Selection Process

Close to 300 nominations were received and entered into a database according to era, field of study, type of career, gender, and relationship to the university. For many weeks, the editorial advisory committee wrestled with the selection process, guided by criteria developed early in the life of the project. We sought to represent equitably the various categories into which the nominees were grouped.

We were particularly interested in the exploration of vocation and the variety of ways in which individuals have applied passion and talent to meet the world’s great needs, both locally and around the globe. Due to the rich well from which we had to draw, current faculty, staff, students, and administrators were not selected, except under special circumstances. For example, several current faculty and staff were selected because they are Hamline alumni. Others work in younger programs that we wanted represented, especially the law and graduate programs. The stories of many other deserving faculty, staff, and students, we hope, will be told in a future volume.

Likewise, there were many deserving teachers, ministers, business leaders, homemakers, and others who could not be included because of space limitations. We wish to honor all nominees by including them in the appendix. We owe a debt of gratitude to the many nominators—students, friends, colleagues, family members—who submitted names and biographical information to the committee.