Interim 2023 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.

ACE Component: Students will complete internships at local community health facilities.

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: Students will work on generating content and material for and participate in the MLK Day Celebration on campus.

This introductory course provides students a broad overview of public health focusing on concepts relating to health promotion, disease prevention and epidemiology. Additionally, students learn about the core public health values, functions, population health assessment and intervention and the socio-economic, behavioral, biological and environmental determinants of health.

ACE Component: Students will complete direct service hours to address food security and access, as well as write letters to elected officials on social policy issues utilizing a Public Health lens.

This course takes a holistic, process approach to design. Student teams identify human-centered needs, define problems, develop and prototype solutions, test, redesign, and present final recommendations. This hands-on course emphasizes the application of scientific principles, analysis, and design to real world problems. Students write throughout the course to develop and share ideas

ACE Component: Students will present physics experiment demonstration days at local elementary schools and afterschool programs.

Course Description coming soon!

ACE Component: More information coming soon.

This course helps students explore the connections between society and their own lives. Students answer challenging questions such as “Do we have a ‘human nature’?,” “Why does social inequality exist?,” “What is race?,” and “How do societies change?” In answering these questions students learn to develop a sociological imagination. In doing so they review the various research methods and theories that form the sociological tradition.

ACE Component: More information coming soon!

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 short volunteer service through Volunteer Network groups or with local partners.

Engaging the diverse cultures and Asian American communities in San Francisco, students learn about the intersection of power, race, class, gender, sexuality, language, and multiculturalism. Students examine the past through immigration history, museums, and Angel Island; experience the present in Chinatown, Nihonmachi (Japantown), and the Castro District; and explore the future by connecting with alumni, academics, and Silicon Valley professionals. Through guest lectures, readings, discussions, field trips, and digital projects, students gain unique perspective and knowledge in one of the historical, political, and cultural centers of Asian America.

ACE Component: Students will work on a mapping project with a community partner.

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.

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 academic and civic engagement course (ACE) explores the culture of Puerto Rico, including its politics, national identity, folklore, and the environment. Students will travel to Puerto Rico (a territory of the U.S.A.), where they will read and analyze authentic materials in Spanish, participate in talks and discussions with local professors, college students and community leaders. The sites to be studied and explored as part of the immersion curriculum of this class are known by their historical, social, geographical and biological relevance. This course will explore the island, staying at three different locations throughout the month: San Juan, Lajas, and Luquillo.

ACE Component: During the Interim program, students will participate in 2-3 direct service projects in conjunction with local community partners to experience and analyze first-hand larger systemic issues that face the island, its people, and its environment.