There are many courses at Carleton that work in the Northfield and surrounding communities. The list below contains the courses that are currently supported by Academic Civic Engagement Resources through the ACT Center and the Dean of the College. It is by no means comprehensive and does not include many ongoing courses.

Winter '10

Anthropology of Health and Illness - SOAN 262 - Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg

In this course students partnered with HealthFinders and Growing Up Healthy. Students working with Growing Up Healthy conducted library-based research to better understand specific subpopulations (such as the Somali population in Faribault) and specific issues (such as refugee mental health, or culturally specific presentation of symptoms) of relevance to GUH's goals. Those working with HealthFinders helped developed and administered surveys to English and Spanish speakers. Students also organized and led focus groups and did participant observation of waiting rooms. This project culminated in a presentation to the Board of HealthFinders.

Public Sociology - SOAN 395 - Adrienne Falcón

Students in this course conducted needs-based assessments of Northfield and the Rice Country area to identify potential projects and collaborations between Carleton and local organizations. Groups of students focused specifically on the arts, business, and housing sectors. Within these sectors, students interviewed staff members of local organizations and government offices. At the end of the term, students created reports of their sectors and presented their findings in a presentation in which community partners were invited to attend.

Health Psychology - PSYC 260 - Ken Abrams

Students in small groups will critically examine the effects of local public (e.g., town) or private (e.g., hospital) policies on health outcomes. More specifically, students will work with local policy makers to investigate an issue, propose policy changes supported by theory and research, present formal proposals to the policy makers, and solicit and respond to community feedback. Additionally, groups will present their findings to the class and community representatives at a poster session at the end of the term. Examples of past projects include the development of a heroin use prevention program at Northfield High School, a comprehensive worksite wellness program at Northfield Hospital, and a more accessible and better marketed farmers' market in Northfield.

Environmental Economics and Policy  - ENTS 271 – Aaron Swoboda

This course explores the economic and political institutions affecting the environment. We will use the tools of economics to analyze several contemporary environmental policy issues including climate change, land use, water, transportation and energy. Learning will take place through a mixture of lecture, class discussion, computer labs, small group work, and student presentations. A final group project will involve a political and economic analysis of a local land use issue. There are no prerequisites for the course.

Fall '09

Truth vs. Power: A Journey in Journalism - ENGL 272 - Doug McGill - 22 students

Journalism is a powerful, socially-useful way to encounter and describe the world. Part literature and part social science, it’s evolved into a fundamental democratic practice. This class surveys journalism's basic theories and methods while giving students many chances to write in a journalistic style. With a "classroom as newsroom" format, students report and write news and feature stories from Northfield and Rice County throughout the term. All the writing assignments receive  consistent feedback from the professor, a former New York Times reporter and Bloomberg News bureau chief. Emerging journalistic formats and tools such as multimedia, blogging, SoundSlides, RSS feeds will be explored.

Foundations of Modern Europe - HIST 139 - Susannah Ottaway - 28 students

Students in this course have the choice to present a lesson for an elementary school classroom in the place of a traditional research paper. Students who choose the academic civic engagement option will prepare lesson plans for 4^th graders in the Northfield School System on the topic of the Spanish Exploration. The lessons are designed to be interactive and collaborative with the projects that the 4^th graders have been learning previously. This project will require students to reconceptualize the history that they learn in class into ideas that would be useful on the elementary level.

Intermediate Spanish - SPAN 204- Maria Elena Doleman - 204.03 (21 students); 204.08 (21 students)

Students in this course are required to spend at least 7 service hours (1 hour per week) working in partnership with the Northfield Public Schools from Elementary to High School. In some situations college students work with other students in the Northfield Compañeros program. In other positions, students work in classrooms directly as ESL tutors. The Spanish course focuses on, in addition to Spanish language, issues of immigration and the Latino experience. This project turns the focus on the local experience of immigrants in Northfield.

Moviegoing and Film Exhibition in America - CAMS 310 – Carol Donelan - 8 students

In this seminar in film history, we dive in, researching and writing the “unwritten” histories of movie culture at the local level, making use of primary sources such as newspapers, photographs, interviews and quantitative data.  This term, our focus is on the history of motion picture censorship from its origins in 1907 to the advent of the Hollywood Production Code in 1934, with special attention to the exhibition and local reception of pre-Code films, 1929-1934. Fair warning: pre-Code films, which feature drinking, drugs, nudity, sex and violence, are required viewing for the course.

English Writing Seminar – ENGL 109 – Carol Rutz and Nancy Cho - 109.01 (15 students); 109.04 (14 students)

Writing makes thinking visible. In this course, students will use individual research projects as well as readings  to develop skills in reflection, reporting, oral presentation, and persuasion. A central component of the course will be individual research about a historic building in downtown Northfield. This investigation will engage students with source material and the written techniques critical to analyzing it while familiarizing them with the surrounding community.

Native American Religious Freedom – RELG 243 - Michael McNally - 21 students

This course explores historical and legal contexts in which Native Americans have practiced their religions in the United States. Making reference to the cultural background of Native traditions, and the history of First Amendment law, the course explores landmark court cases in Sacred Lands, Peyotism, free exercise in prisons, and sacralized traditional practices (whaling, fishing, hunting) and critically examines the conceptual framework of "religion" as it has been applied to the practice of Native American traditions. Service projects will integrate academic learning and student involvement in matters of particular concern to contemporary native communities.

Abrupt Climate Change - ENTS 288 - Trish Ferrett - 31 students

The field of abrupt climate change seeks to understand very fast changes, or "tipping points," in historical climate records. Course topics will include interpretation of data on recent melting trends in the Artic, historical climate data, methods of measuring abrupt changes in  ancient climates, theories for abrupt change, the role of complex  earth systems, and the connection to current trends in global climate change. The course will also directly address our future vulnerability to abrupt climate change through cases studies of past human civilizations (Natufians, Mayans).  Over the term, student teams will produce multi-media web sites through academic civic engagement projects that will serve a community partner organization.

Developing Educational Policy - EDUC 242 - Steven Jongewaard - 16 students

This course is designed to engage students in an exploration of the promise of our democracy to educate everyone for the Common Good. It seeks a critical understanding of the so-called achievement gap. Students will look at public schools in the United States and determine how well they are interpreting and executing this mandate to create citizens both willing and able to sustain and improve the Republic. We will also look at TIMMS, PISA, OECD and other international data to compare our schooling system to systems in other countries.

Geomorphology - GEOL 210 - Mary Savina - 14 students

Geology 210 students will be engaging with the community in a number of ways. Students will write literature reviews on topics related to river restoration, a topic related to the Cannon River Watershed Partnership's current efforts to preserve lower Heath Creek and Spring Brook Creek. Landowners in these two watersheds want Northfield to annex their land and develop it. Spring Brook Creek is the only trout stream in Rice County. Several students volunteered for the Cannon River Watershed Partnership's River Clean-up on Saturday, September 19.  Along with other volunteers recruited by Nancy Braker, we reckon they collected maybe 600 lbs of tires, etc. from the stretch of river in the arb plus the shores of Lower Lyman Lake.

Introduction to Geospatial Analysis - ENTS 120 - Tsegaye Nega - 19 students

For their final projects, students will be examining the recently completed comprehensive plan for the City of Northfield and addressing the issue of how areas designated for "Priority Growth" and "Urban Expansion" have vague zoning designations that don't take into account regional regulations and topographical features. In order to contribute to an ongoing dialouge about growth in Northfield, students will collaborate with the city to create a GIS model that can be adapted to predict and accomodate future possibilities for urban development in Northfield.

Topics in Virology - BIOL 370 - Debby Walser-Kuntz - 15 students

The course will focus on the most recent developments in HIV-related research, including implications for HIV-treatment and vaccines and the impact of viral infection on the immune system of the host. As part of the coursework, students will be expected to create a lesson for Life Sciences students at Northfield Middle School explaining the properties and importance of a particular virus.