Submitted by:
Roberta Lembke
Director of Academic Computing
Academic Computing Center
St. Olaf College
1510 St. Olaf Avenue
Northfield, MN 55057-1097 USA
v: (507) 646-3097
f: (507) 646-3549
e: lembke@stolaf.edu
Categories:
Education, higher
Keywords:
Innovative or improved ways of doing things; More equitable access to technology or electronic information; Creation of new ideas, products, or services; Technology transfer; Local commitment to network-based activities
Supporting Documentation (contact author for more information):
Documentation
Story Site (if other than location listed above):
Northfield, Minnesota
The Story:
St. Olaf College is private, four-year, liberal arts institution located in Northfield, Minnesota. The college can best be described by the mission statement that was adopted in 1987:
“Saint Olaf, a four-year college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, provides an education committed to the liberal arts, rooted in the Christian Gospel, and incorporating a global perspective.”
More than three-fourths of all Saint Olaf students participate in off-campus programs, many of them led by Saint Olaf faculty members. The programs range from a domestic semester-long program in Chicago to a five-month program that travels around the world.
In the last two years St. Olaf’s connection to the Internet has served to strengthen our commitment to an education with a global perspective. While abroad (at diverse institutions such as Paderborn and Konstanz, Germany, six institutions in the United Kingdom, Bogazci University in Turkey, the University of Oslo, Norway, Chiangmai University in Thailand and American University in Cairo, Egypt) many St. Olaf faculty and students regularly exchange electronic communication with their counterparts on-campus.
Electronic communication provided by the Internet and foreign government networking initiatives have allowed us to take advantage of inexpensive and almost instantaneous electronic mail for program-related and personal communication. In some cases, we have even held real-time conversations between continents. Our Internet connection has allowed faculty leading programs abroad to stay in closer touch with campus activities as well as tremendously improve the timeliness of program reports that are distributed to parents of participants.
Electronic exchanges through the Internet have also brought the “global experience” into the St. Olaf curriculum. A Cross Cultural Psychology course has used electronic mail to share thoughts and discussions with students in a similar class in Wisconsin. In the coming semesters we intend to broaden the scope of these exchanges to include interested participants in classes abroad. As electronic mail becomes more widely accepted, we are working more and more with language classes interested in having students communicate electronically with native speakers of the language.
Following its conviction of global awareness, St. Olaf is also the Internet and BITNET distribution point for U.S. State Department Travel Advisories and Consular Information sheets. We make this information available to interested parties through a variety of electronic means. Additionally, St. Olaf has worked with a number of foreign institutions of higher education on network- related projects.
For additional information contact:
Craig Rice
UNIX Systems Specialist
Academic Computing Center
St. Olaf College
1510 St. Olaf Avenue
Northfield, MN 55057-1097
v: (507) 646-3631
f: (507) 646-3549
e: cdr@stolaf.edu