The Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference
July 31-Aug 3, 2008, Luther College, Decorah, Iowa
Download the Registration Form 
and Agenda
We are pleased to invite you to attend the fourteenth annual conference on “The Vocation of a Lutheran College”. The conference will take place from July 31 to August 2 at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. This year the theme of the conference is “The Vocation of a Lutheran College – Educating for Responsible Citizenship”. We have an excellent group of speakers lined up, including president Paul Pribbenow from Augsburg College, provost Dev Lieberman from Wagner College, chaplain Mark Radecke from Susquehanna University, and professors Wanda Deifelt from Luther College and Jose Marichal from California Lutheran University. A preliminary schedule for the conference is attached.
Registration
Each of the colleges and universities that are related to the ELCA is invited to send five representatives to the conference, so it is essential that you first check with the person who is coordinating the delegation from your institution whether you can be selected to be part of the team from your institution. At most institutions it is the chief academic officer who does this coordination, but at some colleges it is the chaplain, the church relations director, or another administrator. This coordination is necessary, since each institution will be asked to cover a registration fee of $150 for each participant.
We ask that you send us a copy of the attached form, no later than July 1. We will cover most of the cost of your participation, including travel from your college area to the conference and back, as outlined below. We will plan some options for recreational activities, especially on Friday evening, and there may be an additional cost for some of those.
We will invoice each college for the registration fees after the conference. Please DO NOT send payment before the meeting (There are always last minute changes, and refunding registration fees and adding fees for late registrants requires a great deal of work for us, so we prefer to bill afterwards).
Housing
We will be housed in an air-conditioned campus residence area.
Traveling by Car
We encourage those of you who live within a reasonable driving distance from Decorah to share a ride back and forth with others from your campus. Your chief academic officer should be able to tell you who the other participants from your college will be. We will cover driving costs at 48.5 cents per mile up to the cost of the least expensive plane ticket.
Traveling by Air
Those who come from further away need to order plane tickets through Best Travel at the Lutheran Center at 1-800-543-8016. Please contact them before July 1, and tell them to charge the ticket to account number 38-115. If you do not have authorization in advance from us we will not reimburse you for tickets, we will only cover the cost of tickets that are directly billed to us by Best Travel.
The commercial flights could be to and from Rochester, Minnesota (Northwest Airlines through Minneapolis) or La Crosse, Wisconsin (American Airlines through Chicago). As you can see in the preliminary schedule, we will pick up travelers at those airports in the early afternoon on Thursday, and we recommend that you choose a flight that arrives no later than 3 pm so you can get to Decorah in time to participate in the opening dinner. On Saturday you should try to find a flight that departs no earlier than 5 p.m. We will provide transportation to the La Crosse and Rochester airports when the conference ends. We will NOT cover the cost of rental cars from those airports, and we will NOT cover the cost of parking your car at your home airport.
For groups of you, an alternative could be to fly to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, rent a car and drive to Decorah. That is a drive of about 2.5 hours. We will not be able to pick up participants in Minneapolis, or pay for rental cars for individuals, but for a group of you traveling together that may be an affordable alternative.
We expect this to be an exciting opportunity to learn, and to share ideas with colleagues from across the country, about matters that are important to your institution and to your life there. We look forward to your participation, and will contact you again with further information.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at 1-800/638-3522 ext. 2857, or 1-773/380-2857, or e-mail us at arne.selbyg@elca.org or Kathryn.Baker@elca.org.