Interim 2016 ACE Courses

Environmental stewardship manifests itself in place and culturally specific ways here and in Asia.  Through collaborative experimental design students will conduct and communicate environment and sustainability research during this course at the Asian Rural Institute in northern Japan, and they will discover how landscapes and institutions recover after a major disturbance.  Field trips, discussion, and symposia with Japanese students, as well as participation in the daily Foodlife at ARI enrich the context of the work.

Students in this course will plan and teach a series of classes on invertebrates to students at Prairie Creek Community School.

This course is a service/learning experience. Week one is spent on campus learning basic clinical techniques, examining emerging disease, and studying existing health care issues. Students spend three weeks in Cuzco, Peru, assessing patient needs in a public hospital, a homeless shelter, orphanages, and a small village. Week four involves discussion and writing reflective journals.

Students work in teams with a community organization to propose some kind of business writing document(s)/project. Past projects include a PR campaign, a volunteer manual, and redesign of the website, to name a few. Since there are 18 students in the course, there are 5 or 6 teams vying for the “job.” Then, the students write up formal proposals for the proposed documents and, eventually, give an oral presentation to a Board of Directors (or group of employees from the organization). The Board selects the team with the best rationale, prototype, and ethos. This selected project gets disseminated by the organization.

In this course students develop critical viewing and practical video-making skills as they explore the aesthetic, rhetorical, and expressive potential of documentary films to positively impact our environment.  For the ACE component in this class, selected films created by students were shown during at the Cannon River Watershed Partnership’s Wild and Scenic Film Festival held in February 2016.

This seminar integrates the liberal arts with the experience of work and the search for a vocation or career. Course content will include both an off-campus internship and on-campus class sessions that connect academic theories/analyses of work with their particular internship experience. Students will also consider and articulate the value of the liberal arts for their pursuit of a creative, productive, and satisfying professional life.

Students work in groups on substantial problems posed by, and of current interest to, area businesses and government agencies. The student groups decide on promising approaches to their problem and carry out the necessary investigations with minimal faculty involvement. Each group reports the results of its investigations with a paper and an hour-long presentation to the sponsoring organization.

The Mozart Experiment: This class will research, interpret, compare, rehearse, and perform a variety of ensembles and recitative scenes from Mozart’s operas in order to develop a sensitivity and ease with the collaborative dynamic of effective lyric communication in an ensemble setting.  Performances by the class will be offered to the public free of charge.

Since its inception in 1916, the New Hampshire primary has attained a preeminent place in American presidential politics. This course will provide students with a broad overview of the presidential nominating process through a detailed examination of the New Hampshire primary. Students read academic analyses of the New Hampshire primary and intern with a presidential candidate.  A prior version of this course is the subject of the following article from the Journal of Political Science Education: Experiencing New Hampshire: The Effects of an Experiential Learning Course on Civic Engagement.

This is a study abroad course taught at various locations in India.  This course explores childhood and family life in modern India through site visits, observations, lectures, and readings, addressing questions such as: How does India’s unique history and culture, population growth, and economic development affect parenting practices, children’s self-concept, relationships, and education? How do adolescents in India understand and experience gender roles and the transition to adulthood? How do Indian psychologists and social workers integrate traditional and contemporary approaches in this religiously and linguistically diverse nation?  The academic civic engagement component of this course is theoretical rather than applied.  Students visit field sites in Chennai where they learn about internships being conducted by Indian social work students from Madras Christian College.  Students also visit several non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) in Bangalore and learn about these programs.  The month of study/travel also provides daily opportunities to consider what we can learn about ourselves by studying these issues in this important South Asian nation.

Students will teach a series of enrichment classes to youth in after school programs at the Northfield Middle School.

The ACE component of this class connects each student with a real and personal experience to help them understand the concepts, cultures and histories studied in class.  Volunteering in classrooms at Greenvale Elementary School provides a contact bridge between the Latino and Hispanic community in Northfield.  This experience helps to guide each student to reflect on their own cultural identity and the relationship between self and other communities, cultures and social spheres.

This course provides students an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of working in professional sectors that prioritize serving the needs of communities, individuals, and families.  Through guest lectures and field visits, students are presented with multiple narratives of professionals who have chosen the path of serving through advocacy, teaching, social work, ministry, non-profit management, and many other arenas.  For the ACE component of this class, students visit multiple social service organizations, including the Neighborhood house and the Northfield Community Action Center where they engage in a service learning project.

Students have the option of partnering with community organizations through a Taking Action project.  Students engage with community partners in projects that involve education, awareness, or fundraising related to global challenges that impact the local community.