educate citizens and leaders for a complex, changing world. Founded by Swedish Lutheran settlers in Chicago in 1860, Augustana has grown into a selective college of the liberal arts and sciences, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Students from diverse backgrounds comprise a student body of 2,500. The curriculum offers major fields in the traditional humanities and fine arts, strong natural and social sciences, and pre-professional fields ranging from engineering to law to medicine. The college's newest major is public health; other new programs include neuroscience, engineering physics, multimedia journalism, graphic design, applied math, creative writing, music composition and international business. Today, the most populated majors are biology, pre-medicine, business, accounting, psychology and education. Popular second majors and minors range from classics to ethics; women's and gender studies; Asian or Latin American studies; and world languages, literatures and cultures, including the Chinese and Japanese languages. In 2012, the faculty approved college-wide student learning outcomes that emphasize the broad range of knowledge and 21st-century skills students need to be successful on campus and after graduation. Every Augustana graduate is expected to have demonstrated abilities in disciplinary knowledge, information and quantitative literacy, critical and creative thinking, communication, collaborative leadership, ethical citizenship, intercultural knowledge and intellectual curiosity. Working with a first-year advisor, followed by an advisor in the major field(s), every student realizes learning in these broad categories, and can articulate their import to future success. Special academic programs include an interdisciplinary honors program; a first-year liberal studies sequence that develops communication skills and knowledge of the liberal arts; and Augie Choice, providing each student $2,000 to support research with a professor, an internship or study abroad. Nearly every student completes a research-based or creative Senior Inquiry capstone project, demonstrating skills in a major field, broad knowledge across the liberal arts, and benefit to a community. Augustana's three-term calendar system makes it comparatively easy for students to major in more than one field, participate in off-campus internships and study programs, and graduate within four years. Students also benefit from resources supporting co-curricular involvement on a residential campus, with living-learning communities to ensure they build important life skills as they transition from campus to off-campus housing. Augustana has a strong tradition of Academic All-Americans: currently #1 in Illinois, #2 in Division III and #6 in the nation for the number of student-athletes who perform as exceptionally in their sport as they do in their scholarship. The college is home to several internationally recognized academic centers, focused on the study of the polar regions, the artist James McNeill Whistler, immigration history, Scandinavian genealogy, peace studies, and upper Mississippi River sustainability. Features are a geology museum, a teaching art museum, research boats for the Mississippi River, an on-campus center serving clients with speech and hearing disabilities, a human cadaver laboratory, environmental field laboratories, a new Center for Student Life, and the new Austin E. Knowlton Outdoor Athletic Complex - all part of one of the most beautiful campuses in the Midwest.