Tuesday, February 24th, 2015
In this Learning and Teaching Center (LTC) Lunch, students described their experiences with academic civic engagement projects in courses that follow a different format from the typical six-credit course model.
Anne Grosse ’16 started the session by sharing her experience with the Statistical Consulting Group. Through a summer internship and yearlong, 2-credit, ACE course she has worked in small groups to analyze data from community partners. The partners they work with have data-driven questions without the resources or knowledge of how to answer those, so student work with them to answer those questions. Anne described how this experience has allowed her to become more comfortable with nuance and complexity as real-world data is messy and can be slow to work with. She also said that she enjoyed being able to collaborate with students in different majors and build relationships with community partners.
Laura Arneson ’15 then described her experience in the new Public Health in Practice interdisciplinary studies program led by Debby Walser-Kuntz (Professor of Biology). This program spanned 7 months and consisted of a fall term course, winter break travel to Minneapolis/St. Paul and Washington D.C., and a winter term course. An ACE project was incorporated throughout as students met with community partners early in the fall and presented their final products at the end of winter term. Laura’s project focused on eligibility for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as she partnered with Growing Up Healthy. She sited extra time, comparing public health at a local, state, and national level, and perspective for ACE projects as benefits of the unique schedule.
Vayu Maini Rekdal ’15 finished out the presentations by speaking about the program he created called Young Chefs. This program, located now in both Northfield and Faribault, seeks to combine mentoring, cooking, and science by teaching middle school students about science through cooking. This project has been a great collaboration bringing together Northfield Public Schools, CCCE (for infrastructure support), Firebellies (who recruit volunteers), and Professors Deborah Gross and Eric McDonald who lead independent study courses in which students develop curriculum for the Young Chefs program. Through these collaborations, the program has been able to extend its reach and build sustainability.
After the presentations, participants discussed opportunities this kind of extension beyond the 6-credit could offer them personally, potential challenges of this model, and if any of these models could be used in their own department or institution.