Top research universities can boast of the world-renowned faculty. But, if a professor who just won a Nobel Prize for research doesn't have time to teach undergraduates, how will your child benefit?  Learning from a college’s most experienced teachers - the tenured faculty - is worth the price of admission. Close relationships with professors not only enhance a student’s classroom learning, they also open up opportunities for individual research projects.

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Professors As Friends?

If there’s one single most important thing we’d want you to think about as you consider your college options, it’s this: what kind of relationships do you expect to have with your professors? 

We want you to keep this question in mind, because we know that professors can do so much more for their students than simply stand up in front of a room and lecture, and hold office hours one afternoon a week. 

Our professors choose to work at Lutheran colleges, where the focus is on undergraduate education rather than graduate programs or big grant-funded research projects, because their first love is teaching – and advising, mentoring, counseling, sharing a cup of coffee with you after class, directing independent studies, taking student groups overseas, writing job and grad school recommendations, even having you over to dinner with their families.

Milton Heinrich, sculptor and art professor at Dana College, came to college teaching in part because of the influence of his own mentor, Concordia University – Nebraska professor ---- Wolfram. He often involves his students in the construction of his large commissioned works, because, he says, it gives him a chance to mentor in a way that’s not possible in the classroom. 

At Gustavus Adolphus College, biochem/bio major and basketball player Hans Sviggum considers Coach Mark Hansen as a role model, and credits Communication Studies professor Terry Morrow with challenging him to “think outside the box.” He counts on both for advice about everything from course selection to dating.