Augsburg University

The University decided to get rid of standardized testing as a requirement for admission.

On June 29, 2023, AU issued its "Statement on Supreme Court Decision to Strike Down Race-Conscious Admissions," which reads as follows: "The Augsburg community is committed to intentional diversity in our life and work. This commitment aligns with our use of holistic application review and our direct admissions approach, launched in fall 2022. Because direct admissions does not consider race as a factor, Augsburg’s current admissions processes are unlikely to be affected by the SFFA v. Harvard/UNC ruling—despite potentially far-reaching impacts for higher education. Augsburg’s experience with direct admissions may serve as a useful case study on alternative strategies to lower barriers for historically underrepresented and marginalized student populations following this decision." 

The university offers its faculty and staff a Diversity and Inclusion Certificate Program.

The Diversity and Inequality in Professional Practice course is listed as a "supporting course" which fulfills the 2023-2024 Social Work degree requirement.

AU's entire community can "use the Discrimination and Bias Incident Online Reporting Form to report incidents of discrimination and/or bias."

AU's 2022-2023 Anti-Racism Training sessions are required for all faculty and staff and include a session titled "Anti-Racialism 101-Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach to Decolonizing and Ending Racial Oppression."

The Department of Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies at AU was established in 2021 in "response to the ongoing movements around racial equity and social justice" by "faculty and student advocates." The Department "seeks to provide students with ethically and socially responsible scholarship that fosters critical thinking about the multiple ways race and ethnicity are produced in different historical contexts."

AU's George Floyd Memorial Scholarship awards $5,000 to "student leaders who show great promise in their ability to further interrupt and dismantle anti-Black racism, racism, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression."

The Culture and Social Justice minor at Augsburg is an "interdisciplinary program committed to engaging students with the histories, struggles, knowledge, and agency of marginalized groups throughout our global society" and "connects local and national efforts to larger global struggles for justice."

The Sankofa Circle Fellowship at Augsburg "serves to connect, affirm, fortify, and uplift junior and senior Augsburg student leaders...where they will continue to interrupt and dismantle anti-Black racism, racism, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression."

Augsburg’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Program is "intended to double the number of African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, Alaska Native and Pacific Islander students receiving baccalaureate degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) in a five-year period."

As part of the University’s Equity and Inclusion Initiatives, there is a site listing all events and opportunities dedicated to Justice for George Floyd Initiatives.

The university has an Inclusion Scholars Program consisting of 18 hours of workshops to become more “equity-minded” and be able to “interrupt bias and microaggressions.” These students receive special recognition at Commencement.

On May 16, 2022, the university will be hosting and Anti-Racist Pedagogy Workshop.

AU has a Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Newsletter that members of he community can subscribe to. The "events and literature included in the Newsletter may help Augsburg faculty, staff and students to grow, not only in their individual intercultural competency development, but also in the approaches they employ to better cultivate a University environment that respects diversity, practices inclusion, and seeks equity."

The university canceled classes and suspended all operations on April 22, 2021 in light of the Chauvin murder trial verdict.

The Theatre Department issued a Diversity Statement which reads in part as follows: "Theater has the potential to catalyze difficult conversations, to ask important questions about cultural representation, and to provide a site for interrogating power dynamics and centering marginalized voices...We hope both to create more opportunities for students who have been historically underrepresented on our stages and to consider the ways the department can move beyond the bounds of the traditional Theater space...."

On September 22, 2023, Augsburg announced that it was the "most ethnically diverse regional university in the Midwest, according to the U.S. News & World Report 2024 rankings."