With Catalyst Curriculum
Do More in Four
With our five-course Catalyst curriculum, you can do it all in just four years. This one-of-a-kind academic flexibility allows you to complete multiple majors and minors, participate in research, play sports, hold an internship — you name it. All without having to take a long list of general education courses!
Most importantly, you can build the communication and critical-thinking skills you need to excel in life and in the workplace.
Every Ripon College graduate demonstrates they’ve mastered the skills of:
- Public speaking
- Writing
- Critical thinking
- Group collaboration
- Quantitative reasoning
- Information literacy
- Intercultural competence
To learn more about individual Catalyst sections, please click here: each PDF file includes course descriptions, major assignments, and information about each class.
Catalyst 110: Writing
Writing - Information Literacy - Critical Thinking - Collaboration
Catalyst 120: Quantitative Reasoning
Oral Communication - Information Literacy - Critical Thinking
Catalyst 210: Cultural Competence
Critical Thinking - Writing Information - Literacy Intercultural
Catalyst 220: Integration
Oral Communication - Information Literacy - Collaboration - Writing Integration
Catalyst 300: Collaborative Capstone
Presentation - Public Speaking
Catalyst Day Presentations
Catalyst Day—held each fall and spring—is designed to showcase Ripon College’s Catalyst curriculum and celebrate the achievements of the students who are completing the junior-level collaborative capstone. Throughout the day, attendees will have the opportunity to watch teams of students present problem solving projects that tackle worldwide issues.
Challenges
Catalyst 300 students are tasked with developing solutions to prominent real-world issues.
Catalyst Day Topics 2026
Since 1986, the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin has sought to protect Wisconsin’s natural heritage through conservation, private-sector engagement and outreach programs, and regularly funds projects that have a beneficial influence on the environment. It currently offers grant monies to organizations that protect state lands, waters, and wildlife, and that educate the public about environmental issues. (https://www.wisconservation.org/) Identify a significant problem related to a natural resource in Wisconsin, research it, and write a proposal to address it that you think the foundation might fund. To be successful, you must conduct intensive research on the problem, analyze its various components, and propose innovative solutions to improve them.
Food is essential to human survival: it fuels our bodies and provides livelihoods. Our lands and oceans produce enough food – yet a third is wasted every year. Over 11% of people in the world are hungry and 3.1 million children die as a result of malnutrition annually. In the United States, one in eight people do not know where their next meal might come from (Feeding America, 2018). The future of our food supply will be further challenged by climate change, environmental degradation, and worldwide poverty and inequality. The goal of this case is to ensure continued support for agriculture and fishing so that current and future generations are able to produce and have access to safe, healthy, high quality, and culturally appropriate food.
Universities and colleges are leaders in knowledge creation and practice. Sustainability offers a unique opportunity to higher education: universities can use their campuses and communities as “living laboratories” to research best practices and innovate to promote sustainability. The Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) establishes sustainability priorities and documents successes in academics, engagement, operations, inclusion, wellbeing, and finance (https://www.aashe.org/ ). This challenge therefore addresses sustainability on a college campus, more specifically at Ripon College, and focuses on promoting sustainability on campus and in the surrounding community.
The human body is often described as the “most complex machine ever created,” yet it remains a site of profound biological limitations, social contention, and ethical dilemmas. Whether viewed through the lens of medicine, aesthetics, law, psychology, or culture, the body is not just a biological entity—it is a lived experience and a social construct. Identify a specific friction point where the human body intersects with modern society. Research this problem from at least two distinct disciplinary perspectives (e.g., Biology and Philosophy, or Exercise Science and Sociology…) and design an innovative proposal—a policy, a physical prototype, a digital tool, or a community program—to address it and improve the human experience. Please make sure your topic is appropriate for classroom and public presentation.
A report by the U.S. Surgeon General in 2023 signaled that Americans of various ages and social groups suffer from an actual loneliness epidemic, in particular teens and young adults, elderly people, minorities, and people with lower income levels. Community involvement is lower than before; jobs require less in-person social interaction; social media create contacts, but do not seem to cultivate the authentic connections that allow humans to really thrive. This loneliness can lead to anxiety, depression, and addiction, and lack of human contact can aggravate dementia in older adults. What can be done to rebuild a lasting sense of community and authentic forms of communication among people? Your challenge is to identify a specific problem related to the loneliness epidemic and to come up with an innovative plan to address it. As you develop your project, focus on community building and social programming rather than on individualized therapies. Design your project so that it actually can be put into practice.
An Enemy of the People, The Laramie Project, Sweat, and A Raisin in the Sun are four well-known examples of plays that have addressed social issues of their times. Drama has the ability to deeply engage audiences with and to create empathy for individuals involved in social quagmires in ways that policy papers or news articles cannot. After reading these example plays, your group will compose and perform a ten-minute play on CTL Day that addresses one or more of the following social issues. Your play will be accompanied by a research paper that analyzes your chosen issue and provides solutions to address it:
Truth vs. conformity
- Gender inequality and sexuality
- Rising housing costs and housing
discrimination - Public health
- Rural or urban poverty
Because of the Catalyst Curriculum and its replacement of general courses, I was able to graduate early with two minors, join a sorority and participate in several student organizations.
Olivia Robinson ’23
History, Minors in Museum Studies, Anthropology
DO MORE YOUR WAY
Become the extraordinary individual you are meant to be at Ripon.