Established on 04.28.1999 by anonymous donors in memory of Professors Ed Fuglestad, Olaf Torstveit, and Elinor Torstveit
R. E. "Ed" Fuglestad (first photo) joined the staff of the biology department at Concordia College in 1927. Retiring in 1970, he completed an outstanding 43-year teaching career. In additions to his many other duties, Professor Fuglestad was the advisor to biology students interest in medicine. Upon retirement, he could boast that 187 students entered medical school during his tenure. Throughout the years, he maintained a keen interest in all of his former students and kept in tough with them through correspondence and his travels across the country. Professor Fuglestad died in 1981 at the age of 80. As reported in an article in the Concordia Alumni News in the summer of that same year, "He gave his students a vision, he excited their imagination, and he nurtured and prodded them on. But above all, he gave them a deep sense of humanity."
Olaf Torstveit (second photo) graduated from Concordia College in 1934. He accepted a teaching position with the Biology Department at Concordia in 1949, and he remained at Concordia for 34 years until his retirement in 1983. Olaf loved to teach, and many of his former students became physicians, medical technologists, nurses, researchers and teachers. During his time at Concordia, he served as chairman of the Biology department and was presented the 1963 AKX-Mondamin Outstanding Teacher Award.
Elinor Torstveit (third photo), known as Concordia’s “Snake Lady," was born in Montana and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and had been accepted to medical school. She, however, chose not to attend stating later that it wasn’t possible for a married woman at the time. She moved to Moorhead in 1949 after her husband, Olaf, accepted a teaching position in Concordia’s Biology Department. In 1954, Elinor joined him in the department after R. E. Fuglestad, the department chair, stopped the family on their way to a camping trip and offered her a job in the lab. Torstveit had always been interested in reptiles and became the Biology Department’s “keeper of the snakes” in addition to teaching Biology 101. Torstveit’s passion for education and service extended beyond the science building and into the community. With the legless creatures in hand, she promoted a better understanding of snakes to the public through a traveling reptile show. At one point, Torstveit estimated that between 500 and 600 grade school children viewed the biology building’s snake display.
The purpose of the Fuglestad-Torstveit Biology Department Endowment is to provide funding for undergraduate research and for the enrichment of student experience in both research and teaching. Proceeds from the endowment may also be used to provide matching or incentive funds for external grants to support research and teaching.