Reflection on Dan Tsui’s Years at Augustana College

In the fall of 1958, students walking onto the Augustana College campus as freshmen found a small but proud institution, approaching its centennial with a surprisingly wide array of academic programs and a skilled and highly dedicated faculty whose primary aim was the intellectual and moral development of the student. Among the new students was a remarkable young man from Hong Kong. Faculty and staff who were aware of the record and recommendations that accompanied his admissions folder knew that his gifts were profound and rare. He was a “phenom” whose limits, if there were any, would be tested in the laboratory and classroom. To those of us entering the college with him, he was perceived to be an intense, exceptionally kind, and sometimes extravagantly polite classmate — an international student with all of the mystery implied by that category who seemed eager for friendship and the full agenda of student life…