Fall 2014 ACE Courses

As a means of learning about voting and the practices of citizenship, an academic civic engagement project provided four options for students to gain hands-on experience.  Options offered included: voter registration, election judge, political campaign work, and helping at a League of Women Voter’s forum.  In addition, Jeff Narabrook, Voter Outreach Director from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, visited the class to share about his work and to talk with students about their experiences this past fall.

This course enables the advanced studio art student to pursue further work in any chosen two or three dimensional medium or combination of media including performance, installation, and collaborative ways of working. This course is organized around an interdisciplinary theme set each year by the instructor. Within a seminar format, students read, discuss, and write on the selected topic in conjunction with topic-driven individual studio work and critiques.

Students engaged in numerous public art projects as part of this course.

• Students created temporary public art sculptures at Way Park in the first week of class. Students rearranged nature to create the pieces. This project was inspired by the work of Andy Goldsworthy.
• Students toured Public Art in Minneapolis and St. Paul with Jack Becker of Forecast Public Art.
• St. Paul Public Artist-in-residence, Amada Lovelee, visited the class to share her work and to engage students in a short workshop.
• The course instructor and Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, Michon Weeks, shared about her recent showing of 36 of her new paintings in a public art event in Indianapolis. The event was called “Art in Odd Places.”
• Students researched a range of topics related to public art including: public art controversies; temporary vs. permanent; monuments & memorials; relational aesthetics & public practice; the business of public art; and site specificity.
• Students proposed designs to a set of community stakeholders for painting the warming house at Way Park. The class painted the warming house based on the winning design.
• Students invited kids and adults from the Way Park neighborhood to create drawings for a pop-up gallery in the warming house. They shared candy, played music, and created a well-attended casual art show opening within the warming house.
• Students created individual mock public art grant proposals. The proposals were exhibited in the Groot Gallery Opening on Dec. 4th.

As the civic engagement component in 2014, students experienced a taste of ethnographic research through several field trips to Asian-American communities in Minnesota.  For their final project, students gave presentations about Asian/Asian American issues to middle and high school students at Arcadia Charter School.  In preparation for these presentations, St. Olaf students interacted with a subset of Arcadia School students to discuss what aspect of the larger theme they were interested in and why in order to engage the students in meaningful conversations and to determine the presentation topics.  The final talks took place in Arcadia School and all students were invited.  The Arcadia students provided their feedback by voting for the “best” presentation overall.

Students in the healthcare economics course (Econ 245) created cost-benefit analysis videos for Health Finders, a local nonprofit agency that provides free and sliding scale care for members of the Northfield community.  The students researched statistics on Heath Finders and put those statistics into an analytical argument promoting the cost-effectiveness of Health Finders.

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 course includes readings, case study analysis, in-class exercises and group projects.

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.  See photos from the event.

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.

Part of a multi-year project, the civic engagement component of this course built upon past work by St. Olaf students regarding immigration issues.  The Rural Immigration Network project aims to create a useful and well-used online network of national scope, which will share practical information and cultural knowledge.  It seeks to reach rural communities diversifying through immigration across the United States.  Students in this course conducted research to translate social science findings pertinent to community leaders in rural communities into a standardized format suitable for sharing online.  These findings will help to identify innovative, positive responses to immigration in rural communities.  Students also participated in a hands-on workshop with immigration scholars and leaders from around the country to help shape the next steps for this project.

The civic engagement component of this course gave students a hands-on research experience analyzing and reporting on psychology-related data for on-campus programs, as well as for external community organizations.  Students presented findings from their research publicly at a poster session on the St. Olaf campus.

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.

This is a First Year Writing seminar about global food politics.  For their final project, students will be asked to write a public argument (e.g. an opinion-editorial piece for a newspaper) based on a topic of their choice. Students may choose to submit their writings for publication.