It’s fitting that Augustana College celebrated its Homecoming the weekend of Oct. 9, since Angela Snyder had her own homecoming Oct. 12 at the Rock Island private liberal arts school.
The 2002 alumna started that Monday as Augie’s first assistant vice president for impact learning, a new role designed to connect every Augustana student more intentionally with hands-on learning, career preparation and meaningful work in the community.
Located in the Olin Center at the heart of Augustana’s campus, CORE is a multifaceted center for programming focused on experiential learning. CORE initiatives include career planning and preparation, international and off-campus study, research, service learning, vocational exploration and community-based learning centers, including the Upper Mississippi Center for Sustainable Communities and the EDGE Entrepreneurial Center.
CELTS supports Augustana educators in creating transformational, engaging learning experiences for students.
Through professional development, collaboration and evidence-based teaching practices, CELTS helps educators advance the college’s mission and prepare students to lead and serve in a diverse, changing world.
President Andrea Talentino said Snyder’s appointment will strengthen connections between students and the broader community.
“We are excited to welcome Angela Snyder to Augustana to help students discover how they can make an impact here and now, even before they graduate,” Talentino said. “We are committed to producing graduates who know what it means to contribute to the success of businesses, nonprofits and municipalities around us, and are prepared to do the same wherever their paths might lead. Angela’s energy, local connections and commitment to impactful learning are exactly what we need to inspire in our students the value of serving and building community.”
Snyder was chosen following a nationwide search led by Kent Barnds, executive vice president for strategy and innovation.
The search included an interview process involving Augustana faculty, staff and students. Barnds highlighted Snyder’s ability to build partnerships through shared goals.
“Her career has required her to bring people together around shared goals when none of them is obligated to participate,” he said. “Her ability to build trust, identify mutual value and turn partnerships into results is exactly what Augustana needs as we expand impact learning.”
Snyder comes to Augustana with more than two decades of experience bringing together corporate, nonprofit, educational, philanthropic and civic partners to achieve shared vision.
Before returning to her alma mater, Snyder served as chief strategy officer at United Way Quad Cities.
Previously, she held a senior leadership role at Russell, a commercial real estate and construction firm, where she led growth strategies, cross-functional teams, leadership development, business development and organizational integration.
Preparing students for life after school
In her new role, Snyder will lead CORE (Careers, Opportunity, Research, Exploration), the college’s center for preparing students for post-graduate work, service and education.
She also will work closely with Augustana’s CELTS (Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship) to support curricular innovations that prioritize engaged learning. Her job was reorganized from a similar position in place the past few years.
“The title is different, but there's someone kind of leading the function in a different way. And I'll be more external than internal and academic,” Snyder said.
Reflecting on her return to Augustana, where she majored in speech communication and English as a student, Snyder said she’s excited to use her role to build on existing momentum in engaged learning.
“Returning to Augustana at this moment feels incredibly meaningful,” she said. “There is already strong momentum around engaged learning, a clear priority in the college’s strategic plan, and a talented team committed to connecting students more deeply with the Quad Cities. I’m energized by the opportunity to build on that work and help create even more experiences that benefit students, partners and the community.”
Snyder comes to the new job after five years at United Way QC as chief strategy officer. That started as marketing, communications and fundraising oversight, and then moved mainly to fundraising and “figuring out how we could activate the community more and accelerate the work that we were doing for one of the initiatives, which was United for Schools,” Snyder said.
“So it's kind of taking what I did in the corporate environment and what I did at a nonprofit and bringing it here to Augustana.”
“It's kind of taking pieces and parts from each of my career stops and amplifying each of those pieces and parts,” she said. “I get to join a really awesome team here that's already doing a lot of engagement and engaged learning work with our students. So it's leading that function, but then also looking toward how can we get Augustana more entrenched in the community and offer our students more opportunities to learn outside of the classroom and bring those opportunities to campus.”
When Snyder was a student, she referred to Augie as “a bubble,” since students didn’t really leave campus or interact much with the wider community.
“And that bubble has burst, and that's with intention. So yes, it is getting students out,” she said. “The goal of that is to have our students leave this institution equipped with actual learning and with the skills that employers are wanting.
"Employers are scoring like technical skills and leadership skills very low, and communication and problem-solving and real-world experience is very high. So that's kind of what we're strategically trying to do with the Quad Cities, and giving those opportunities to students at Augustana.”
CORE is literally a core part of the process, Snyder said.
“We partner very closely with faculty to build some engaged learning into the classroom, but then outside of the classroom, it's study away or study abroad opportunities, it's internship placement, it's research projects,” she said. “Whether that's at Texas Medical Institute, every summer we send students, or bringing our students out for environmental work, to like the Milan Bottoms through our Environmental Studies Center. So it's not just one thing, it's many things, and that's by design.
"And it's our vision, our hope, our intent that students— this is unavoidable for students. This is how they learn. This is not something that they just check off of a card somewhere.”
Augustana boasts that 84% of graduates completed at least one internship during college (Class of 2025), and 95% of 2025 graduates were employed or in grad school within six months.
How Augie influenced her
A native of small-town Orion, Illinois, Snyder chose to go to Augie (a smaller school) for college to get more personalized attention, and be involved in many things, including as a volleyball player. Snyder’s coach still works for Augie, as registrar.
“I think one of the biggest changes that I am feeling and seeing as I walk around campus, is we have almost 22% of our students are international students. So I'm experiencing culture and language and groups of students that I never would have been exposed to when I was here,” she said Thursday, Oct. 22.
“I'm seeing the priority for engaged learning is really being adopted and put into practice by faculty. So they're kind of welcoming our team into their classroom and helping kids get career ready.”
Engaged learning means learning that's not done through reading a textbook or taking a test, but “more real-world, hands-on experience,” Snyder said, noting that applies to students regardless of their major.
“We have centers that focus on certain career paths and certain learnings,” she said. “For example, we have the Upper Mississippi Center, UMC, and that's for students to gain work in the environmental studies. So that is quite literally them putting on a life jacket and boots and going out to Milan and doing research work there. So it's for all students, it's for all majors, and we want to see that work spread even further and have all of our students participate.”
Engaged learning is one of three strategic initiatives of the college, Snyder noted. “It's prioritization of engaged learning, and that's something that's going to set Augustana apart. So I'm really thrilled to be here.”
Her new job is leading all the services provided by CORE, and partnering with CELTS (that center director works in Olin, just a floor above her).
“My role really is to try and formalize, expand and grow it and offer more opportunities outside of campus through our employers, through our nonprofits, and just kind of widen the portfolio of chances they get to be ready for graduation,” Snyder said.
Known in the QC
Due to her visible roles at Russell and United Way, she is “a somewhat known name amongst a variety of different industries, and I think that's going to help continue to— I said the bubble burst here at Augustana, but that's going to continue to get Augie out into the community and help our students be pretty active,” she said. “I've got relationships and I'm really excited to bring those to the students.”
It’s fitting Snyder left United Way, as it welcomed a new president/CEO, the former Augie provost Wendy Hilton-Morrow (who was also vice president of academic affairs and dean of the college).
“We had three weeks of overlap, two of them formal,” Snyder said of her moving to the QC nonprofit. “She was downloading me on Augustana and I was downloading her in United Way. And I think we're both— I just saw her yesterday on campus, actually. We're both excited to be able to expand Augie's continued work with United Way and vice versa.”
She added Hilton-Morrow is ideal for UWQC.
“She is the right combination of brilliant mind and passionate heart, and that's needed in the presidential role, but it's needed for nonprofit leadership,” Snyder said. “And she's a very respected person across the community. She's from here. She has belief in figuring out what's happening upstream for families so those services can be provided versus trying to fix something after it's broken. And I think that's where our students can help too.”
While businesses and nonprofits may feel overwhelmed in trying to add student workers to the mix, her role is to help ease their minds.
“I would say that is hugely valuable to students, but the students can be hugely valuable to the organizations,” Snyder said. “Students today bring different sets of skills, abilities, and expertise. They can bring a thought-starting idea. They can help launch and research something. So I think students offer a lot more value than employers might realize. And Augustana is such a staple in the community.
"I just would invite any employer— any nonprofit, any organization to think of Augustana as a partner and figure out how we can help solve their problems while giving students experiences.”
In a more competitive job market for new grads (who will have to adapt to wider use of AI in certain industries), Augie recommends apply for jobs ready and prepared.
“You're going to be most competitive if you enter the market with a different set of things in your resume and portfolio, like experiences,” Snyder said. “They'll ask instead of a student, how are your PowerPoint skills? They'll say, tell me about how you've resolved conflict in a team. Or tell me about an outcome where you had to learn quickly to do something and then execute and measure it. So that's why this center is here. That's kind of why I'm here, and that's what we want for our students.”
Experience as advisor
Snyder also has served on the Augustana College President’s Advisory Council from 2020-25, and the Augustana College Business for Humanities Advisory Council in 2025.
The first panel (which meets about three times a year), is a group of alumni and community members that hear about initiatives that the college is considering and serve as a sounding board or an advisement group, she said, noting it helps her current role.
“It actually made me even more interested in the position because I had an understanding of the future and the direction and why and what the strategy was,” Snyder said. “And I feel like I could fit in and help drive that. So yeah, it was hugely advantageous.”
She’s thrilled to work with the EDGE Center, whose director Doug Tschopp taught her when she was a student.
“Now I'm getting to work every day with him,” Snyder said, noting one of his advanced courses had students create their own company. She recalls her business was called Your Firm (to move into the former Venture store space in Moline), for an after-school center and a place for kids to go because there were issues.
“I did think through transportation, price point, communication, measurement, funding, and it was a PR class, but it was so much more than that,” Snyder said. “So I took that as a senior-level class, and actually Augie was still trimesters then, so I graduated early. So I was doing that while I was doing an internship and other senior inquiry stuff, and I wish now I could have spent more time doing more classes like that.”
“That was one of the things that was most memorable to me in academics here,” she said. “The guy who actually recruited me from admissions is still here in a different role. So I mean, the retention and the longevity and the care that people have for students and for this place is huge. The culture is great.”
This story was produced by WVIK, Quad Cities NPR. We rely on financial support from our listeners and readers to provide coverage of the issues that matter to the Quad Cities region and beyond. As someone who values the content created by WVIK's news department, please consider making a financial contribution to support our work.
