Alyssa Melby is inaugural director of the new Svoboda Center for Civic Engagement
Launched within the Buntrock Institute for Freedom and Community in fall of 2025, the Svoboda Center for Civic Engagement serves as a one-stop shop for civic engagement at St. Olaf College. Leading the center’s many initiatives is its inaugural director, Alyssa Melby.
Melby assumed the position as the director of the Svoboda Center for Civic Engagement at the beginning of the academic year. She has played an active and significant role in civic engagement at St. Olaf since she began working for the college in 2017 by assisting professors in constructing Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) courses and guiding their community connection process, as well as leading other campus-wide engagement initiatives like on-campus voting. In this expanded position, Melby will have a greater capacity to empower students’ enthusiasm for public service and guide their efforts to ensure responsible and ethical engagement.
With the creation of the Svoboda Center, many of the civic engagement efforts that were previously dispersed throughout the college can now be found in one accessible location.
“Now we have a front door for this work here at the college, which is really exciting,” Melby says. “Students have a place to go if they’re interested in engaging with the community — the same is true for the faculty as well — and our partners now know a clear place to start to connect with the college and its students.”
The Svoboda Center was made possible by an initial $1.7 million gift from Paul Svoboda ’81. The center aims to foster the college’s civic leadership and responsible community engagement.
“Part of the work [of the Svoboda Center] supports academic civic engagement courses, which almost every student on this campus will end up taking — we have a record number of academic civic engagement courses in the college’s history right now,” says Chris Chapp, the Morrison Family Director of the Buntrock Institute for Freedom and Community that houses the Svoboda Center. “Another part is community-based work study; we have a lot of students here who are fulfilling their work award by partnering with community members. The third piece is trying to be a good partner to our student service organizations. There’s a wide range of student service organizations on campus, and we try to support them in part because the Svoboda Center can have long-term connections and be an institutional grounding for our service organizations.”
The work of the Svoboda Center also aligns closely with St. Olaf’s strategic plan, Solution Seekers, which emphasizes preparing every Ole to become an engaged citizen.
“Thinking back to why we have higher education, one of the overarching purposes has always been civic preparation,” President Susan Rundell Singer says. “We prepare individuals to go out, be part of their communities, to contribute, and to engage, and blooming within our offerings at St. Olaf in order to create those opportunities and support our students is part of contributing to the greater good.”
In addition to continuing to head the Academic Civic Engagement program, Melby’s role has expanded to include the broader ecosystem of civic engagement activities, enhancing connections with the wider community.
“[Svoboda’s] generous gift provides an opportunity to connect, deepen, and build upon the strong history of service and volunteering programs at St. Olaf and within our wider community,” Melby says. “It’s thinking bigger-picture about what it means for the college to be more embedded and rooted in this place, thinking carefully about how we can best contribute and be the neighbors that the Lutheran tradition really calls us to be.”
The Svoboda Center has adopted the same principles that guide the college’s Smith Center for Global Engagement and ACE courses: civic identity, community knowledge, cultural humility and curiosity, connectedness, and changemaking.
“Those 5 C’s, as we call them, are a way to ground the work in best practices and ethical community engagement,” Melby explains. “We try to infuse our programs with them whenever possible by offering lots of opportunities for students in particular to reflect on their civic identity and to think about what they know or assume about communities that they’re engaging with, encouraging curiosity and regular reflection.”
Melby is particularly excited about how the center will support students seeking opportunities for service and connection.
“Next year we’re hoping we’ll have open office hours, so when students want to come by and learn more about ways to get involved, we can talk with them about different opportunities that speak to where their hearts are feeling called to serve, give back, and contribute, as well as the strengths that they are bringing,” Melby notes. “I think that’s one of the biggest things for current students. I hear more and more students expressing desires to break out of the bubble of St. Olaf, go into the town, and experience life in this place alongside our neighbors — and that’s really exciting.”
Chapp posits that no one does civic engagement to the level that Melby does, stewarding students and faculty members to create stronger and more sustainable community partnerships.
“There are few people who live and breathe community engagement, and she really puts all of herself into the job in a way that reflects so positively on St. Olaf,” Chapp observes. “She is a powerhouse who partners with people to help them bring out the best in themselves and the best in this college. She knows Northfield well and has curated all sorts of rich relationships over the years. That is absolutely part of the reason that the Svoboda Center is having so much early success. [Melby] is also just great at working with students — I don’t think she ever wants to impose a particular vision. She wants students to make that road for themselves, but she’s there to really help shepherd and guide them. ”
Rundell Singer explains that Melby’s civic knowledge and ability to create mutually beneficial partnerships leave her well equipped for the role.
“There are many things that make [Melby] the perfect person at the moment for the job. One, she’s deeply experienced — she understands the current context in which civic engagement occurs, that, in this case, the college and the community, the student and community co-create work together,” Rundell Singer says. “[Melby] not only understands, but lives what it takes to build those trusting relationships with a partner, showing up in a way that meets a spoken need — it’s an equal partnership, creating something good for the community as a whole.”
Melby believes that the experiences the center will provide for Oles will equip them to be civically engaged well beyond their time on the Hill.
“While our focus in the Svoboda Center is largely local, thinking about building strong partnerships within Northfield and Rice County, the students are going to take those civic skills, civic knowledge, and civic attitudes that they’re building here with them when they graduate. It is a great responsibility of the Svoboda Center to prepare students in that way.”
Alyssa Melby holds a B.A. in English and theater from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in theater arts from the University of Pittsburgh. Community engagement has been a consistent piece of her work, beginning with her 12 years of arts management and arts education, during which she served as a community partner of higher education institutions. She worked as the director of education and community engagement at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. In this position, Melby spearheaded a number of new initiatives to improve access for patrons and participants alike, including the country’s first-ever autism/sensory-friendly performance of The Nutcracker. Before assuming her role at St. Olaf, she served as executive director of the Northfield Arts Guild. In 2013 Melby received the John F. Kennedy Center Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability networks Emerging Leader award. She has been with St. Olaf College since 2017, during which time she coordinated academic Civic Engagement (ACE) courses and led other campus-wide engagement initiatives, like on-campus voting, to great degrees of success. Melby is a proud Northfielder and lives here with her husband and three kids. She is an active community member, serving on multiple committees including the Healthy Community Initiative Board of Directors and League of Women Voters-Northfield and Cannon Falls Board of Directors, and has participated on the grants committee for Northfield Shares and the Minnesota State Arts Board.