Spring 2026

What is a museum? Is it an impartial space to display and store valued objects that objectively reflect culture, or is it a more complicated organization that evolves and responds to the emerging needs and challenges of individuals and communities? In this course, students explore these questions, consider how museums can be understood as systems of power, and become acquainted with the various roles people play within them.

ACE Component: Students will work with the Flaten Art Museum on programming and/or acquire art.

The final course in the Asian Conversations program will provide critical reflections on the students’ academic and personal journey in the Asian Conversations program in particular, and in the college as a whole. Students examine diverse interpretations of Asia, engage with various primary and secondary texts through written and oral presentations, including materials collected during January Term, and conclude their overall experiences from their past two years in the learning community and beyond.

ACE Component: Students will develop programming in collaboration with the Northfield Public Library as part of AANHPI Heritage Month in May.

This course addresses the reception of migrants in relationship to education and ethics. Students interrogate laws, policies, practices, and foundational belief systems involved in immigration while learning about normative perspectives in ethics. They interrogate best practices for teaching and interacting with refugees, immigrants and immigrant communities that reflect moral responsibility. Required for ESL licensure, and highly relevant for all educators and those interested in immigration. 10-hour service component working with migrants in the community

ACE Component: Students completed a 10-hour service component working with immigrants or refugees in an educational setting in the community.

A capstone seminar for seniors in the major, this course involves intensive study of special topics through reflective writing, student generated research projects, presentations, and a grant proposal. Topics relate to local or regional environmental issues of interest to the students, and it provides participants with opportunities to interact with alumni, government and regulatory agencies, and community groups. The work culminates in a grant proposal where students rely on the expertise gained from their environmental studies courses and work in other majors as applicable.

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.

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: Students will work with organizations and businesses on developing narratives for future sustainability grant proposals.

Course Description: Where does democracy originate, within nations or from international processes? What factors shape efforts around the world to claim power for the people? Should democratic states seek to promote democracy internationally? This course asks students to consider these questions by exploring global experiences of democratization from the 20th century through recent events.

ACE Component: Students will work on co-generation deliberative dialogues with older adults in the local area.

Course Description: In this course, we will collaborate and use a variety of methods to try to answer the question: Who is science for? Through readings, discussion, and community engagement, we will explore the natural world around us and consider issues like vaccine acceptance and climate change. We will ask: Why is there skepticism of science?, How do people start to think of themselves as scientists?, and What do we need to learn about our own community in this part of Minnesota to make science accessible and useful to more people? Moving from inquiry to action, we will use our learning to help us develop and curate materials to be used for science outreach at community gatherings and in schools.

ACE Component: Students will have the opportunity to spend six afternoons working and learning with youth in the community in an afterschool program.

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. Students attend lectures plus one three-hour laboratory per week.

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 offer free baseline measurements to the great St. Olaf community (faculty, staff, and students). During the process, participants will receive not only the measurements, but information about the measurement testing and suggestions for how to improve their health based on their individual measurements.

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.

TBD

ACE Component: Students will work with the community on fear of falling research.

An introduction to principles, methods and resources for effective and creative music teaching through the piano. Students observe demonstration teaching at various levels and individual and group settings, engage in peer teaching, analyze and perform teaching literature, and discuss topics such as technical development, learning stages and styles, and studio management.

ACE Component: TBD

Course description forthcoming. 

ACE Component:Students will observe one day at the Fort Snelling Immigration Court and embark upon self-direction action projects related to the topic of the course.

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.

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 create environmental education games and pilot them with local youth in the community.