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
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
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 Spring 2025 Options
Catalyst Day is coming Wednesday, April 23rd! Save the date.
To what extent can the creative arts help resolve real-world problems? Can literature, music, theatre, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and digital art promote “solutions to open-ended problems”? How can they impact and alleviate sociocultural, environmental, economic and philosophical concerns? Your challenge is to identify a problem that your group finds significant, research it, and propose an innovative solution that uses the creative arts to mitigate it. This challenge does not expect you to create artwork yourselves, but instead asks you to demonstrate how the creative arts can have a significant impact on “the real world” and lead to change.
As the world’s climate changes, natural disasters are becoming more ubiquitous. Hurricanes are increasing in frequency, wildfires are spreading thousands of acres, and tornadoes are popping up with greater ferocity. For this challenge, research a place that experiences natural disasters and look for ways to reduce the harms for that community. For your solution, consider ways to improve preparedness, increase human (or animal) safety, enhance infrastructure, or improve the rebuilding of a community that has been affected by a natural disaster.
A recent USA Today article associates various social determinants of health (SDOH) with the systemic oppression of minorities in the United States. While the article focuses on racism as a public health crisis, it also describes various barriers to determinants like education, economic status, employment, and housing that can inequitably impact minorities. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services groups SDOH into five general domains—Economic Stability, Education Access and Quality, Health Care Access and Quality, Neighborhood and Built Environment, and Social and Community Context—that impact the public and can lead to inequities and health disparities. This topic challenges you to explore how social determinants of health affect minorities. Identify a specific problem related to a SDOH that you find significant, study it in-depth, and develop an innovative proposal to address it. Your goal is to
present a well-researched, evidence-based, and objective solution to your chosen problem, and to educate your audience about its significance.
“Urban sustainability” refers to efforts to create environmentally viable yet socially equitable cities that
balance human well-being and ecological interests to provide hospitable living conditions for all. Urban sustainability involves many concepts, including infrastructure reform, sanitation, public transportation, renewable resources, waste management, social equity, energy consumption, and access to public services, among others. This challenge tasks you to identify a problem related to urban sustainability in a
specific location (in Wisconsin, in the United States, or internationally), research it, and come up with an
innovative solution to mitigate the problem while still balancing human and environmental interests.
The state of Wisconsin is widely renowned for its excellent universities, national forests, outstanding sports franchises and breweries, and for its immense agricultural output. As one of the nation’s leading producers of dairy products, cranberries, corn, cherries, soybeans and ginseng, the agriculture industry is a major economic driver that contributes billions of dollars to the state’s economy each year. Nevertheless, problems related to climate change, soil quality, pests, invasive species, animal pathogens, population growth, labor, development and land management constantly threaten the state’s agricultural viability. This challenge tasks you to identify and research a problem related to Wisconsin agriculture, explore what has already been done to address it, and come up with an innovative solution to mitigate it.
DO MORE YOUR WAY
Become the extraordinary individual you are meant to be at Ripon.