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For a moment, imagine yourself and your fellow performers singing or playing, surrounded by cozy holiday decor and the warm smiles of listeners soaking up the music. After your jubilant performance, you have the opportunity to sit and converse with those in attendance, discussing your favorite holiday goodies, what major you are pursuing, and where you’re from — building a connection that goes far beyond performer and audience member.

This scene, taking place at FiftyNorth (Northfield’s community center for individuals over the age of 50), is just one example of how St. Olaf College’s new BA in Music for Social Impact (BAMSI) major has enabled students to facilitate and experience community through their work as musicians. 

This spring marks the inaugural graduation year for the BAMSI major, with the first cohort including Christine Whear ’26, Ian DiMundo ’26, Kaspar Czuk ’26, and Clara Smith ’26. As part of this major, students are learning skills that go beyond the Western European tradition and center the study of music in the combination of performance and community.

The conception of the major began with collaborative work between Professor of Music and Department Chair Louis Epstein, Associate Professor of Music Rehanna Kheshgi, and Svoboda Center for Civic Engagement Director Alyssa Melby, as well as other faculty partners. 

Epstein notes that St. Olaf’s commitment to equity and inclusion played an important role in the development of the major.

“For years, the Music Department has been thinking about how to welcome in students who have strong musicianship skills in areas outside of Western European classical music,” he explains. “After discussion and debate about how to balance our strengths and aspirations, we came up with this major as one way to bring in and support students who we wouldn’t have typically brought into the department through our current audition process.”

Kheshgi highlights the community engagement opportunities the major provides for students and the value they can garner from the experience.

“We decided it would be great to create a pathway for students to build their own partnerships with community organizations in Northfield and beyond over multiple years instead of only a semester,” Kheshgi says. “It’s a pathway where they’ll be thinking about forming sustainable partnerships, how they can discern their own vocation through this experience, how they can build skills that will serve them in their future careers, and also get joy from making music with people beyond the college.”

Many members of the first cohort noted that the prospect of fostering connection through music drew them to the major.

“When they opened up the opportunity to join this major, I immediately applied,” says DiMundo. “I was captivated by the opportunity to spend my time not only maintaining high-quality performance practice, but also having the opportunity to come up with a project for building community, which at the end of the day is the foundation of music — it was an easy choice for me.”

The community-centered goals of the BAMSI major are only one facet that sets it apart from the preexisting music majors. 

It shifts emphasis away from more common pedagogical conventions by requiring coursework focused on local contexts for global music, musicology, and community engagement — recognizing that a broader spectrum of  skills are needed for BAMSI students to carry out their work. BAMSI majors also take a greater number of Academic and Civic Engagement (ACE) courses, helping them to develop crucial skills for community engagement.

“ACE courses are integral to the major because it offers structured and scaffolded opportunities for students to learn the ethical principles for this work and provides them with opportunities to gain experience before they ultimately have to do their own project in the capstone,” Melby says. “It provides all sorts of learning opportunities for them to think about where they want to leave their impact in and through the BAMSI Major.”

The major culminates in a capstone course taken during junior or senior year. Seniors use the course as an opportunity to work towards the conclusion of their capstone project, reflecting on the work that they’re already doing with community partners, and lay the groundwork for a handoff to future majors —  while juniors use it to develop their own capstone projects. 

“The idea behind this capstone course is that it will be focused on music and community engagement with themed units about areas where music has been used as a tool for wellness, mental health, and a variety of other topics,” says Kheshgi, who will be teaching the capstone course this spring. “The overarching goal is to help the [BAMSI] majors make a plan for handing over their projects to the next group of students. Rather than having a performance or an event as the culminating experience, that is only part of the process — the final product is a guide to stewarding this relationship after the students graduate.”

Through their capstone projects, BAMSI majors engage with community members and organizations to form partnerships and connections through music. These projects can take many forms.

Whear’s work centers on writing a Northfield community song in Spanish.

“I’m in the process of building relationships with Latine/Hispanic artists and musicians — the idea so far is to collaborate with artists to host songwriting sessions at the Northfield Public Library. This would involve reflective conversations guided by Latine artists, ensuring that it is a collaborative process that includes many voices,” she says. “However the project unfolds, I want the process to reflect the community’s priorities and celebrate Latine artists and their talents in Northfield.”

For Czuk, his project involves collaborating with Northfield Hospital to connect with patients through music.

“We brought music workshops to Northfield Hospital and work with two different cancer groups this December,” he says. “It provides an opportunity for them to directly interact with the music, making use of how engaging with music can be therapeutic and build strong ties with the community.”

As part of his capstone project, DiMundo brings music programming to FiftyNorth, the community center in Northfield for individuals over the age of 50.

“Starting in Fall of 2024, we have held multiple concerts at FiftyNorth,” he says. “My goals were always to bring music from our isolated campus community to the people who call Northfield home for more than four years. We’ve allotted at least as much time for mingling as we do music, and the underlying message is to bridge the gap between the college and the residents by giving the students, including myself, an opportunity to learn from the residents, hear their stories, and share memories — the concerts have simply served as a mechanism to bring people together.”

Students appreciate the emphasis the BAMSI major places on constructing mutually beneficial and sustainable relationships.

“One thing that I’ve really enjoyed about the major is that it’s focused on building reciprocal relationships with community partners that you’re going to be working with for your project,” Whear says. “They’re not necessarily looking for a tangible, successful project by the end of your senior year — your production will be doing it well, spending the time building trust and relationships with the people that you’re going to be interacting with, and making sure that the work we are doing now has a lasting impact.”

The experience has proven transformative for cohort members’ communication and collaboration skills.

“One thing I’m learning is how to work with various different groups of people and learn from others, while still being a leader,” Czuk adds. “While we’re organizing an event, we have to recognize that a lot of the people attending are the experts on what we’re doing and constantly ask for feedback, ensuring that what we’re doing is appropriate and meaningful for the people we’re working with and working for.”

While the BAMSI major itself is still in development, with faculty continuing to refine the processes and experience for students, it will continue to focus on facilitating connection and building community through music well into the future.

“The first cohort was instrumental in charting the major,” Kheshgi says. “We are all creating it together and I think that’s really exciting because it can be responsive to student interests and needs, as well as those of the community, and the capacity that we have as faculty.”

Empowered by their experiences, the first BAMSI cohort plans to pursue a variety of fields, including dentistry, clinical psychology, and medical school. Their goals illustrate how the major’s emphasis on relationship building translates beyond music and into broader vocational paths

“I’ve learned that it takes patience to build a connection from scratch. It also takes persistence and commitment, and more than anything: things sometimes just don’t go as planned,” DiMundo says. “I’m learning how to navigate and shift gears, and I feel like that’s gonna set me up in a lot of wonderful ways, even though I’m not planning to pursue a career in music at all.”