Augustana congratulates 630 graduates

May 20, 2018

Augustana College congratulated 630 new graduates May 20 in a ceremony at the TaxSlayer Center in Moline.

Faculty, staff and coaches offered advice to the graduates in a video presentation.

"The great thing about a liberal arts education is that you have been exposed to many different perspectives and ideas," said one of them, Michael Rogers, director of the Office of Student Inclusion and Diversity.

Augustana President Steve Bahls said this class was one of the largest graduating classes in the 158-year history of the college. The class had a large number of international students and 57 percent of the graduates studied abroad — a greater percentage than that of any other class. He said the class also was high in number of students who had double and triple majors.

He said the Class of 2018 logged 18,000 hours of volunteer work in the Quad Cities area.

The student speaker was Anna Tegge from Geneva, Ill., graduating magna cum laude in international business and political science.