January Term 2024

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 complete internships at various sites in non-profit and for-profit healthcare and wellness settings.

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 in an Opera Creation Residency as the elementary students compose and perform their own original works. The course culminates in staged public performances. Enrollment is subject to a fall interview/audition.

ACE Component: Students will work with youth at the Prairie Creek Community School to devise and perform a one-act opera.

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. Students engage in oral and written communication to critically think and analyze public health issues.

ACE Component: Students will conduct a letter writing advocacy campaign about a topic related to public health.

Rapid global aging represents the next great challenge that students in a broad range of majors must be prepared to address. Students will consider contemporary and enduring questions about aging from multidisciplinary perspectives to explore issues, methods, and theories surrounding what life will be like as people grow older. Students will interact with older adults in the community to understand aging in context.

ACE Component: Students will engage in intergenerational class sessions and discussions with older adults from FiftyNorth.

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.

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 January Term 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.

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 and intern with a presidential candidate.

ACE Component: Students will complete volunteering and micro-internships on various presidential candidate campaigns.

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 January Term 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.