Augustana University

Augustana University is a private liberal arts college in South Dakota. It is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The school is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States. The 100-acre (40 ha) campus makes the school the largest private university in South Dakota. Some people call the college “Augie.”
It was first called "The Lutheran Normal School". It was started for the purpose of educating teachers. In 1918, the college got its current name after joining with Augustana College in Canton. This happened because synod officials worried about having enough money to run two institutions so close together. The schools were only 20 miles (32 km) apart. The college claims its founding as 1860, the same as its sister-school (which shares the same name) in Rock Island, Illinois. Augustana gets its name from the "Confessio Augustana", the Latin name for the Augsburg Confession of 1530.
Augustana regularly gets high rankings among other Midwestern schools. Publications such as "The Princeton Review" named Augustana a "Best Midwestern College" and "U.S. News &amp; World Report" listed Augustana as a "Best Buy" in 2009. "U.S. News &amp; World Report" has listed the school a top tier baccalaureate college in the Midwest for 13 years in a row, with Augustana placing third as of 2009. It got this ranking again in 2010.