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The Gustavus Choir and the Gustavus Wind Orchestra embark on tour by the end of this week.

Learn about college policies for students, student rights, responsibilities, and the conduct process at Gustavus.

These profs led the efforts to revamp the College’s curriculum—a big lift with cascading consequences. They did it in nine months. How? A Q & A.

Rebecca Taylor Fremo (Professor of English) earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio State University after completing her BA and MA in English at Virginia Tech. In the nearly three decades she’s spent at Gustavus, she’s served as English department chair, English co-chair, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, and Director of the Writing Center. But Fremo’s real passion is teaching writing, and she’s been awarded the Edgar M. Carlson Award and the Swenson and Bunn Award for this work. Fremo likes nothing better than rolling up her sleeves and sitting side by side with student writers as they work through the challenges of sharing their stories. Fremo has published a variety of scholarly essays about teaching writing, but she’s most excited about her work as a creative writer. She recently completed a memoir titled Controlled Burn, which applies her observations as a gardener to her experiences raising three neurodivergent sons. Her poems and essays appear in journals including Mud Season Review, Mankato Magazine, Full Grown People, Paper Darts, and Water~Stone Review. She is also the author of one collection of poetry, Moving This Body, and a chapbook of poems titled Chasing Northern Lights. When she’s not at work, she’s probably in her garden or daydreaming about her next visit to the North Shore. She’s originally from Richmond, Virginia and still dreads the Minnesota winters–but the summers are worth it! 
 

We are the student group that leads and supports all Greek life at Gustavus. We bring together members from different fraternities and sororities to plan events, encourage leadership, and show the positive side of being part of Greek life. Our goal is to build stronger chapters and a better campus community.

Gustavus offers opportunities for experiential learning in philosophy that support your academic growth and relationship building outside the classroom. Embracing the many ways to get involved on campus expands your knowledge, helps you engage with diverse perspectives, and develops practical skills that are valuable in a wide range of personal and professional contexts. Plus, with small class sizes, students in the philosophy department have ample opportunities to build strong connections in class that carry over to activities outside of class.

Since 1965, the Nobel Conference has been bringing leading researchers and thinkers to Gustavus, to explore revolutionary, transformative and pressing scientific issues and the ethical questions that arise alongside them. As the only event in the United States authorized by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden to use this name, it is our privilege to host a space in which we can talk about big scientific questions, and the big ethical issues to which they inevitably give rise.

Dr. Lucas Rapisarda is a visiting professor of biology. As an environmental social scientist, his research interests sit at the nexus of environment and society, specifically how physical and sociocultural access to the environment impacts the sense of place and natural resource use of historically marginalized communities in the outdoors. At Gustavus, Dr. Rapisarda teaches introductory and organismal biology, as well as an upper-level ornithology course. 

Curtis J. Kowaleski became the CFO, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer of Gustavus in 2019. After spending the early part of his career in the for-profit sector, Curt has now spent almost half of his career in higher education where he continues to chase his passion for helping students. Dedicated to helping young people, Curt has coached youth sports and through higher education he has been able to use his accounting and finance background to help Gustavus students. When he is not leading the operational and financial side of the college, you will probably see Curt at a sporting event, a theater production or participating in one of the many international events held on campus, so you might as well “Jump”. 

Maddalena Marinari is a Professor of History and the Dorothy Peterson, Mildred Peterson Hanson, and Arthur Jennings Hanson Endowed Professor of Liberal Studies. She is the author of Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) and of several articles on immigration restriction, U.S. immigration policy, and immigrant mobilization in the Journal of American History, Journal of Policy History, Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and Social Science History Journal. She has also co-edited four volumes on different aspects of US immigration history in the twentieth century, a special issue of the Journal of American History on the centennials of the immigration restriction acts of the 1920s, and a special issue of the Journal of American Ethnic History on migration and citizenship. Her next book explores the history of family, marriage, and sexuality in U.S. immigration policy from 1875 to 2025. She is also one of the scholars who created the Immigration Syllabus, an online tool for anyone interested in understanding the history behind current debates on immigration, and of Immigrants in COVID America, a curated collection of resources that chronicles the impact of the pandemic on migrant and refugee communities in the United States. Professor Marinari is currently president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and Editor in Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies. She has received funding from the American Philosophical Society, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Immigration History Research Center, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Society for Legal History for her research and her public projects.

At Gustavus, she teaches a broad range of courses in U.S. history since 1865 and is an active member of the community. Her service to the College includes her tenure on the Faculty Senate and the Personnel Committee as well as her roles as the Kendall Center Associate for Faculty, Research, and Scholarship and as the Kendall Center Associate for Excellence in Teaching. In 2023, she received the Gustavus Faculty Service Award for her work on the Faculty Task Force. In 2021, Gustavus Adolphus College awarded her the Gustavus Faculty Scholarly Accomplishment Award in recognition of her scholarship accomplishments.