Fall 2016 ACE Courses

As a means of learning about voting and the practices of citizenship, an academic civic engagement project provides four options for students to gain hands-on experience.  Options include: voter registration, election judge, political campaign work, and helping at a League of Women Voter’s forum.

As a means of learning about voting and the practices of citizenship, an academic civic engagement project provides four options for students to gain hands-on experience.  Options include: voter registration, election judge, political campaign work, and helping at a League of Women Voter’s forum.

As the civic engagement component in 2016, students will experience a taste of ethnographic research through several field trips to Asian-American communities in Minnesota.  For their final project, students will give presentations about Asian/Asian American issues to middle and high school students at Arcadia Charter School.  In preparation for these presentations, St. Olaf students will interact with a subset of Arcadia School students to discuss what aspect of the larger theme they are interested in and why in order to engage the students in meaningful conversations and to determine the presentation topics.  The final talks will take place in Arcadia School and all students will be invited.  The Arcadia students will provide their feedback by voting for the “best” presentation overall.

This class is a good example of the connection of theory to practice as students translate classroom learning into real-world experience by serving as teachers, where faculty and staff become their students.  The exercise prescription course was designed to give senior exercise science majors the opportunity to utilize their skills in prescribing exercise regimens to “clients”.  This would be very similar to what a physical therapist, occupational therapist, or personal trainer would do.  The clients are chosen from the St. Olaf community (faculty and staff, not students).  Each exercise science major is assigned two clients for the entire semester.  The client is assessed on numerous factors (e.g., strength, endurance, flexibility, nutrition, blood pressure, body composition) at the beginning of the semester.  The student then prescribes exercise regimens and offers dietary advice to the clients for 12 weeks.  The client participates in the same testing at the end of the semester (and the results are fantastic).  The potential benefits to members of the St. Olaf community include increased workplace wellness and reduced medical and insurance claims.  The students gain a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment as they integrate and utilize course material in a real-world setting.

St. Olaf College owns a distinctive collection of World War II propaganda posters from Occupied Europe.  For the academic civic engagement assignment, students will use the historical knowledge and research skills developed in this seminar, and work with experts in collections curation at St. Olaf and other institutions, to draft formal research reports on selected posters related to France during the war.  These reports will contribute directly to efforts by Flaten Art Museum and the Libraries’ Special Collections section to curate a College resource that will eventually be accessible to students, scholars, and the larger public.

Students will pursue historical research on a topic of their choosing related to the environmental history of Northfield and present their final projects in a public symposium at the end of the semester.  The students’ research papers will be shared with the Northfield History Collaborative and made publicly accessible on its website and any oral histories they conduct will be added to the collections of the Northfield Historical Society.  View collection of Student Research Papers.

This course provides an overview of the key issues that face arts administrators. Topics addressed include strategic planning, budgeting, fund raising, audience development, and human resource management as each relates to the unique setting of the arts. Case analysis and guest speakers provide opportunities to explore application of key concepts. Teams of students will research and write grants for various local arts organizations and present their projects to the community partners at the end of the semester.

Students are challenged to apply the marketing principles learned in class to current and real world marketing issues. Student teams develop strategic marketing plans for various local for profit and nonprofit organizations. Students present their recommendations to the community partners.

This studio course culminates with public performances of a fully staged and costumed lyric theater work. St. Olaf students in the course, “Acting for the Lyrical Stage” performed in full Commedia dell Arte costumes for students in local elementary schools.  The performance included singing, dancing, and improvising to involve the younger students.  This course is part of the Music department’s school outreach program.

This course emphasizes the health of communities and populations. Topics include population-based health issues such as environmental health, epidemiology and communicable diseases. Students assess and screen individuals and families within communities, address identified needs and educate populations across the lifespan, collaborate with other health care professionals, make referrals, and participate in health promotion clinics. Clinical experiences occur in rural public health agencies, community-based programs, and in simulations.

For the ACE component of this class, students will run community exit polls at voting sites and present the results of the poll to the general public at a mini-conference. This will help the community gain new insights into voting and political participation in the community.

Students will be conducting semester-long research on candidate communication on congressional websites.  Students will present their findings to the general public through an elections mini-conference. This will inform members of the public about how candidates communicate, prominent issues in political debate, how issues are framed, how information is disseminated to the public, and how candidates deploy negativity and/or rhetorical attacks.

Students will be working on proposals for after-school clubs at Greenvale Park Community School, in consultation with Kathryn Lozada, Greenvale Volunteer Co-Coordinator. They will work on activities that will help students develop their multicultural awareness and competence.  These clubs will take place during November and December.

As an additional component of the class, we will have 6 visits from community partners that will discuss their work with the Latino community in Northfield and Minneapolis respectively. Students will interact with them and read about their work in preparation for their visit.

Finally, students will visit the Mercado Central in Minneapolis to learn first hand about the crucial role that this Center for Economic Development has in the lives of recent Latin American migrants, as well as the general population.

The story-partners project pairs students with an older community member residing at the Northfield Retirement Center. Students meet with their partner 6-8 times throughout the course of the semester for the specific purpose of encouraging their partners to tell stories about their lives. Students practice what they have learned through role-playing in class such as active listening and asking clarifying questions, which helps to build their one-on-one conversation and interviewing skills. The volunteer participants gain an enthusiastic listener, validation for their experiences, and the opportunity to reflect upon their lives.

For the civic engagement component of this course, students tour the American Indian Center in Minneapolis to learn about what the center does and the community it serves.  Students also participate in a powwow by serving food at a community feast and observing as part of the audience.