Fall 2015 ACE Courses

This seminar course for senior Dance majors focuses on career development.  Students design and carry out a senior capstone project with assistance from a team of faculty advisors.  This year, several students chose to work with area choreographers to create solo performances, others elected to carry out a research project and presentation, and still others chose to develop a dance performance engaging fellow students.  The performances will be offered to the public free of charge.

This year’s performance is titled, “Beyond Boundaries”.  Students will be presenting multiple, integrative aspects of their St. Olaf experiences through dance.  Eight distinct students will perform and give presentations that go beyond the boundaries of how movement interacts with their lives.  The evening will begin with four performances that explore emotions from life, the feelings of loss and hurt, chaos in movement, and issues of colonization, race and power. The performances feature collaborations with Twin Cities artists Stuart Pimsler, Brian Evans, and Timmy Wagner.  The second half of the evening will consist of four presentations that explore how dance can be used as an intervention for individuals on the autism spectrum, the use of Dance Movement Therapy with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, the role of dance in occupational therapy, and how psychology, dance, and creativity can inform one another.

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 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 wrote a reflective essay about their volunteering experiences and motivations.  A collection of these papers was shared with the Northfield United Way.

Part of a multi-year project, the civic engagement component of this course builds 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 conduct 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.  Taught both fall and spring semesters during 2015-16, students will contribute submissions to the Rural Immigration Network, including either a “Recipe for Action,” “Research Brief,” or “Call for Research”.

Students in this course were asked to develop a presentation about psychology to teach to students in a local elementary school.  Topics were selected by students from one chapter of the course textbook.   Read more about the “Students Teaching Students” project, which has been ongoing to approximately ten years, on the project website.

See also: Muir, G. M., & van der Linden, G. J. (2009). Students teaching students: An experiential learning opportunity for large introductory psychology classes in collaboration with local elementary schools. Teaching of Psychology, 36(3), 169-173.

Students will be asked to take part in a number of after school activities at Greenvale Community School with elementary students who are primarily from Spanish-speaking families.

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.