A Taste of Norway
June 13-23, 2025
Registration Deadline: March 16, 2025
If “Norwegian cuisine” only brings to mind meatballs, lutefisk, and lefse, this culinary-focused trip to Norway will enhance your understanding of and appreciation for the variation, quality, and creativity of today’s Norwegian cuisine.
Join Norwegian travel and food enthusiasts, Dr. Lisa Sethre-Hofstad, vice president for student development and campus life and professor of psychology, and Dr. Joan Kopperud, professor emeritus of English, to experience how centuries of Norwegian food traditions continue to influence innovative approaches to today’s culinary dishes.
Travelers will enjoy first-hand experiences with Norwegian food and culture, including a Viking plank dinner, a Michelin Star restaurant dining experience, a cooking lesson with North Wild Kitchen’s Nevada Berg, and more.
Faculty Leaders
Dr. Lisa Sethre-Hofstad serves as Concordia’s vice president for student development and campus life. Sethre-Hofstad took over the newly revised and renamed division in fall 2017, leading student support, student development, and campus life.
Now in her 29th year of service at Concordia, Sethre-Hofstad is a professor of psychology and previously served as associate dean of the college.
She has been recognized on campus through leadership roles and through Centennial research grants. Beyond Concordia she has been honored as a Fulbright Scholar, a Scholar of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, a Thrivent Fellow, and a participant in the HERS Summer Leadership Institute for Women in Higher Education.
She brings to her work a devotion to equity, to diversity in opportunity and practice, and to the rich worth and promise of every Concordia student.
During her time at Concordia, she spent one year as a Fulbright Scholar in Tromsø, Norway, where she again taught during 2010 while on sabbatical leave. Dr. Sethre-Hofstad’s interest in international travel and education began as an undergraduate at Concordia College, where she majored in psychology and Scandinavian studies, and during which time she spent three summers working at Skogfjorden, the Norwegian program of the Concordia Language Villages. She has spent time living abroad in Australia and in Norway, and has led students on study-abroad experiences to London and Oslo.
Dr. Joan Kopperud is now retired from Concordia College after teaching in the English Department for 31 years. She also served as the director of integrative learning at Concordia the last three years of her career. Kopperud is currently professor emeritus in residence at Concordia.
She grew up in Owatonna, Minnesota, and graduated from Concordia in 1975. She and her husband Kevin, also a Cobber, spend time at their cabin north of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Her hobbies and interests include daily lap swimming, reading, cooking, biking, walking/hiking, and traveling.
In addition to leading a number of study-away opportunities with students, together Kopperud and Sethre-Hofstad have co-led multiple trips to Norway and look forward to another great trip to Norway in June 2025.