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Zempel to use Boldt Chair to connect St. Olaf's past, present

By Anna Stevens '10
April 20, 2009

St. Olaf Professor of Norwegian Solveig Zempel '69 has been selected as the college's sixth Boldt Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities, a chair offered to a current faculty member whose scholarship and professional endeavors advance the teaching and learning of humanities at the baccalaureate level.

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Zempel will use her appointment to the Boldt Chair, established in 1994 by contractor Oscar C. Boldt and his wife, Patricia Hamar Boldt, to broadly address the academic theme year topic of Migration and put it into cultural perspective.

"Immigrants founded St. Olaf, and the purpose was to serve immigrants and their descendants. That has shaped who we are as a college," says Zempel, whose three-year Boldt Chair appointment will run through 2012. "Now we have a new wave of differing immigrants and descendants to understand and help. In this way, the theme of the Boldt Chair will tie the history and philosophy of our institution to today."

Zempel will begin her Boldt Chair tenure by attending a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in Washington, D.C., titled "American Immigration Revisited." Back on campus, she will use films, speakers, faculty seminars and community outreach to explore the topic of immigration. In addition, she hopes to create a course to be offered during the 2010 and 2011 academic years. The course, tentatively titled "Chronicles of the American Immigration Experience," would be an interdisciplinary class providing a look into the history of immigration through different types of literature. Zempel notes that one possible literary focus for the class, the work of her grandfather, Ole E. Rolvaag, "will shed light on the gains and losses of immigration." Rolvaag, a novelist, educator and St. Olaf graduate who is best known for his novel Giants in the Earth, was himself a Norwegian American immigrant.

After graduating from St. Olaf, Zempel earned her master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She began teaching in St. Olaf College's Norwegian Department in 1976. She has been recognized by the Norwegian Government as an officer of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit and has served as St. Olaf's Fulbright adviser and associate dean of Interdisciplinary and General Studies. Zempel has a rich family history at St. Olaf and a unique understanding of the ideals upon which St. Olaf was established more than 100 years ago.

Previous Boldt Professors are Professor of History James Farrell, Professor of English Carol Holly, Professor of Philosophy Ed Langerak, Professor of Philosophy Gordon Marino and Professor of English Diana Postlethwaite.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.