Concordia Magazine

Dr. Gregg Muilenburg

Dr. Gregg Muilenburg retires after 36 years at Concordia as professor of philosophy. He came to Concordia in 1977 after earning his bachelor’s degree from Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich., and his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Chicago.

Muilenburg was immediately thrust into leadership roles at the college. He helped craft the Agenda or Blueprint III and IV, documents laying out the liberal arts agenda for the college that guided Concordia through the '80s and '90s. The Goals for Liberal Learning are directly descended from the goals Muilenburg helped formulate in his first years here.

Throughout the years, Muilenburg has played many roles at Concordia and has embodied philosophy for Concordia students. “He has an abiding commitment to things he takes deeply seriously: students, friends, the life of the mind, integrity and this academic community, Concordia College,” says Dr. George Connell, division chair of Humanities and professor of philosophy. “To borrow a phrase I’ve often heard him use, when you cut Gregg, he bleeds maroon and gold.”

He was the director of the Lutheran Academy of Scholars from 2006 to 2008, an organization that took faculty from ELCA colleges to Harvard for a two-week seminar with a Harvard Divinity School professor, Ronald Thiemann. He published a number of articles and co-edited a book, “Translucence: Religion, the Arts, and Imagination,” published by Fortress Press in 2004. 

During the course of six May Seminars and four semesters in Crete, he opened the world to hundreds of Concordia students and Connell says, Muilenburg “became about half Greek himself.”

Muilenburg and his wife, Pat, plan to travel a great deal both here and out of the country. He also plans to finish a book on metaphor and begin a logic text a publishing company wants him to write. And “last but not least, we will spend time with our four grandchildren,” he says.

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