The Upper Mississippi Center mobilizes Augustana’s resources to help communities solve sustainability challenges facing urban and rural working landscapes of the Upper Mississippi River. Through this work, the center creates learning opportunities where students acquire collective set of knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to solve 21st-century sustainability challenges.
One objective of the center is to use a transdisciplinary approach to solving complex problems that combines:
- Interdisciplinary research (broadly defined) that integrates the knowledge & perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, & natural sciences to create new knowledge & perspectives (solutions)
- Community engagement and authentic collaboration with relevant stakeholders
The center also aims to assist communities in solving the sustainability challenges they are facing and in doing so build enduring relationships between Augustana on the rural and urban communities of the Upper Mississippi region.