Spring 2024

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.

Course Description: In this course we will explore the world of ancient Greek myth as it appears in the remains of 5th-century BCE satyr plays. These tragi-comic musicals were designed for performance in the late afternoon, after the Athenian spectators had just watched three tragedies in a row and were in the mood for a less serious way to end the festival day. To help us understand what made satyr plays so popular, we will also take on the challenge of staging a live performance of one of them, in collaboration with students and teachers from K-12 schools in the Northfield area. The first part of the semester will be spent reading, writing, and talking about Greek satyr plays, searching for links between them and modern forms of entertainment. After that, we will pool our talents to adapt and perform Sophocles’ Ichneutae (“The Trackers”), which focuses on Apollo’s search for his missing herd of cows but wittily interweaves that plot with Hermes’ invention of the lyre. Although experience with theater, skill in music, knowledge of ancient Greek, and familiarity with cows would all be helpful, only a sense of humor is required.

ACE Component: Students will work and perform with youth and teachers from K-12 schools in the Northfield area.

Course Description: What does it mean to be an “emerging adult,” and what skills can you develop at college to help you thrive after you graduate? How and why do views of young adulthood vary among cultures and families? In this course, you will reflect on adult responsibilities such as fending for yourself, finding a vocation, managing your money, practicing self-care, making independent decisions, being civically engaged, and practicing mindfulness and gratitude. You will explore your own emerging adult identity along with the things that may be holding you back from wanting to, having to, and learning how to be an adult. Assignments will include popular and academic source readings, weekly reflective essays, small and large group discussions, and a service project in Northfield.

ACE Component: Students will complete a service project in the Northfield area.

Students analyze mechanical principles in depth as they affect human motion. Topics include study of muscular and skeletal systems, skill analysis, and motion measurement techniques.

ACE Component: Students will offer free gait analysis or functional fitness measurements to the greater St. Olaf community (faculty, staff, and students).

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 provides a comprehensive research opportunity, including an introduction to relevant background material, technical instruction, identification of a meaningful project, and data collection. The topic is determined by the faculty member in charge of the course and may relate to his/her research interests.

ACE Component: Students will work on delivering Matter of Balance curriculum in Northfield community.

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 Waano and the Somali community in the Twin Cities and Faribault.

This course examines the representation of nature from creation narratives of Norse myth, 19th century nation-building, and up to present concerns about climate change and environmental destruction in the Nordic region. Students examine central works and contested notions of nature. Alongside these, they will be introduced to ecocriticism as a method of textual analysis. This provides an entryway into the environmental humanities, and an opportunity to explore what makes Nordic literature and culture unique.

ACE Component: Students will be collaborating with youth at Arcadia Charter School to develop materials related to Greta Thunberg.

This whirlwind introduction comprehensively examines foundational principles, theoretical approaches, and major areas of study within psychology. Acting as skeptical scientists, students gain another lens on the human experience by which they can better understand themselves and others. Students see psychology as a science and challenge “common sense” explanations about how people function. This gateway course captures the essence of the liberal arts, applying to almost any career choice.

ACE Component: Students will make a presentation about a topic in psychology to local youth in Northfield Public Schools.

This course explores research on parenting and child development across a variety of diverse family structures and sociocultural contexts, including families with primary caregiving fathers, divorced and remarried parents, adoptive parents, gay and lesbian parents. Students discuss similarities and variability across families, and examine how factors such as gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity and social class shape parenting experiences and unique psychosocial challenges that “nontraditional” families may confront. Students examine and bridge the empirical literature with popular culture and media portrayals of families.

ACE Component: TBD

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 participate in the National Association of Social Workers Advocacy Week.

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: TBD

Blending the reading seminar and writing workshop, this course offers advanced practice in critical reading and writing with emphasis in the sciences. Students read and respond to popular feature stories in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2022, creative writing, TED Talks, short documentaries, and scholarly essays. Topics include animal consciousness, dinosaurs, galaxies, the evolution of organs, the quest to preserve wild sounds, and the link between quantum mechanics and indigenous knowledge. Course activities first explore how writers and speakers communicate with multiple audiences, then students practice various communication strategies through personal narrative, information visualization, an explainer, and a researched feature story.

ACE Component: Students will work on writing pieces for the Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory.