1994-2007
Theodore Olsen served as president of the newly amalgamated Martin Luther College from 1994 until 2007. These were testing years in which a common faith and hope would be challenged by the daily tensions and passions of two very different academic cultures united on one campus. The students, faculties, and staffs of Northwestern College and Dr. Martin Luther College, now united as Martin Luther College, occasionally needed redirection and creative adjudication to ease the strains as they learned to live together.
To bear capably both the onus and the honor of this leadership, the pastor called by the Governing Board was a man with an independent personality rooted in Christian faith, a man trained by broad experience, a man bearing a manifest love for the synod’s program of ministerial training.
Ted Olsen (1940-2015) graduated from Northwestern College in 1962 and Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary in 1966. He began serving in the parish ministry at St. Mark in Brown Deer, Wisconsin. In 1971, the Lord called Ted to serve as professor of religion and social studies at Dr. Martin Luther College, where he served until 1978. The next four years he served as parish pastor at Zion in Gainesville, Florida. Ted began anew his service in ministerial training as president of Martin Luther Preparatory School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and then was called to the presidency of Martin Luther College in 1994.
Ted’s tenure at MLC not only fostered the college’s unity, as a student body and faculty began to live together effectively, but also promoted within the synod at large satisfaction and acceptance of a single ministerial training college.
During his tenure the faculty responded to the synod’s requests for careful examination of its curricula, to assure both itself and the entire synod that it was teaching what was most needed to prepare young men and women for faithful, sensitive ministry of God’s Word. Meaningful curriculum changes resulted, both in required and optional studies within each college program. Beyond curriculum change, practical ministry activities were made available, and many more students participated in them.
Ted served MLC until his retirement in 2007 when he and his dear wife, Joanne, retired to Trego, Wisconsin, where she continues to live since Ted’s death in 2015. Even now Ted’s and his family’s love for ministerial training continue to serve both college and synod through a student scholarship established in his name.
Written by Professor Emeritus Darvin Raddatz WLS ’59
