Higher Education

• Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, received approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service to lease 130 acres into the Emergency Watershed Protection Program-Floodplain Easements. Luther must restore the native habitat of the bottomland and never use it for cropland. The restoration project is part of the college's sustainability plan.

Students spell out "Lenoir" and "Rhyne" in American Sign Language while those on the end sign "bear," the university's mascot. This year, Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory, N.C., received its largest incoming class of deaf and hard-of-hearing students at 14. Program director Shawn Frank has interpreted for classes that include horseback riding, cadaver lab and ballroom dancing. Support services include doorbell and fire alarm lights in residence halls, assistive listening devices and video phones in the students' rooms.

• In the Delaware-Maryland Synod, they're turning college students' names into chickens. How? For every name a synod congregation submits of a student enrolled in a college or university anywhere in the country, an anonymous donor contributes the cost of a chicken to ELCA World Hunger. "We're at 360 names and counting," said Laura E. Sinche, pastor of Baltimore Lutheran Campus Ministry, in late September. She sent names to more than 115 campus contacts - either ministries or pastors of local congregations. "We want students to know we're praying for them and want them to continue in their life of faith," she said.

• At Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, a fourth-year increase in enrollment to nearly 700 incoming students is due in part to an affordability initiative launched in April, college officials said. The initiative kept Capital's 2009-10 tuition increase to 2.9 percent and used $2.6 million to create grants to help incoming and returning students.