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Wartburg College
Motto	Experience more.
Type	Private liberal arts college
Established	1852; 172 years ago
Religious affiliation	Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Endowment	$94 million (2023)
President	Rebecca Ehretsman
Academic staff	83 full-time and 60 part-time (fall 2022)
Students	1,563 fall 2022
Location	Waverly, Iowa and Denver, Colorado, United States
Campus	Rural, 118 acres (48 ha)
Colors	Orange and black
Nickname	Knights
Website	www.wartburg.edu

Wartburg College is a private Lutheran liberal arts college in Waverly, Iowa.

History

Wartburg College was founded in 1852 in Saginaw, Michigan, by Georg M. Grossmann, a native of Neuendettelsau, Bavaria. Pastor Wilhelm Löhe sent Grossmann to establish a pastor training school for German immigrants. The college moved many times between Illinois and Iowa before settling in Waverly in 1935. Also in 1935, St. Paul Luther College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, merged with Wartburg College.

The college is named after Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, Germany, where Martin Luther was protected during the stormy days of the Reformation. Student and alumni groups often travel to the castle, and the Wartburg Choir has performed there several times. Waverly and Eisenach are sister towns and often swap foreign exchange students. The college is proud of its German heritage and celebrates an annual student-declared one-day holiday, Outfly, a deliberately mistaken translation of the German noun Ausflug. Outfly is the most enduring Wartburg tradition. The first mention of Ausflug comes from Mendota, Illinois, in 1883, when students went on a Friday-Saturday excursion to nearby Starved Rock, now a state park. Faculty minutes for October 5, 1892, note that Ausflug was scheduled for the next day.^[2]^[3]

Old Main, the oldest building on campus, was built in 1880 for the Wartburg Teachers Seminary. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 under the name Wartburg Teachers' Seminary.^[4]

The longstanding rivalry between Wartburg and Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, has produced some colorful moments. The rivalry's origins are unclear. Stories of pranks date to the 1940s. For the most part, the rivalry has been characterized by fun and good sportsmanship. It rose to new heights in October 1996, when two Wartburg cross-country runners rented a light plane, flew to Decorah, and dropped leaflets on the Luther campus. The incident was reported in every major Iowa newspaper, got national mention on Fox, and made Rolling Stone magazine's list of the most memorable college pranks of 1996–97. The creativity in the rivalry continued when student staff members of the college radio station, KWAR, secretly entered a float in the Luther College Homecoming Parade. The staff members decorated the float as an environmental club, the "Organization of Nature Enthusiasts", from Luther College. In front of the judges' stand the float quickly changed color from blue and white to orange and black. It continued all the way through town and onto Luther's campus, with numerous Wartburg students joining the procession from the crowd.^[5]

In 2022, Rebecca Ehretsman became Wartburg's first female president.^[6]

List of presidents

Georg M. Grossmann, 1852–1868
John Klindworth, 1868–1875
Georg Grossmann, 1878–1894
Friedrich Lutz, 1894–1905
Gerhard Bergstraesser, 1905–1909
Friedrich Richter, 1894–1899 (Clinton IA)
Otto Kraushaar, 1899–1907 (Clinton IA)
John Fritschel, 1907–1919 (Clinton IA)
Otto Proehl, 1919–1935 (Clinton IA)
August Engelbrecht, 1909–1933
Edward J. Braulick, 1935–1945
Conrad Becker, 1945–1964
John Bachman, 1964–1974
William Jellema, 1974–1980
Robert L. Vogel, 1980–1998
Jack R. Ohle, 1998–2008
William Hamm, 2008–2009 (interim)
Darrel Colson, 2009–2022
Rebecca Ehretsman, 2022–Present^[7]

Location

Wartburg College has moved many times throughout its history:^[8]

Saginaw, Michigan (1852–1853)
Dubuque, Iowa (1853–1857)
St. Sebald, Iowa (1857–1868)
Galena, Illinois (1868–1875)
Mendota, Illinois (1875–1885)
Clinton, Iowa (1894–1935)
Waverly, Iowa (1879–1933, 1935–present)

Athletics

Wartburg College teams participate as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division III. The Knights are a member of the American Rivers Conference (ARC). Men's sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, tennis, track & field, and wrestling; while women's sports include basketball, cheerleading, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, track & field, volleyball, wrestling, and lacrosse. The women's lacrosse team competes in the Midwest Women's Lacrosse Conference (MWLC). In the spring of 2012, Wartburg's wrestling and women's track and field teams led Wartburg to become the only school in NCAA history to win two national team championships on the same day. Wartburg has had an individual or team national champion for 28 straight years including Wartburg Knights wrestling winning the 2022 NCAA DIII Wrestling Tournament.^[9] The men's wrestling team has an NCAA DIII leading 15 NCAA national titles. Wartburg's softball team appeared in two Women's College World Series in 1971 and 2003,^[10] while the baseball team has also played in two College World Series, coming in 2000 and 2005.^[11]

Notable coaches

Bob Amsberry, head women's basketball coach, 2006–present
Joel Holst, head baseball coach, 1996–2022
Eric Keller, head wrestling coach, 2011–present
Casey Klunder, head baseball coach, 2023–present
Sam Leal, head men's basketball coach, 2024–present
Jamie Mueller, head softball coach, 2016–present
Dick Peth, head men's basketball coach, 1997–2024
Rick Willis, head football coach, 1997–2005 and 2008–2021
Chris Winter, head football coach, 2021–present
Emily Ryan, head women's soccer coach, 2022–present

Notable alumni

Don Denkinger, Major League Baseball umpire who achieved notoriety for his call at 1st base as an umpire in the 1985 World Series
Matt Entz, head football coach at Fresno State
Romaine H Foege, member, Iowa House of Representatives, 1996–2008, director, Iowa Department on Aging, 2010–2011. CEO, Eastern Iowa Health Center, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 2014–2015
Mark Holtz, radio announcer for professional baseball team the Texas Rangers
Dan Ige, professional mixed martial artist
Rachelle Keck, academic administrator
Sarah Lacina, winner of season 34 of Survivor: Game Changers. Appeared on three seasons of survivor and The Challenge: USA
Bob Nielson, current head football coach at University of South Dakota
Tiffany Pins, head women's soccer coach at Washington and Lee and former Wartburg college head coach
Coleen Rowley, whistleblower FBI agent, researched suspected World Trade Center terrorist; jointly held the Time magazine Person of the Year award in 2002
Jack Salzwedel, chairman and CEO of American Family Insurance
Paul Schell, former mayor of Seattle, Washington
Brian Trow, businessman and television personality
Chris Winter, head football coach at Wartburg College
George J. Woerth, Wisconsin state assemblyman
Tom Zirbel, professional bicycle racer and 2009 USA Cycling NRC points champion who signed to Union Cycliste Internationale professional team, Garmin-Transitions for the 2010 season
Landon Williams, head men's wrestling coach at Central College (Iowa)

References

^ ^a ^b "College Navigator - Wartburg College". Nces.ed.gov.
^ Matthias, Ronald (2002). Still on the Move: Wartburg College A Sesquicentennial Celebration 1852-2002. Cedar Rapids, IA: WDG Communications Inc. p. 116.
^ Gyamera, Phoebe (October 5, 2009). "Ausflug: A Wartburg tradition continues". The Wartburg College Circuit. Archived from the original on August 14, 2012.
^ Jellema, W. W. "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form for Wartburg Teachers' Seminary". National Park Service. Retrieved April 1, 2023.
^ "Midwest Region Notes by Don Stoner". D3football.com. Retrieved July 23, 2022.
^ Turner, Jonathan (February 13, 2023). "Meet new Wartburg president in the QC". WHBF - OurQuadCities.com. Retrieved December 25, 2023.
^ "Neiduski named 18th Wartburg College president". Wartburg.edu. March 21, 2022. Retrieved July 23, 2022.
^ "Wartburg Locations - About Wartburg College - Waverly, Iowa, USA". Archived from the original on August 28, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2006.
^ "Athletic Dominance". Wartburg.edu. Retrieved July 23, 2022.
^ Plummer, William; Floyd, Larry C. (2013). A Series Of Their Own: History Of The Women's College World Series. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States: Turnkey Communications Inc. ISBN 978-0-9893007-0-4.
^ "Wartburg College Baseball Record Book Updated 2022" (PDF). S3.amazonaws.com. Retrieved July 23, 2022.