Jeff Swensen: My favorite pathway to excellence is 1% improvement every day. So I want my coaches, my athletes, you know to always look at ways to get better. I'm proud to say that Augsburg does that.

Paul Pribbenow: I'm Paul Pribbenow, President of Augsburg University. Augsburg educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. It's my great privileged to present the Augsburg podcast. One way you can meet some of the faculty and staff I'm honored to work with every day.

Jeff Swensen: Jeff Swensen. I'm the athletic director at Augsburg College and a 1979 alumnus. The thing that drew me to Augsburg was the ability to both play football and to wrestle. You know where if I went to the University of Minnesota I was certainly gonna go out for the wrestling team, but had no idea, you know having never made it to the state tournament as a wrestler in high school, had no idea what the outcome would be at the U, where I felt I would get a better chance athletically at Augsburg. You know I certainly knew that it was an ELCA College. There was a Christian emphasis and I liked that. You know I'm a Lutheran myself. The wrestling program and coach John Grygelko were the ones that shaped me. You know he was my coach for four years. You know to this day probably the greatest motivator I know.

You know, but he took a guy like me who was from South High School who had never made it to the state wrestling tournament and turned me into a three time all American and a National Champion. Um, I don't think that would've happened anywhere else, but Augsburg. You know two other people that influenced me, uh in the health and physical education uh area were Lavonne Peterson, we called her Mrs. Pete. She never let us use the acronym, HPE for Health Physical Education. She always made us say it entirely, so it was health and physical education, but she hated P.E. She, you know, thought that that was degrading. And Joyce Pfaff was the other one. She's still the hardest person that I ever had to save in my lifesaving swimming class. We had to learn how to save somebody in the water. All you go swim out and you grab the person and then you swim back with 'em. Not with Joyce. She fought you every inch of the way. She was pulling my arms away from her. She could've been a great wrestler 'cause she fought to no end.

She made us better by doing that. She wasn't going to pass you unless you, you know if someone was drowning, but you couldn't swim out and grab her, but she also was made sure that you weren't gonna be in a position that, um if you went out, you were gonna drown yourself. You know, so she prepared us. You know and Joyce, Joyce prepared a lot of people for things, you know not only at Augsburg but for life after Augsburg. She was a great mentor. She's got a lot to do with the fact that we have eleven women's sports and ten men's sports now. You know, she was a pioneer. When I went to Augsburg they didn't have a women's sports program. I can't believe I'm even saying that right now. I think my parents gave me a great upbringing in that I always treated everybody the same and I never looked at men being better than women.

And if I ever would have, Jocye certainly would've corrected me quickly, but I really believe it's important that women have great women role models and so we've done our very best to hire women head coaches, you know to coach the women's sports and who knows, maybe in the future we'll have a women coaching one of our men's sports. We keep track of how the students do in each program academically. You know our bare minimum expectation is a 3.0 grade point average. You know and I'm really proud of the fact that we're students first and athletes second. I think our value system is still deeply rooted, but what we are able to do is we're able to change with societies value system. You know and and the changing world that we're in. When I talk to, you know, a lot of different alums, you know in their you know they think about the changes at Augsburg and of course they always think of the physical changes. "Wow there's so many great new building. It's wonderful. The campus looks Beautiful." But, you know, how many students are still in a class and we're still under 20.

You know we still average under 20 per classroom and I think that allows these students to get a great education and also to get a lot of individual attention which is how I recruited. You know when we were against big universities or big schools that would, you know would have large classes. You know we of course emphasized the fact that you weren't gonna get lost in the shuffle at Augsburg. You were gonna be taken care of. Augsburg looks at how they can get better. Augsburg University looks at how it can get better. We're never treading water. You know we're always looking at, at going forward and being better. The way that I'm able to measure my 1% improvement philosophy every day is to take the mirror test. I take the mirror test. I look myself in the mirror, whether it be at the beginning of the day or at then end of the day when I'm brushing my teeth and I, you know I ask myself, Have I done everything I possibly can, you know, to be the best that I could be today? You know have I been the best leader for my coaches?

You know, have I been the best dad? Have I been the best husband? You know, have I done everything I can to make this world a better place? And that's the questions I ask myself when I evaluate my 1% improvement philosophy. Athletically, you know um, you know we've come from a situation where we hope to make the play-offs to where were incredibly disappointed when we don't. You know we've created a culture of winning. Now we want it to be expecting to be the best. You know and I think the University has led the way for us in that way and I've been around Augsburg, you know now this is going on my, you know since my undergrad years, uh 43 years and I've never seen Augsburg in a better place than right now. There's no more influential time in a student's life that 18 to 22 years old when they're independent for the first time ever. You know and they grow up more so in those four years than I would wager any four years in their entire life. You know, so we make a life.

You know we start learning how to make a life here. You know we are the real world. We are real world educational experience, you know that I'm just really proud to be part of.

Paul Pribbenow: That was Jeff Swensen, Athletic director at Augsburg University. Thanks for listening to the Augsburg podcast. I'm President Paul Pribbenow. For more information, please visit Augsburg.edu.