Interim 2020 ACE Courses

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.

ACE Component: Students will participate in various internships at community nonprofit and for profit health related businesses.

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.

ACE Component: Students will complete a short service experience with a local organization.

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: More info coming soon!

This course is designed for students interested in civic engagement in the arts and arts fusion projects. Participants mentor students from a local elementary school, Prairie Creek Community School, in an Opera Creation Residency as the elementary students compose and perform their own original works. The course culminates in staged public performances.

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 to develop solutions to engineering problems that they face.

Course description coming soon!

ACE Component: Students will collaborate with the Faribault Diversity Coalition on a multitude of programs and projects.

This course examines the US-Mexico border (construed physically and abstractly) as a site of religious engagement, reflecting on analyses of the border as both a political construct and a racial one that shapes the idea of “American” identity. Students consider diverse religious views, including those who cross the border, those left behind, those who live near it, and those who fear and want to end its permeability.

ACE Component: Students will hear from local community members about this issue and take advocacy measures to address it through a variety of communication methods.

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.

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.

Health begins where we live, work and play. Students are immersed in public, private, and community-based organizations in Northfield (rural) and Minneapolis-St. Paul (urban) to gain an understanding of the social determinants of health (environmental conditions, resources and supports) and the relationship to individual health outcomes through service learning. A special emphasis is placed on the impact of socioeconomic status, geographic location, and disability on health disparities.

ACE Component: Students will complete service assignments at local Rice County organizations and in the Twin Cities.

This course explores the dynamic arts and governance environment of Washington D. C. Students will meet arts professionals in varied fields; visit galleries, museums, theaters, music and dance performances, arts and civic organizations; and develop strategies for practicing citizenship and democratic engagement through artistic expression.

ACE Component: Students will engage in democratic processes, such as contacting representatives, and complete short service opportunities in DC.

This seminar integrates the experience of work and the search for career in the context of Norway. Course content includes both an internship in Oslo and a reflection seminar. The reflection seminar connects academic theories/analyses of work and Norwegian culture with the internship experience. Through reading, writing, and discussion, this course provides a space in which to reflect on the challenges, hopes, and fears facing students embarking on their postgraduation careers.

ACE Component: Students will conduct internships at various humanitarian organizations.

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.

ACE Component: Students will intern with a presidential candidate.