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About Catalyst Day

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.

The Challenges

Catalyst 300 students are tasked with developing solutions to prominent real-world issues. This term, students were given the choice of the challenges listed below or a “wild card” option for students to choose their own topic they are passionate about, pending approval by the faculty members.

Fall 2024 Catalyst Challenges:

Energy Crisis

“The Four Elements”

Public Health and Minorities

Voting Matters

Social Media

Public Health and Minorities

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 “contribute to wide health disparities and inequities.” (“Social Determinants of Health”) Although some states, public institutions, and private organizations attempt to mitigate inequalities by developing new policies and programs, longstanding cultural and political barriers can make it difficult to implement meaningful reforms.

This topic challenges you to explore how social determinants of health impact 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.

Social Media

While many people enjoy using social media for interpersonal, communicational, educational, business, entertainment and gaming purposes, others criticize it for exacerbating a variety of problems such as consumer privacy, social anxiety, cyberbullying, the proliferation of misinformation, cybercrime, and ethical concerns among others. Advocates champion its benefits, but critics often claim that its use and abuse can have significantly detrimental ramifications.
Your task is to identify and research a substantial problem related to social media, and to come up with an implementable solution to address it without abandoning its use. Research the problem, explore its significance, find out what has already been done to address it, and devise an innovative proposal to help resolve it. Your goal is to promote realistic and healthy ways to use social media, and not to exclusively critique, demonize, or discontinue its use.

“The Four Elements”

Since ancient times, cultures around the world have believed that four essential elements—fire, air, earth, and water—make up the foundation of all terrestrial matter. Over time, scholars from virtually every liberal-arts discipline have studied, theorized about, and represented the elements in their work, and they continue to be common tropes in popular culture today. While our current understandings of these elements are radically different from those of the past, fascination with them has continuously inspired human thought throughout the ages.
Humanity’s relationship with fire, air, earth and water has always been both positive and negative. This challenge tasks your group to identify and study a problem related to these elements that impacts a particular place, community, or culture, and to design an innovative project to address it. To be successful, you must conduct extensive research on a problem, determine what has already been done to try to improve it, and propose a solution that satisfies the needs of humankind while protecting the natural environment.

Voting Matters

Voting in the United States involves over 10,000 different offices/systems, with each system having its own rules for tracking voter registration and elections. Throughout the nation, the further scattering of voting rules that has occurred since 2020 has exacerbated the relative confusion and relative expense disparities among states and among municipalities. Several recent articles about election infrastructure describe pressing concerns regarding election costs, underfunding, limited availability of services, security, staffing, and inconsistencies among election administrations at local, state, and federal levels. Other aspects of the American voting process, not listed here, are potentially significant as well.
Research election infrastructure at either the local, state, or federal level in the United States, identify a related problem that your group wants to address, and devise an innovative proposal to improve it. Your project should ultimately strive to help an aspect of the American voting process be more efficient, secure, safe, and consistent.

Energy Crisis

Energy is critical in our everyday lives. From batteries for our devices to power grids to run AI technology, energy needs for technology seem to be increasing. We also need more power to cool our homes and businesses as the world’s temperatures increase. Infrastructure surrounding energy transfer is also being challenged as we try to deal with moving electricity from renewable sources. Consider a problem related to energy storage, use, transfer, or distribution whether that is on a small or large scale. Consider innovative solutions to solve those energy challenges.