Founded in Chicago in 1860, Augustana is a selective college of the liberal arts and sciences with a diverse student body of 2,500. The college's location in the Quad Cities (pop. 400,000) provides access to many career-path and hands-on learning opportunities, including internships, jobs, student teaching and research sites. More than 90 majors and related study programs include the humanities and fine arts, strong natural and social sciences, and pre-professional fields from engineering to law to medicine. Extending from strong established programs, newer majors include public health, neuroscience, engineering physics, multimedia journalism, graphic design, applied math, creative writing, music composition and international business. The most populated majors are biology, pre-medicine, business, accounting, psychology and education. Popular second majors/minors range from classics to ethics; women's and gender studies; and world languages, literatures and cultures, including Chinese and Japanese. Nearly every student completes a research-based or creative Senior Inquiry capstone project demonstrating skills in a major field and knowledge across the liberal arts. Special academic programs include an honors program; a first-year 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. Along with Augie Choice and the benefits of the Quad Cities, the college's distinctions include a balance of academic life with extracurricular interests. This balance is demonstrated by the college's strong tradition of Academic All-Americans: currently #1 in Illinois, #3 in Division III and #7 in the nation for the number of student-athletes who perform exceptionally in their sport and their studies. Another distinction is the level of advising, demonstrated especially through CORE (Careers, Opportunities, Research, Exploration). Centrally located in the Olin Center, CORE provides step-by-step advising related to Augie Choice, career and graduate school preparation, community service, internships, international study, research and vocation. Using their Viking Scorecard, students track from year to year their specific progress toward stated career-path goals. Students also benefit from resources supporting co-curricular involvement on a residential campus, with living-learning communities to ensure they build life skills as they transition from campus to off-campus housing. The college is home to several internationally recognized academic centers related to polar studies, the artist James McNeill Whistler, immigration history, Scandinavian genealogy, peace studies, and sustainability practices in communities of the upper Mississippi River valley. Other campus features include a geology museum, a teaching art museum, river research boats, an on-campus center serving clients with speech and hearing disabilities, a human cadaver laboratory, environmental field laboratories, The Gerber Center for Student Life and the Austin E. Knowlton Outdoor Athletic Complex. The Brunner Theatre Center opened in 2016. In 2012, the faculty approved college-wide student learning outcomes emphasizing the broad range of knowledge and 21st-century skills needed for success on campus and after graduation: disciplinary knowledge, information and quantitative literacy, critical and creative thinking, communication, collaborative leadership, ethical citizenship, intercultural knowledge and intellectual curiosity. Our 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." Affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Augustana welcomes all faith traditions.

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