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Grand Hotel on the city’s main street, she fondly recalled running into Chuck Nelson, the man responsible for attracting many Norwegian international students to Pacific Lutheran University. During their meeting in 1993, Nelson recited his pitch to Fodstad about the American institution of Lutheran higher education — founded by Norwegian immigrants — and she was sold. “A couple of months later I was enrolled and started my first class on a beautiful fall campus,” she said. “My first trip to America

.” Despite an ocean separating her from the team, Floyd had the help of fellow PLU student Jackie Stenberg ’19. “Jackie’s been my workout buddy,” Floyd said. “She keeps me accountable. She’s a lot better at planning workouts than I am.” The pair did sprints and workouts at the campus track, as well as hikes and running. They also participated in some competitive sports, including handball, a popular Norwegian team sport. “Those are always fun because it’s competitive, but not hardcore competitive,” Floyd

first Norwegian students. He remembers her as bubbly, outgoing and a natural at the craft. “Her writing was just so good,” Rowe said. Bjørhovde credits her degree, in part, to her longtime mentor. Originally, she intended to come to the United States for one year and one purpose: to study journalism. When she arrived on PLU’s campus in 1977, all the classes she planned to take were full. She needed Rowe’s approval if she had any chance of enrolling in that first news-writing class and sticking to

in Norway, and a group that has long been discriminated against in Norwegian culture. Efforts were undertaken in the mid-1800s to exterminate their language and way of life. Children were taught in schools that Sámi — depicted back then as small, scrawny and sickly — were inferior. This socially constructed idea of race was taught at Norwegian universities until the 1940s, Storfjell said. It’s why Storfjell, who passes as white in the United States, nevertheless experiences the sting of systemic

As an institution founded on the tenets of Lutheran Higher Education, the University encourages its student organizations to contribute to the role of the University as a forum for intellectual discussion, diversity of thought, debate, investigation, and/or artistic expression. The University has final discretion in decisions regarding the distribution of literature, the sponsorship of visiting speakers and public performances, and the screening of films that utilize University facilities or

family relocated when she was 6 years old, fleeing a country rife with political instability. Her family never abandoned their ethnic Oromo roots, but actively immersed themselves in their new culture. Now, she’s relocated again, extending her international education to a third continent as a sociology major at PLU. The university’s commitment to global education is a value that’s familiar to Urgessa. She speaks five languages — Amhara and Oromo that are native to Ethiopia, English, Norwegian and

other Lutes. A display outside the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. (Photo by John Froschauer/PLU) The local prize — believed to be the only one of its kind in the United States — is for everybody, Heavey said, just as the Oslo-based Nobel Peace Prize is for the world. The 2005 founding of Tacoma’s peace prize coincided with the Puget Sound region’s centennial celebration of Norwegian independence, the anniversary of Norway’s split from its union with Sweden. The timing was perfect, as the