ENTREPRENEURIAL GRANT RECIPIENTS

The Grant program awards grants up to $3,000 to individuals or teams to launch sustainable enterprises that create value - commercial, social, artistic and/or scientific. Funds are awarded to students for entrepreneurial projects with social and economic potential. The Entrepreneurial Grant program also awards mini-grants of up to $500 for Social Innovation Projects.


New Grant:

Joseph Erickson, Kai Hansen, Steve Milne & Gabe Rysdahl ’11
CircaVista
CircaVista specializes in interactive virtual imaging. That means we capture all 720-degrees of a space into an image that can be explored by anyone with a computer. We refer to these individual navigatable images as nodes.  These nodes can be embedded to your homepage individually, or connected to each other to form a network of spaces. They can also be linked to still images, video, and other webpages. A network of nodes is called a virtual tour.

Yingsi Tang ’13
"Welcome Home" Chinese Summer School Program
Establish a summer school program in Guangzhou city to teach African immigrant children Chinese and Chinese culture, helping them adapt their new life in Guangzhou. Furthermore, to diminish the misunderstanding that local Cantonese residents have towards African immigrants and break the barrier between African immigrants and local Cantonese residents.

Previous Grants:

Rebecca Carlson ’12
Maple Syrup Tapping
Sugar maple trees run every spring regardless if they are tapped or not. I plan on "tapping" into the potential by tapping local maple trees (even those in Norway Valley here on campus) and boiling down the sap to maple syrup while hopefully educating the people around.

Mara Fink ’11
Keeping Stories Alive
My project focuses on ensuring that students in Minnesota learn about the World War II Japanese American internment through an innovative approach, the elementary school libraries. Although the internment is in the state standards, many students still don't know anything about it. Working with elementary school librarians in two different Minnesota school districts, I will create and implement an educational program for the librarians to use during students' weekly library time. If all goes well, I hope to expand to more districts next year.

Anna Martin ’12
Northfield College Access Program (NCAP)
Anna is working to enhance collaboration between the Riverland Community College, Carleton and St. Olaf college, and the Northfield public school system to make post secondary education more accessible and sustainable within Northfield.

Matt Minea ’12
Bee Keeping
Bees are being raised on a local farm to produce honey that can help with the prevention of local and seasonal allergies.

Emily Rose Pfaltzgraff ’11
Permaculture and Restoration
Emily is providing consultation and design to the SEEDS initiative in order to create sustainable agricultural lands that incorporates grasslands, fruit & nut trees, creek restoration and perennial vegetation.

Kelsey Solum ’11
Farm to Fork
Through art, dance, and literature, Kelsey is creating summer camp enrichment experiences for elementary age children to learn about nutrition, local foods, environmental sustainability and stewardship through hands-on activities.

Patrick Roisen ’11
Spanglish
Spanglish is a locally driven language acquisition program based on two basic goals.  The first is to bring both the Northfield community and the Hispanic community together in order to enhance the areas language learning within a social atmosphere.  Second, by placing the program within the center of town, Spanglish aims to reduce the levels of isolation currently felt by the Hispanic population, primarily within Viking Terrace.

Social Grants

New Grant:

Anne Daily ’12
St. Dominic Elementary School Organic Garden
The project seeks to create an organic school garden at St. Dominic Elementary School. The goal of the project is to implement a multi-study curriculum for the schools K-8 program that uses the garden as a resource, involving students in the entire process of creating the garden, integrating the produce into the school lunch program, and also working with the Food and Nutrition Service Learning Collaborative Grant.

Previous Grants:

Jon Chang ’11
GEAR Network
The Gender, Equality And Responsibility (GEAR) Network opens dialogue about negative manifestations of masculinity--such as forms of aggression and sexual assault.  Through education, GEAR Network hopes to alleviate the degrading effects negative masculinity imposes in the Northfield community.

Scott Fuhrman ’10 & Adam Koenig ’11
School Composite
Scott and Adam worked with St Dominic’s School to create a compositing system for the cafeteria.  Two food grinders and composite bins were purchased for the school.  Educational materials and demonstrations were provided to help implement the program.

Nicholas Kang ’12
Smart Step Youth Initiative
Smart Step Youth Initiative Programs was created to promote positive social change in small communities suffering from social injustices by inspiring, motivating, and engaging everyday teenagers into civic engagement.

Linnea Logas ’10
Book for Food Shelves
Linnea devised a system for collecting and delivering children books to area food shelves.  Children are able to choose a free book with each visit to the food shelf.

Gabe Rysdahl ’11
San Juan de Lurigancho School - the grant was to fund supplies to the local school
Gabe established a library at the San Juan de Lurigancho School in Lima, Peru.  He also taught English and helped to implement projects ranging from a sustainable bathroom to an annual check-up with Peruvian doctors, optometrists and dentists for the children and adults of the school community.

Continuing Grants:

Joseph Erickson & Kai Hansen ’11
Checkdown Records, LLC
Checkdown Records is not only a working record label, but a multi-faceted media company, with services ranging from marketing, distribution and promotion to recording and production.

Nicholas Kang ’12
Merritt Hockey School
Merritt Hockey School is a hockey camp located in Merritt, British Columbia, Canada. The hockey school will teach young hockey players from the age of 5 to 15 the skills of skating, shooting, stick handling, and passing in a fun and comfortable learning environment.

Elliot Robia ’10
Dream Box
Dream Box is an organization which offers one-on-one lessons and group instruction in a variety of activities and art forms. They also assist St. Olaf students by providing financial support for the creative projects they want to do.

Evan Uribe ’11
Lumen Photography
Lumen Photography is a fully functional studio that provides on location & studio portraits, senior, child, wedding, event & sports photography. Lumen photography brings to every photo shoot an approach and attitude that puts even the most reserved photo subjects at ease.

Justin Volling & Carl Numrich ’12
Minnesota Youth Golf Camp
The MN Youth Golf Camp is a golf camp for youth ages 10 to 17 that will allow participants to grow in their skills and abilities.