Breaking “the Bubble”

St. Olaf and Carleton Students Get Off Campus and into the Community

Amy Sack, Northfield.org

One of the unique characteristics of Northfield are the colleges here. As a St. Olaf student, I wanted to write this story to give Northfield residents an idea of what college students are doing to be involved in the larger community they reside in. Even as a student, when I started researching Carleton and St. Olaf involvement I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of ways students help out. Talking to students and faculty, I found a common thread emerge: St. Olaf and Carleton students not only appreciate opportunities to get out of “the bubble” of campus life, but they find working in the community an invaluable part of their college experience.

(Note: The following story is meant to be an overview of ways students get involved, but is not an exhaustive list of the activities students take part in. I decided to limit my search to college-sponsored activities, but I know many students who work at shops downtown, babysit for families in Northfield, coach sports teams, etc.)

Community volunteer programs

With over 35 active volunteer programs at both St. Olaf and Carleton, students are involved in nearly every aspect of community life in Northfield and surrounding towns.

At St. Olaf, a student-run organization called the Volunteer Network recruits students and organizes the school’s volunteer programs. Student directors run the programs, and are in charge of everything from scheduling to placing fellow students in their respective programs.

Carleton runs their programs through a volunteer center called Acting in the Community Together (ACT). ACT began in 1985 as a way to further support and encourage Carleton students in their community volunteer efforts. Unlike the Volunteer Network, ACT is both staff and student run. Laura Riehle-Merrill works as the current ACT director, and Amber Cameron is the assistant ACT director. Nine paid student coordinators currently work for the center as liaisons between the individual volunteer program directors (around 100 students) and the professional ACT staff.

Many of the volunteer programs at St. Olaf and Carleton overlap. These shared volunteer efforts include: mentoring through Project Friendship, tutoring in the Northfield schools, leading story hour at the library, helping at nonprofits such as HealthFinders and the Northfield Community Action Center, and a plethora of other programs.

Two noteworthy programs unique to St. Olaf are Pet Therapy and Ole Entertainers. In the Pet Therapy program, St. Olaf students bring pets (often belonging to professors) and visit patients at the long-term care unit at the Northfield Hospital, while the Ole Entertainers program allows students to share their musical talents with residents of the Northfield Retirement Center.

At Carleton, Kids Night Out is a unique volunteer program where students provide childcare for low-income families two or three Saturday evenings every month, giving parents who might not be able to afford a babysitter a well-deserved break.

Students often choose volunteer positions that match up with their academic interests. Anna Larson, a St. Olaf Junior majoring in Chemistry and Spanish with a Biomedical studies concentration, wanted to find a volunteer opportunity that would allow her to apply her knowledge of Spanish as well as gain exposure to the medical field. HealthFinders Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that brings free medical services to low-income and uninsured residents of Rice County, was a perfect fit for her, where she is able to use her language skills to help interpret for Spanish-speaking patients at appointments.

While HealthFinders volunteers typically help with office work (like entering patient information into the database), interpret for Spanish-speaking patients, and help plan the annual gala fundraiser, Larson has a unique role: she serves as a co-coordinator for the HealthFinders Diabetes program. Her work involves meeting with around 20 diabetic patients on a monthly basis to help them manage certain aspects of diabetes such as nutrition, exercise, and medications.

As a student director for HealthFinders at St. Olaf, Larson feels passionate about the program and is grateful for the opportunity.

“I look forward to evenings [I volunteer], when I help patients make the progress they need to enjoy the healthiest life possible,” she said.

Whitney Allen, a Junior at Carleton majoring in Sociology/Anthropology, also volunteers with HealthFinders. As one of the program directors at Carleton, she recruits volunteers and tries to place students in volunteer positions at HealthFinders that match their interests and skills. Allen herself often works as a translator, making appointment phone call reminders to Spanish-speaking patients.

“[Volunteering] helped me realize Northfield is not just life at Carleton,” Allen said about her experience.

Colin Halverson, a St. Olaf senior with a triple major in German, Russian, Russian Area Studies and concentration in Historical Perspectives, also combines his academic interests with his volunteer work. Halverson spends two nights a week teaching English through an adult ESL education program in Faribault. The majority of the adults he works with are immigrants from Somalia and South and Central America. As someone interested in language acquisition and acculturation (Halverson hopes to go to grad school to study linguistics), being a part of a program teaching English language skills complements his academic interests.

Halverson is also passionate about reaching out to the immigrant and refugee population and wants the community to be aware of their hard work. “[Functioning in society] isn’t really possible without an understanding of the English language,” said Halverson. “These people [immigrants at the ESL center] are incredibly driven and nice. They left everything to come here for a better life, and we can help them realize that dream.”

Volunteering at the ESL program, he added, “is one of my favorite parts of the week.” 

Community based work-study

For many college students, trying to find time to work a campus job and volunteer can be difficult, especially for those who need a lot of work hours. The off-campus community work study program at St. Olaf and Carleton allows time-strapped students the opportunity to get involved in the community through local government agencies, nonprofits, and school districts, while at the same time earn money towards their student work award.

Northfield Reads and Counts is one of the two programs available for students seeking jobs off campus. The program pays students to tutor in the Northfield schools, primarily in the elementary in middle schools (although it sometimes extends to the high school). Around 50 St. Olaf students are taking advantage of this program and will tutor in the schools this spring.

Siri Svanoe, now a senior Anthropology/Sociology and Studio Art major at St. Olaf, decided to tutor after St. Olaf placed her to work in the cafeteria her freshman year. When she heard about Northfield Reads and Counts, she decided take advantage of an opportunity to work off campus.

Svanoe enjoys her work off campus, and has worked at three elementary schools in Northfield: Bridgewater, Sibley, and St. Dominic’s (a private Catholic school). Throughout her three years as a tutor she has worked in various classrooms as a teacher assistant, one-on-one tutor, and small group leader, where she helps students with homework and class assignments.

“I like feeling more involved in the Northfield community …I think it’s really easy if you don’t have an excuse to leave campus to forget about the rest of the world,” she said.

Libbie Weimer, a Junior at Carleton majoring in International Relations with a concentration in Latin American studies, first got involved in ACT when she worked in a 5th grade classroom through Northfield Reads and Counts. Weimer’s experience as a tutor inspired her to continue her work in the community, and she now serves as one of the nine ACT student coordinators.

“I got the opportunity to try my hand at leading discussion and teaching literature analysis informally, plus it was a lot of fun to hang out with 5th graders and talk about our love of reading!” she said about her classroom experience.

In the last two years, the community based work-study program expanded to include the Community Service Program. The Community Service Program gives students the opportunity to fill work award hours through participation in nonprofit organizations.

Between St. Olaf and Carleton, this spring 40 students will work in the Community Service Program at 18 different organizations, filling positions ranging from child care staff to marketing assistant to website assistant.  

One student works for Laura Baker Services as a music therapist assistant; another works at the Northfield Arts Guild as a gift shop assistant; yet another works at the Northfield Public Library as a children’s section assistant. Many of these jobs are unique and all fulfill important needs of community organizations.

“[The off campus programs] are a great opportunity for students to be engaged in our community, and also learning about nonprofits [while at the same time] building a resume,” said Diana Dargen, the Community-Based Work Study Coordinator for both Carleton and St. Olaf.

From what Dargen has found through student interviews, “Students really enjoy getting off campus, networking, and working with youth.”

“It’s a win-win situation,” she added.

Thanks to Dargen’s visibility efforts, more students are hearing about the off campus work opportunities and taking advantage of them. In its second year, the Community Service Program has more than tripled.

Academic Civic Engagement

Another relatively new initiative at both St. Olaf and Carleton has been to amp up classroom civic engagement in the community.  Both colleges are striving to find new ways to integrate student course projects with community needs.

“A core part of our mission is to educate students for citizenship, and a great way to do this is to provide real world experience that will complement academic curriculum and help them [students] develop civic skills,” said Nate Jacobi, Center for Experiential Learning (CEL) associate director for civic engagement at St. Olaf.

Since Jacobi took on the position in August 2007, he has worked to build and expand relationships with community partners. Last summer, St. Olaf received a grant allowing Jacobi and the CEL to run a four-day long civic engagement summer institute, where eight professors and nine community partners collaborated to discuss new approaches to creating connections between student course work and the community.

This fall at St. Olaf, eight classes included some kind of community based research component opportunity for students, in subjects ranging from philosophy to management to statistics.

Students in Professor Dan Hofenning’s political science class Introduction to American Politics were asked to actively engage in politics. The students were given the choice of registering voters, presenting to Northfield High School students on the importance of political participation, serving as an election judge, or working for a political campaign to fulfill the requirement.

In Professor Naurine Lennox’s social work class, Inclusive Practice with Individuals and Families, each student went to the Northfield Retirement Center to visit and share stories with residents as they learned about the care facility.

Across town, Adrienne Falcon is Carleton’s new civic engagement coordinator. Falcon has only been in the position about one year, and in that time has been working with faculty to try and find more ways to connect the classroom and the community.

Among several classes at Carleton that engaged in the community this fall, 60 students in two intermediate-level Spanish classes tutored and mentored ELL students at the Northfield public schools as a required course component.

Falcon herself is teaching a Public Sociology class over the second trimester. The class is currently working in pairs to analyze a particular community sector in Northfield (ranging from the arts, business, and nonprofit sectors), in light of the current economic situation, in order to identify community-based needs.

Currently, Whitney Allen is in Falcon’s class studying the state of the arts in Northfield.

 “It’s a great way to get to know the community—I’m realizing the Northfield Arts Guild is right over here,” Allen said about civic engagement in the classroom. “It’s amazing how much can be going on around you [that you don’t realize] because you’re in the college world.”

Students Voices

All the students I talked to were passionate about their roles in the community and underscored the importance of getting off campus and into the “real world.” They were appreciative for the opportunities to get involved and valued the time they spent in the community. Here is a sample of what they told me:

“As much as I enjoy being a college student, I know that I am privileged to have been given the opportunity to learn and grow in such an environment. It disturbs me to know that not everyone has the same opportunities that I do... At such an exciting and busy point in the life of young people, it is all the more important to get involved and stay involved with the life of the community.”

- Anna Larson, St. Olaf

“People need to give back. Those with the means to help others are morally obligated to. Plus you need to burst "The Bubble." Understand the real world or live a sheltered life; I think it's an easy decision.”

- Colin Halverson, St. Olaf

“I feel like a real part of the community when I volunteer and not just a visitor…I think that it's important for students to remember that they can make an impact here, and that what they do really does shape the Northfield community. The colleges in Northfield are part of the community character, and this absolutely includes students… I want Northfield citizens to know that Carleton students want to get involved and care about their neighbors.”

- Libbie Weimer, Carleton

“I think it's important to remember that even though the St. Olaf campus can feel isolated, it is still part of the Northfield community, and there are people who need our help right here… You're also a member of a larger community, and a welcoming one.  It's refreshing to realize your role in this town can go beyond the classes you take in it.”

- Sarah Miller, St. Olaf