Allison Campbell Jensen

I seek to engage readers, liven up language, and convey insights. Here are a few samples from my work.

A recent story in the Libraries’ news portal, continuum, featured two students who work in the renowned John R. Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota. Lauren Boyer, majoring in English and Sociology, is one.

“Tasks that seem mundane are actually really important when you look at the big picture,” Boyer says. Protecting fragile maps by encapsulation in plastic is one. “Knowing that years down the line, that the map will hopefully last longer and be looked at longer because something I did that kept it preserved — I think that’s kind of cool.”

I wrote Croixdale: A Community Treasure, published in December 2010 for Presbyterian Homes, to mark the senior community’s 50th anniversary in 2011.

From the chapter Croixdale Today:
“Arrive in this St. Croix River town from the north, and the senior residence’s current incarnation stands where it was founded, on a lovely site right by the road. Croixdale invites passersby to pull in, stop and visit.”

From “Setting the Pace,” lead story in the 2007 Dean’s Report for the Medical School.
“Taken for granted today, this breakthrough treatment [the pacemaker] 50 years ago helped to set the pace for the University of Minnesota Medical School’s prominent role in cardiovascular care, research, and education, while establishing a foundation for a multibillion-dollar Minnesota company, Medtronic. In the years since, the Medical School’s physicians, collaborators, and patients benefited from an atmosphere of discovery and commitment to excellence. Today, the Medical School is launching on a new trajectory,one that promises to move the field of cardiovascular care into new territory.

‘”Stem cell biology and progenitor cell biology is going to teach us a considerable amount about how the heart develops, grows, and adapts to heart failure. We’re going to be able to intervene,’ says Daniel J. Garry…. Fifty years from today, he says, ‘we will be able to modulate the signals to allow the heart to repair itself.'”

The following is from “Never Losing Heart,” Twin Cities Business Monthly, October 2002
“[Manny] Villafana’s self-confident image begins with his finely fashioned clothes, the expensive cars he owns, and the watches he’s known for collecting. But for Charles Cuddihy, his former boss at Medtronic who urged him to go out on his own more than 30 years ago—and still is his advisor—Villafana’s need to have the right goods stems from his childhood spent poor, struggling, and sometimes hungry in the South Bronx.”

My “Making Waves” profile of John Moriarty, now Natural Resources Specialist for Ramsey County Parks, was published Oct. 4, 1998, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

“John Moriarty is Minnesota’s leading frog man. His name pops up whenever frogs make the news.

“For instance, just this past summer, northern cricket frogs, missing from Minnesota for 15 years, were discovered living in Bloomington.

“You’d think Moriarty would have rushed to save the fragile little colony. He did not.

“He took a tough-love stance. He argued that cordoning off a Bloomington marsh isn’t the way to save those frogs—or any other threatened species. Instead, if people want to help wildlife survive, Moriarty says, they must start preserving meaningful habitat. Unless they belong to truly rare species, individual animals, plants or birds are not that important. Ecosystems are.”