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A year and a half into Nicolaus Anderson’s nursing studies at CUC, something wasn’t clicking for him.

At the time, CUC nursing students would go through what was called the “Two Plus Two” program where two years of classes were taught in science, math, and other general education classes by CUC faculty and two additional years were done through a neighboring university or college, like the now-closed Oak Point University. Over 1,000 nursing graduates from CUC went through the Two Plus Two program over 40 years.

“I wasn’t getting what I wanted,” Anderson said. “Academically, socially, it wasn’t Concordia – and there was a lot of issues with that.” While he initially chose CUC for the tight-knit community and Christ-centered atmosphere, with almost all of his classes taken at a completely different school, Anderson was unhappy in the situation.

That all changed when he ran into the newly hired CUC director of nursing Kristen Bayer in late 2022. They discussed Anderson’s struggles with the current nursing program while Bayer introduced him to the new four-year program she was working to bring to CUC.

“I met her and started working with her,” Anderson said. “Even while I was taking classes at this other school, she was helping me study, you know, tutoring me and all that. She reminded me of what I wanted from school and why I chose Concordia in the first place.”

Bayer’s vision for this new four-year program was unlike what CUC had seen before in the nursing program. Her goal was to focus on that same reason Anderson chose CUC to begin with – consistency, community, and faith.

She wanted the experience of a nursing student to feel uniquely Concordia by looking at nursing through the lens of a vocation used to serve one’s neighbor.

“Bringing our faith into the classroom is really important,” Bayer said. “And really leaning into faculty who are strong in their faith, who have been nurses for a long time, who have a willingness and a desire to really explore that part of what makes the job so much a vocation with our students.”

Anderson said the nursing faculty were important in his experience with the new program.

“They were really there to help us through it the whole way, and gave us what we needed to be successful,” Anderson said. “They really wanted the best out of each and every one of us, so I felt like they were personally invested in us. We weren’t just a success rate to pass our tests and move on.”

From checking in on students regularly to standing beside them on their first clinical while they perform CPR on real patients, each member of the nursing faculty was chosen specifically because of their love of the vocation and care for students.

“The faculty are not just a teacher in a classroom,” Anderson said. “I’d always stop by their offices [and talk] about class, about life, about this, about that. You know, they’re always there for us – for pretty much anything.”

In addition to the faculty being chosen very specifically, the students’ schedules, the tools they use, and the spaces where they work are central to Bayer’s vision for the nursing program.

In contrast to most nursing programs starting clinical rotations at nearby hospitals the third or fourth year of school, Bayer wanted students’ schedules to mirror their interests soon after coming in. She schedules clinicals to start the student’s second year, whether in the ICU, ER, or anywhere in a hospital that student is interested in getting a deeper view.

“If a student does two years and says ‘I want to be a nurse,’ and then you go to your first clinical in your junior year, after you’ve done all the prerequisites you need, it’s hard to then pivot,” Bayer said. “If you say ‘I don’t want to sit with blood, I don’t want to touch a person that’s sick, I don’t want to be at the hospital,’ they just don’t realize that. We recognize that in students.”

Students get additional hands-on and real-world experience with a senior capstone. Anderson worked night shifts shadowing a nurse and learning all he could from working with real people in the hospital. He is now a registered nurse at Methodist Hospital in the emergency room.

“Most of your clinicals, it’s your instructor and then five to eight students, and you’re kind of all there on the floor practicing, trying to see stuff,” Anderson said. “But the capstone, the way it works is you, as an individual student, go to this unit and get assigned a staff member from that hospital and you work with their schedule.”

On CUC’s campus, students will use tools that help prepare them for real-world situations in hospitals. From realistic life-sized dummies that can breathe, bleed, and give birth, to crash carts to carry “patients” around the lab, to VR goggles and an interactive touchscreen table featuring life-sized 3D cadavers and anatomical visualizations, Bayer wanted every tool to aid in the students’ learning.

These tools are housed in the simulation lab on the third floor of the Christopher Center on campus. The lab celebrated its third anniversary on Feb. 14 after being transformed from an office space. Close to $1.5 million from donors, fundraising, and specific nursing grants was spent on building this lab and outfitting the space with the necessary equipment.

The first five students who utilized these brand-new facilities, tools, and curriculum graduated in December of 2025. Among them was Anderson, who looked back at his time as a nursing student at CUC as a time of much learning and growth.

“They were really receptive to our feedback,” Anderson said. “They were working with us, not just telling us stuff. It really felt like a two-way street – we heard them, they heard us. And you know we’re gonna get through it together.”

Talk is underway for additions of a graduate program or even separating from the College of Health, Science, and Technology to become specifically the College of Health Science. “The opportunities are kind of limitless,” Bayer said.

As professor of theology Charles Schulz stood in the middle of Concordia University Ann Arbor’s Zimmerman Library, which was deserted save for his five-person crew and the librarian, he felt all of the memories come flooding back. He recalled long nights completing schoolwork for his undergraduate degree and doctorate, and remembered holding classes in some of the rooms in the library, directing students to particular resources.

Now the Zimmerman Library’s future is uncertain. With CUAA ceasing the majority of its programs in June 2025 and currently in talks to sell off most of its land, Schulz stepped into its library for perhaps the last time to rescue books for CUC’s collection.

“It was bittersweet,” said Schulz, who had come to teach at CUC in 2024 after CUAA had first announced their restructuring. “That library had been my undergraduate library. I went to school there, and I taught there for about 23 years. And now to see the campus silent and empty is heartbreaking, because it was such a vibrant ministry in that place.”

Early this semester, after many months of asking what would happen to the collection, Schulz was notified of the opportunity to recover books from the CUAA library. He then put out a general invitation to CUC faculty to select books from the library catalog that would be useful to them and their students.

On Friday, Feb. 20, Schulz, along with four of his students and assistant professor of English Joshua Tuttle, embarked on a roadtrip to CUAA to bring books from their collection to CUC. The crew stayed in the home of Schulz’s former parishioners in Ann Arbor for the night and were at work in the CUAA library in the morning.

By the end of the experience, after painstakingly typing out every ISBN and barcode to document what they took, they loaded a U-Haul with approximately 2,000 books, most of which were related to English or theology.

Schulz wasn’t the only one on the road trip with a connection to CUAA. Junior Tim Burmann, one of the students helping out with the haul, was formerly a student there before transferring to CUC in 2024.

“I think it was a good experience,” Burmann said. “It kind of felt like burying the body a little bit. Like, all right, it’s over. But now we can at least take the good things that we knew were over there and bring them over to our collection,” 

Though the crew walked away with boxes upon boxes of books, they still had to be selective about what they chose to take.

“It had to be something that I could see wanting to either use in a course or things that, in the way that I’m often directing students into the library to do some browsing and discovering on their own, things that they would, following a citation trail, be led to,” Tuttle said. “Basically, it had to be something that a student would be led to directly or indirectly from the coursework. Otherwise, I couldn’t justify it.”

The English literature is currently stored in the third floor of Brohm Hall, though where the books will ultimately land is still uncertain. Tuttle hosted a book sorting party on March 31 to discover which books from CUAA are already owned by the CUC library, in order to prevent duplicates in the collection. 

“This really was probably a once-in-a-generation opportunity to grow our collection in one fell swoop at zero cost,” Tuttle said. 

The theology books are now housed in the St. Isidore of Seville Theological Collection, found in the second floor of Kretzmann Hall. 

“I know some of my colleagues have already found it useful, when I’m preparing for a class and I say, ‘I need a commentary on that Bible book’ and I don’t happen to have one on my shelf,” Schulz said. “It’s very convenient for me and my studies and supporting my work with the students. And I’ve already had the parents of prospective students comment on how impressive the books look and how it indicates that our school is a place for study and for real intellectual growth.” 

The theological library is open to all students. Students can check out books by emailing Schulz with which materials they have taken out. 

“It’s very helpful, especially for languages. We have a bunch of patristic church fathers in original languages, so a bunch of Greek and Latin and church fathers, so that’ll be a super good resource,” said junior Troy Zimmerman, one of the students who went on the book haul trip.

The newly-acquired books have wider relevance beyond church work and theology students, extending to other fields relating to the humanities.

“Those books that we got, there’s no way to really describe how useful those things are for the students that we have, especially in any sort of classics-type department like English, theology, philology, philosophy,” Burmann said. “We don’t have those books here. And so being able to have those and have them at free access, it’s just insanely useful for us.” 

Despite the sadness surrounding the closure of CUAA, Schulz viewed the experience as an opportunity to expand CUC’s holdings of physical books, a fleeting resource in an increasingly digital world.

“Students are drawn into deeper scholarship when they have a physical book in front of them. Even when it’s on the shelves, it invites them to open it in a way that a web page doesn’t,” Schulz said. “And not only does the book on the shelf invite you, but the book next to it, and the book that you just happen to be passing by, and so the serendipitous discoveries that happen with library collections are just untold. They’re just fantastic.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that the English books would be integrated into the collection at Klinck Memorial Library. They will not be absorbed into the library’s collection.

During much of his free time, junior Alan Saban finds himself picking up extra shifts in the tutoring center. Not to cover typical living expenses or to have extra spending money, but to help pay for parking.

Saban, a nursing major, needs a car on campus so he can drive to his required clinicals at local hospitals. As a campus resident, he pays $320 each semester for his parking permit.

“If I did not have clinicals both semesters, I would not be paying for parking. The second I find out I don’t have clinicals next or the overmorrow semester, I’m not paying for parking at all,” Saban said. “It’s just the paralyzing fear of being unable to complete a clinical shift that keeps me in line.”

Parking costs have been a hot-button issue this semester. The SGA is leading an effort to lower the cost of parking on campus, which is currently $88 per semester for commuters and $320 per semester for residents. The effort was spearheaded by junior Alexa Giannoulis, the president of the SGA, who was taken aback by the cost of parking.

“Last year I was a resident, and I do have a car, but when they told us the price, my mom and I, we were really shocked,”  said Giannoulis. “Ever since then, I’m like, ‘This is just too expensive.’”

A survey conducted by the SGA in February found that 54.3% of students believe the current permit pricing to be very expensive, and 71.9% of students say that the pricing is not fair. 

“Our ultimate goal is so the prices, hopefully, they get lowered. But with the survey, just so we could talk to the higher-ups and be like, ‘Hey, this is student feedback, this is what we learned, here’s the stats for some of the questions we asked,’” Giannoulis said.

SGA shared that student feedback during a meeting with administration on March 23, the first of a series of meetings aimed at discussing the parking issue. No official decision has been made about whether parking permit prices will be lowered or not.

Part of SGA’s parking inquiry was researching the parking costs at other private universities in the area. They found that the parking costs at other nearby universities were less than those at CUC. Dominican University’s parking rates are $75 a year for commuters, and $100 each semester for residents. Elmhurst University’s is $75 a year for commuters and $125 a year for residents. At Aurora University, parking is completely free.

“CUC’s parking fees reflect our cost structure and limited available parking off-campus,” said CFO John Thoelke over email. “CUC’s commuter pricing appears competitive based on a review of area colleges. On-campus resident pricing is higher than other colleges reviewed but reasonably priced for the River Forest community.”

Thoelke added parking fees “offset the cost of the ongoing maintenance and depreciation of student parking areas on campus,” and that the challenge, if the parking fees were to be lowered, would be finding a replacement for that lost revenue. Thoelke said CUC incurs annual expenses of at least $200,000, and this year CUC collected $190,000 of parking permit revenue to cover those expenses.  

Affordability for students, administrators said, is one of the factors being considered as parking permit pricing is evaluated.

“We are very sensitive to the cost of parking permits for our students; therefore, we attempt to keep the parking permit price as low as possible,” said Kathy Gebhardt, dean of students.

While many students are dissatisfied with parking costs, those who need cars to travel between school and home or to internships and jobs don’t have much of a choice in whether they pay for parking or not. And some students get creative to avoid the expense of a parking permit.

“I know a lot of people, they’ll just park on the side, or they’ll try and get around it, or they’ll take public transportation so they don’t have to worry about that cost,” sophomore Michelle Marecki said.

The high cost of parking has also presented some students with the dilemma of whether to pay for a full year of parking up-front, or pay by semester.

“I have always needed my car. So I haven’t been able to just be like, ‘No, I can’t do it,’” said senior Evalynn Berg. “But I’ve been going back and forth between those two options because sometimes it’s way too expensive right out of the get-go. And then I forget to buy it for the next semester and I get a ticket.” 

Saban said the parking prices seem unreasonable for the quality of the parking lot.

“I think that the parking is a major thing that will continue to lower the students’ appreciation and pride of CUC, an emblem of the continual money-grubbing that makes students feel like they’re not really there to get an education, just there as commodities to be squeezed,” Saban said.

Handshakes, introductions, and spirited discussion were common sights in the Oak Park room on Feb. 13 as students, faculty, staff, and local business owners had lunch and made new connections.

The luncheon was a bridge between a morning and afternoon session of discussion and listening, students and their faculty coaches supporting their assigned entrepreneur by hearing their concerns and asking questions.

The event was part of the Entrepreneurship Triad program at CUC, which began in January. Funded by a grant from the Bradley Foundation, it is a collaboration between the College of Business, the Free Enterprise Center and the Proviso Township Ministerial Alliance Network, a local organization dedicated to community transformation. 

The program is an opportunity for students to get hands-on experience in business and for entrepreneurs from the Maywood area to get feedback on how to improve their businesses. Students receive their choice of a stipend or course credit for their efforts.

“What we’re actually able to do is sit down with the client, speak to them, and find out what concerns they have that we could potentially assist them with in their development of trying to be sustainable,” said adjunct business professor J.T. White, who is a faculty coach in the program. 

Each of the 12 triads consists of one CUC faculty or staff coach, one student and one entrepreneur. The individual triads meet once or twice a month for business coaching sessions in addition to monthly larger group meetings in the form of peer advisory sessions. 

“With the peer advising, everyone listens to the problem, asks a lot of questions first, not suggestions. And then once they’ve exhausted the topic, then people make suggestions,” said Rachel Ferguson, director of the Free Enterprise Center at CUC. “It’s very exciting because oftentimes the feedback from the other CEOs will open up whole new vistas of how the problem could be handled.”

The Entrepreneurship Triad is part of a larger, continuous effort by CUC to be involved in neighborhood stabilization efforts, Ferguson said. CUC’s ongoing partnership with the Rev. Reginald Saffo, chairman of the Proviso Township Ministry Alliance Network and a community leader in the Maywood area, helped inform the creation of the program. In May, CUC will host a fundraiser for Saffo’s program, Four by Four, which teaches entrepreneurial skills to middle and high schoolers.

“The mistake a lot of universities make is they’ve got big ideas, but it’s what they think the neighborhood needs. And so they just show up and start doing things and they don’t know anybody and they haven’t asked anybody,” Ferguson said. “A lot of times it fails and they disappear. And so it ends up being even more discouraging to the neighborhood, as opposed to building something where you’re saying, ‘we’re going to be here.’ Building that sense of trust with our neighbors is really important to me.”

As students, coaches, and entrepreneurs talk through the issues their businesses face, an emphasis is placed on listening, showing the entrepreneurs that they have support.

“It’s nice to have someone else, not to do the work for me, but to help me push a little further on the parts of the business that are really not that easy to do alone,” said Lorenzo King, the owner of delivery service Easy Does It.

That meant figuring out how to put some systems in place for the back end of the business and to build more structure to keep the business successful, King said. Among the concerns of other entrepreneurs in the program were improving the effectiveness of their advertising, setting up processes and documentation for on-boarding, and appealing to a target audience in marketing campaigns.

“A student is able to showcase themselves to a business,” White said. “Also the school with the program is saying to the neighborhood, to Maywood, ‘Hey, we’re here for you. We care about you. You’re part of our community. We want to assist you in any way we can to see what we can do to help you grow, develop, or start off.’”

Senior Emma Pflughoeft is working alongside Tandra Rutledge, founder of Avidity LLC, a faith-based mental health consulting and training agency.

“I have been learning a lot from Tandra about her own personal experience with creating her own business and the amount of promotions that you have to do for that,” Pflughoeft said. “Being super consistent on online marketing and physical marketing and just getting out there is crucial for the growth and development of the business.”

White said that a few of the students in the program are currently in one of his classes, and that he has enjoyed watching them apply what they are learning.

“Another student that’s in the classroom is not in my triad, but I congratulated him and told him I was proud of him, because in the meeting he was actually echoing some of the points that we teach in the HR class about when there’s disciplinary action necessary, the four steps,” White said. “So I see the students, I learn it sticks, it works, they’re actually listening. They’re actually seeing potential in their vocation.”