Spring 2022 ACE Courses

The United States was founded by breaking away from an empire, yet has grown into an imperial power. This course explores territorial expansion, the development of a pluralistic American state with varied internal borders and cultural realms, and the emergence of the United States as a world power. Examining American history through lenses used by creative artists, historians and social scientists, students consider such topics as global trade, slavery, urbanization, and war.

ACE Component: More info coming soon!

Hope, based on expectations of opportunity, and fear, grounded in cataclysms, shape everyday life and the United States’ role in the world. Fears underlie conflicts between groups; hope animates social movements and energizes human rights initiatives. This course prepares students to be engaged citizens on campus and beyond. A culminating civic engagement experience draws from previous American Conversations assignments. Students will help design part of the course, shaping future conversations of hope and fear.

ACE Component:  Students will volunteer with the Mapping Prejudice project to help build their map of housing deeds that carry racial covenants.

This course explores in depth the issues most crucial to artists working today in an increasingly globalized art scene. Students investigate the complexities of new media, new methods of production and exhibition, and theoretical models through readings and a required field trip to a contemporary art museum.

ACE component: Students will work with galleries to acquire pieces by artists from underrepresented communities for St. Olaf’s permanent collection.

The software we design has real effects in people’s lives. This course explores the ethical and social considerations inherent in computer-based systems, develops skills in thinking about those considerations and in collecting data to determine their effects, and expands students’ abilities to integrate these issues and skills into software development procedures, largely through an extensive team analysis of a “live” software project. Coursework uses extended case studies and surveys topics such as professional and ethical responsibilities, risk, liability, intellectual property, privacy, and computer crime.

ACE component:  Students work in small groups to analyze the ethical implications of a socio-technical system for outside clients, both nonprofit and for-profit. The students conduct an initial informational interview. Students then give clients a list of possible issues to analyze. Client and team choose several issues, collect data, and prepare a final presentation of their analysis, complete with suggested solutions and supporting material.

Mobile devices are actually sophisticated and powerful computers. This course explores mobile computing technology by creating applications for the Android platform, including a final team project. The course introduces Java language and provides exposure to graphics user interfaces (GUIs), event-driven programming, APIs, databases, SQL query language, and agile team programming methodologies.

ACE component: Students will work with Project Friendship to prototype a mentor networking app.

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 in small groups with a client on an engineering based problem.

The course brings together students from across the environmental studies areas of emphasis to explore complex environmental problems connected to community needs. The course satisfies the experiential component requirement.

ACE Component: In cooperation with a community partner teams of students will participate in a project fulfilling an identified local need, such as research, planning and execute a community event, inventorying and documenting various features of natural environments, etc.

Collectively the intersectional impacts of climate change comprise one of the today’s gravest challenges and warrant multivalent and anticipatory responses from a variety of disciplines. This arts and humanities topics course examines what theological worldviews have to offer by way of texts, traditions and communities. With an aim to center the perspectives and voices of those most negatively affected we’ll ask what resources theological ethics bring to bear on questions of ecojustice, biodiversity loss, climate adaptation and migration, public health, economies, energy policies, lifestyle choices and the like. Our ethical queries will employ a variety of normative frameworks including contemporary perspectives on stewardship, deep ecology, environmental virtue, and contemplative ecology.

ACE Component: Students will create discussion guides with different religious congregations around topics explored in class.

Required for the gender and sexuality studies major and concentration, this course introduces students to the concept of gender as a category of analysis. It is designed for students who seek a fuller understanding of themselves as women and men and a wider knowledge of the experiences and achievements of women.

ACE component:  Students will create guides for and facilitate deliberative dialogues with their peers around aspects of gender and sexuality.

The course begins with a review of cellular physiology and the digestive system, which are the basic components necessary for metabolic processes. Students examine the roles nutrient selection, metabolism, and timing play in supporting physical performance. The integration and regulation of metabolism, energy expenditure, and body composition will be discussed. An advanced overview of the functions of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fluids, vitamins, and minerals that are determinants of health and diseases will be conducted.

ACE Component: Students will work with the Healthy Ways program in Northfield to deliver nutrition education models to local youth and families.

Students study in-depth the physiology of exercise, covering cardiovascular and muscular adaptions to exercise and factors affecting performance, including body composition, environmental influences, training implications across gender and age, and the assessment of fitness.

ACE Component: Students will work with members from the St. Olaf community to conduct baseline measurement testing and consultation.

This course presents the fundamental principles of exercise testing and prescription for both healthy and special needs individuals. Students explore techniques for assessing fitness and prescribing exercise using a variety of ergometers for improvement of health fitness parameters. Students also utilize case studies and laboratory experiences. Topics include health/medical histories, submaximal graded exercise testing, and assessment of strength, flexibility, pulmonary functions, and body composition.

ACE Component: Students will work 1-1 with two St. Olaf clients (faculty or staff) to assess several health factors (e.g., strength, endurance, flexibility, nutrition, blood pressure, body composition) and then prescribe exercise regimens and dietary advice over the course of 12-weeks. Clients are reassessed at the end of the 12-weeks.

This course introduces the key elements of marketing principles. Topics include evaluating market opportunities; buyer behavior; market segmentation, targeting, and positioning; market strategy and planning; development of marketing mix; and marketing organization and control. Students are challenged to apply the principles learned in class to current and real world marketing issues. The course includes readings, case study analysis, in-class exercises and group projects.

ACE Component: Students will work with businesses and organizations to research and generate marketing plans.

When civil war broke out in Somalia in 1991, thousands of refugees fled to camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, and some were eventually resettled in the US and Canada. Many Somali refugees ended up in Minnesota not by choice, but because resettlement agencies in Minnesota worked with the US government to support new arrivals. As extended family members joined their relatives, Somali diasporic culture became an important visible, and audible, part of the cultural landscape of Minnesota. As part of this course, students will go beyond studying Somali history, culture, literature, and performance. As a class, we will pursue a community engaged model of learning, connecting with community partners in order to begin building relationships. Students will reflect on and seek out connections between the skills and interests they bring to the course and the needs and desires of Somali community partners in Minnesota.

ACE Component: Students will work on developing relationships with culture bearers, artists, and musicians from the Somali community in the Twin Cities and Faribault.

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 write letters to elected officials on social policy issues (in conjunction with the SW 258 Social Policy class) 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 assist with STEM outreach demonstrations at Greenvale Park Elementary School.

This course investigates entry control policy, integration and citizenship policy, and the political activities of migrants in the wealthy democracies. Alternative arguments emphasizing the role of economic interests, sovereignty, national identity, and gender are introduced. Opportunities for academic civic engagement projects are included in the course.

ACE Component: Students will assist with research and mapping of various communities as part of the Lutheran Center’s “Nourishing Vocation Project.”

Social welfare policies exemplify how society’s values and needs translate into policies and programs. Social workers create, implement, and evaluate policies in all areas of social policy. Students study policy formation and analysis that reflect interests and powers of diverse groups as well as economic and social realities of certain populations at risk of poverty and discrimination. The course emphasizes policy impact on women, people in poverty, people of color, and empowerment in policy practice.

ACE Component: Students will partner with the League of Women Voters-Northfield and Cannon Falls to facilitate letter writing campaigns on campus around social policy issues.

Social work majors continue to study the methods and skills of generalist practice. They assess strengths and problems of diverse groups, organizations, and communities and use the systems perspective to help client systems frame goals and plans for social change. Students assess macrosystems and develop plans for implementing change that are reflective, scientific, just, and grounded in the liberal arts.

ACE Component: Students will create materials around ethical community engagement for their peers as part of the College’s NEH grant, “Reflecting on Creating a Just World: Ethical Engagement with Communities through Humanities.”