Interim 2018 ACE Courses

In this course, students examine how schools and communities in the Twin Cities interact to provide support and developmental opportunities for school-age children. Through lectures, readings, discussions, field trips, and in-school and co-curricular placements, students gain an understanding and awareness of how race, class, ethnicity, national origin, and gender shape the complex character of urban youth and schools. Students spend one week in orientation activities on campus and two weeks in the Twin Cities. The last week of Interim is spent back on campus discussing the experience.

ACE Component: During the time in the Twin Cities, St. Olaf students participate as tutors and classroom assistants during the school day and then assist in various after-school and community programs.

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. One of the overarching goals is to provide a space to reflect on the challenges, hopes, and anxieties that accompany the experiences of having an internship and searching out post-college employment. Classroom discussions focus on analyzing and understanding the students’ experiences in their internships and how they potentially connect with future professions that are personally rewarding and meaningful. This class was specifically designed to include students in pre-health, pre-med, and exercise science. Students are exposed to a wide range of sub-fields through in-depth conversation with other students.

Students explore service to human beings as a profession, both vocation and avocation. Who needs help? Who helps? Where? How? What motivates people to help? Using the liberal arts as a foundation for helping people, students study opportunities in areas such as health care, social services, ministry, youth work, and the arts. The class includes lectures, discussions, speakers, and field visits; additional fee.

ACE Component: Students will conduct site visits to social service agencies in Northfield and the Twin Cities and hear from guest speakers working in social service fields.

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.

Students study how music can engage and advocate for those on the margins of society, inspiring social justice movements. Analyzing historical and current events, class members design a musical project that can empower a people, group or organization in addressing moral and social problems such as racial inequality, rural or urban violence, or prison reform. A Christian normative framework, along with religious and secular alternatives, help guide the ethics implications pertaining to this subject.

ACE Component: Four evening visits the Women’s Correctional Facility in Shakopee, MN to work with their women’s choir, plus generating musical advocacy program/project ideas in conjunction with Northfield area nonprofits (Northfield Arts Guild, Union of Youth/The Key, Greenvale Park Community School, Cannon River Watershed Partnership).

This course gives students the opportunity to work on real world physics and engineering problems. Companies, non-profits, and other organizations provide projects relevant and important to the organizations’ goals. Students work in teams to approach these projects from an engineering design perspective that emphasizes hands-on work, prototyping, and organizational skills.

ACE Component: Students work with two businesses (this year: Medtronic and Sage Glass) to develop solutions to engineering problems that they face.

Seminars allow in-depth study of particular themes or topics in psychology. See department Website for descriptions and additional prerequisites.

ACE Component: Four in-class visits to the Northfield Senior Center for an open class with interested older adults, plus a 6-hour service learning experience at the Northfield Senior Center.

Students explore seven major challenges affecting the world’s people including population, resource management, economic integration, information, technology, conflict/security, and governance with an emphasis on their relation to global citizenship and human rights. This course examines issues from social science and global problem-solving perspectives with particular attention to how culture and place affect human experience. Students engage in discussions, forums, a global village activity, and an action project. 

Students investigate community-based approaches to environmental sustainability during this Interim course taught at the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) in northern Japan. Students explore how ARI builds on local Japanese resources to support its mission of training rural leaders from developing countries in organic agricultural practices. Activities include field trips, discussions, and symposia with Japanese students, as well as hands-on participation in the daily food life at ARI.

ACE Component: Students will participate in daily food life routines to sustain operations at ARI.

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.

ACE Component: Students will assist in the delivery of medical and dental services in the Willoq community, while also facilitating three projects in 2018: a community health survey, pilot of electronic medical records, and identify and develop methods for community health education.