Macalester College
Macalester College (visited 10/4/22)
Fun fact: Not surprising for a college with Scottish roots, Macalester has a pipe band and all students can take free bagpipe lessons!
“At our core, we’re a liberal arts college. We’re a mission driven institution: internationalism, service to society, academics. These inform all we do. Students live those values,” said an admission rep. Mac attracts a community of students who are engaged, sometimes to a fault. “Students are so earnest! They are when they’re athletes, when they’re so sure they know the way forward (which changes, of course!), when they’re trying to figure out how to be an adult, about their academics, about improving the world they’re living in. Sometimes I need a little less earnestness; it’s 8am,” said one of the Deans. Students arrive at Mac prepared to think about things. They have an idea of what their ideals are and are willing to be uncomfortable.
In the wake of George Floyd being murdered in Minneapolis, we asked what the aftermath looked like on campus. “Racial reckoning happens every day depending on the skin you live in. Students are figuring out how to work through anger and fear, listening to others when they don’t understand or if they’ve had an experience they haven’t lived.” Students are hungry to talk about privilege and oppression as well as intersectionality. The president has even offered to reimburse students for bail money if they were charged while protesting!
“We’ve all been learning how to have hard conversations. We aren’t going to be perfect,” said one of the Deans, who went on to say that with this comes a sense of ‘Institutional Restlessness,’ a striving to be better. A faculty member added to this by saying, “I see it as innovation. We’re known for trying things. We wrestle with ideas. Sometimes we fail, but we figure it out. It’s designed to look at the students who are here now and figure out what they’re going to need in the future.”
Mac’s location St. Paul/the Twin Cities adds value to what they can offer to students. The college has built a multitude of partnerships with businesses and community organizations to provide service-learning, experiential education, internships/externships, and other community-based educational opportunities. They help students get meaningful internships (many students stay in town for this, but they can be done away over the summer, too); many are paid, but the university provides stipends to students if they’re unpaid. Many classes engage with the city and community organizations in order to enrich the curriculum and coursework. “There are tons of things,” said a student. “I took a geology/art class that looked at landscape and urban design. We were always trekking around the city.”
Although in a city, this is an insular 3-block campus in a residential neighborhood. We asked our female tour guide about being in the city and if this reflected in safety issues; “I’m pretty small, and I walk around at all hours. I’ve never felt unsafe here.” Students get free bus passes for the MSP city busses which stop on campus. It’s a 15-minute ride to downtown Minneapolis, and the light rail runs all over, including the Mall of America and the airport.
Because they’re so close to so many other institutions, students have opportunities for cross-registration at St. Thomas, St. Catherine, Hamline, and Augsburg. They also have a looser agreement with Minneapolis College of Art and Design; students can take 1 class per term but must get approval for it before registering. There aren’t shuttles between campuses, but St Tom’s is walkable (“It’s about 5 minutes down the street,” said the tour guide) and the others are accessible on public transportation.
This is an incredibly inclusive community in all sorts of ways. They’ve been named one of the most LGBTQ-friendly campuses in the country. Almost 20% of students are First Gen; almost 40% self-identify as BIPOC. At the end of many events, students will come up and recite the Peace prayer (“It’s not really a prayer”) in their own language. “It’s a good reminder to recenter and take a breath and what we’re about.”
As part of their Internationalism mission, they provide a ton of international experiences which includes everything from working with immigrant or other international groups in town to going abroad. More than half of the students study abroad, and 11 departments require some sort of study-away experience. Students are required to show competency through 4 semesters of a language (or can test out). There are Language Living Communities for all languages they teach (including Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Russian); they each house 15-20 students; students can choose to live there starting in their sophomore year. “Students live here a lot before going abroad to give them a jump start with the language.” They also have robust multicultural resources, including the Lealtad-Suzuki Center. “We want people to explore and take pride in their own identity but also engage with people who aren’t like them.”
They have a 2-year residency requirement. There are three first-year dorms with mostly double rooms; they’re not super large but they get the job done. They have all-gender and single-gender floor options. Juniors and seniors who choose to move off campus mostly live within about a mile and stay involved on campus. In addition to the Language Houses, there are multiple other options including Interfaith, All Gender, Healthy Living, and even a Vegetarian Coop – located under the bleachers of one of the athletic fields! They cook together a couple times a week and get funding to shop for the food.
A couple major traditions that got shout-outs from students we talked to were Midnight Breakfasts and Pushball. Midnight breakfast happens at the end of every semester before exams; from 9pm-midnight, the President, deans, and professors cook breakfast in the dining hall. Pushball, an annual event on Founders Day, the classes play each other. “It’s a huge deal! We get really competitive. I remember one where one guy rolled up and over the ball – and then it rolled over him. He’s ok, though! He popped right back up!”
Academics are challenging but manageable according to the students we talked to. The facilities are impressive for a school this size, including some that are more unusual for a school this size such as an amazing concert hall and an observatory. A few programs you wouldn’t necessarily expect at a smaller school include Performance Design and Technologies; Food, Agriculture, and Society; Human Rights and Humanitarianism; Critical Theory; International Development; and Astronomy (which explains the observatory!).
I asked students what their favorite classes were; they were so enthusiastic about what they were doing that it was hard for many to come up with one (so some told me about two!):
- Distress Disorder and Disfunction (DSM): “This was called ‘Abnormal Psych’ class until a student asked what ‘Abnormal’ really meant!”
- Microbiology: “We do so many fun experiments including making sourdough starter!”
- International Storytelling: “We’re learning about different cultural storytelling forms to break away from Western standards. We do a lot of oral storytelling in class, and they’ll bring pizza in during it.”
- Advanced Archaeology Seminar: “We do a lot of 3D modeling, use drones, and spend a lot of time going into the field.”
- Comparative Feminisms: “The professor is amazing and so kind! She was the highlight of the class. She created a safe community to discuss ideas. It was very theoretical and difficult, but we learned so much.”
- Psychology of Sustainable Behavior. “We had do a 10 day project in which we tried to get to as close to zero-waste as possible. It … was a bit of a disaster, but we tried hard and make huge strides in seeing what the problems were and how we can make it easier for people and also help convince people to even try to take steps forward.”
All of us got to sit in on two sample classes which were absolutely amazing! The teachers were engaging and funny. One of the two classes was the Psych of Sustainable Behavior; I would’ve taken the whole thing if I had the option. One of the teachers said this about their students: “They’re collaborative which I appreciate. The way they teach tends to be engaging and fun. Students want to learn with you, not in spite of you.”
© 2022
campus encounters 