What is the American College of Norway
American College of Norway is part of the U.S. university system and offers curriculum in English. Study abroad at ACN for a semester, the academic year and/or the summer program.
Since 1992, the American College of Norway (ACN) has provided a study abroad opportunity to Americans and other international students, bringing them together with Norwegian peers to take courses toward their U.S. bachelor’s degree. ACN is part of the American university system and offers curriculum in English taught by American faculty. The schedule and academic calendar follow the typical U.S. system as well. Because our study abroad students are comfortable with this form of education, other cultural differences are then exciting and not overwhelming.
“In the 25-year [now 28] long partnership, over 2,000 students and more than 80 American faculty have been favorably impacted. This is one of the most successful and enduring educational partnerships in all of Norway.” Kåre R. Aas, Royal Norwegian Embassy, Ambassador to the United States
ACN partner universities
WHO ARE OUR STUDENTS?
Americans and international students make up about 25% of the student body. There are only 70 students admitted to the program each year so students get to know their classmates and enjoy the intimate environment. They attend ACN to study abroad and experience a different culture and the daily excitement of living in Norway. Click here for admission requirements for international students.
In ACN’s living/learning community, students learn not only from their instructors, but also each other. This is part of the unique program which helps create the best fit for everyone.
Norwegian students choose to start their bachelor’s degree at ACN to gain one-year of an American university education before heading to the U.S. to complete their degrees. After successful completion of the program, Norwegian students transfer to one of ACN’s cooperative partners and other U.S. universities.
Students at all academic levels are welcomed and encouraged to apply to study abroad at ACN. Each year freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors attend our program from universities all over the United States.
“The American College of Norway provides a great opportunity for students looking to study abroad. As a freshman, it has given me the chance to have an experience abroad while taking care of my general classes before I get deep into a major. The small classes and many activities present the chance to really get to know professors, staff and other students well.” Conrad Pederson, Study Abroad Student Spring 2018
To learn more about ACN, you can read several articles in English on our blog! You can also connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and even Snapchat (myacnsnaps)!
Academics & Tuition
The best study abroad programs are the ones that give students an intimate insight into a country’s people and culture while also providing useful university credit that will help progress their education. If you want to study abroad in Norway, look no further because the American College of Norway (ACN) does just that!
WHAT CAN YOU STUDY AT ACN?
When students study abroad in Norway at ACN, students take U.S. university courses that easily transfer to any U.S. university. ACN’s school of record is the University of North Dakota (UND) and all courses are pre-approved and transcripted by UND – making it very easy for U.S. university students wanting to study abroad in Norway at ACN, to transfer their credits completed abroad back to their home university.
One of the exciting aspects ACN’s study abroad program is how vibrant it is! The course offering does not stay the same year after year and this is because the American College of Norway has the pleasure of welcoming new and enthusiastic faculty from top U.S. universities every semester.
ACN offers a wide variety of courses which fit into the general education requirements or electives at U.S. universities. The courses offered each semester will be based off of the expertise of the visiting faculty. Upcoming course listings are usually available well in advance of the start of new semesters.
TUITION
Tuition is NOK 48 000 per semester for full-time students (approx USD 4,700, (exchange rate as of March, 2023). Tuition for the ACN Summer School differs.
HOUSING COSTS
Living on campus lets you make the most of your university experience. It is a great way to be near your classes and fellow students and is the most
convenient housing option for ACN students.
Student housing is available and costs between NOK 41 000 – 42 000 per semester (approx USD 4,000 – 4,100 exchange rate as of March 2023). The rent includes electricity and internet. Contact ACN if you would like more information about courses or cost of attending.
Note that if the exchange rate changes dramatically, we will adjust this and students will either get money back or we will charge the difference.
ACN ON-CAMPUS APARTMENTS
The apartments are just short walk from the school. Each unit contains 2 bedrooms, shared bathroom, and a kitchen/living area. The building has room for 36 students. The apartments are furnished with: beds, closets, desk/chair, dining table/chairs, fridge/freezer, stove, and washing machine. Students must bring their own bedding for a 90 cm bed and their own kitchen equipment. Electricity is included in the rent. Internet is installed in each apartment and the cost is also included in the rent.
A housing deposit of NOK 3 000 (approx USD 300, exchange rate as of March 2023) for international students staying one semester, must be paid before you move in to confirm your room. Housing deposit for a school year is NOK 4 000 (approx. USD 4,000). Information about the housing deposit will be sent out with the housing assignments. The deposit is refundable upon successful check-out when the rental period is over.
BUDGETING
When planning to study abroad in Norway, it’s a good idea to do some advanced planning and have a good idea about where you will use your money. Norway is an expensive place to live if you try to live like you would in the U.S. (e.g. eating out). However, with good planning and suggestions you’ll receive from ACN staff after arrival, you should be able to stay within your budget. Here is a suggestion:
- Housing: NOK 42 000 ($4,100)
- Food: NOK 13 500 ($1,300)
- Books and Supplies: NOK 1 500 ($150)
- Other expenses (including personal purchases such as entertainment, clothing, gym membership etc): NOK 10 000 ($1,000)
- Total for 5 months: NOK 67 000 (about $6,550)
Approximate USD prices in parenthesis, exchange rate as of March 2023.
Because ACN is centrally located and walk-able, no public transportation costs within Moss are necessary.
Students must pay a housing deposit (NOK 3 000 – approx. $300), which is refundable upon successful completion of check-out and return of keys.
Travel estimates not included. Charter airlines to European destinations make weekends/breaks an affordable option. ACN staff are great resources for suggestions and tips.
Courses
Fall 2022
ENGL 110: College Composition I – 3 credits
Cecilie Olandersson, American College of Norway
THEA 397: Collaborative Education – 1 credit
Instructor: Tonje Kristiansen, American College of Norway
Campus Life – 2 credits Life, University and Everything (LUE)
Instructor: Dr. Tami Carmichael, University of North Dakota
COMM 110 – Public Speaking – 3 credits
Instructor: Dr. Elaine Jenks, West Chester University
Social Science Course – Human Rights
Instructor: Dr. Tami Carmichael, University of North Dakota
Spring 2023
ENGL 130: Writing for Public Audiences
BIOL 110: Biology for Non-majors
BIOL 494: Directed Study: Using the Scientific Method to Understand a Complex World and Make Rational Decisions
BIOL 499: Special Topics: Human Genetics and Society (with a focus on the Vikings)
POLS 220: Arctic Travel Course (Svalbard) – 1 credit
IDS 399: The Arctic Seminar
HUM: Leadership & Ambassadorship/Volunteerism
All 3 credit courses unless otherwise noted
Student Life in Norway at ACN
If you're looking for a study abroad program that is welcoming, inclusive, not to mention exciting, the American College of Norway is the place to be! Read more about student life in Norway and ACN below!
On-Campus Activities
ACN knows the importance of cultural exchange through study abroad programs and works hard to provide an active and engaging community for all students. Student life in Norway and at ACN is exciting! And with our hands on approach., students are offered many opportunities to get involved on-campus.
During our welcome activities and throughout the year, students can enjoy paintball, BBQs, movie marathons, Homecoming Week, Spring Formal, Thanksgiving, Halloween, ice skating, bowling, and much more!
In addition, if you are looking to get involved on campus, students are offered the opportunity to join the Activities Committee where they have weekly meetings to plan, prepare and execute monthly events on campus with our Activities Coordinator. In addition to helping create an active campus life, ACN students have participated in several service projects, helped at community events and have created events for the community. ACN will help you to get involved!
NO CLASSES ON FRIDAY
If you’re looking for a program that offers a wide variety of travel opportunities, ACN might just be the right study abroad program for you!
Travel is encouraged at ACN and with classes scheduled from Monday through Thursday, every weekend is a three-day weekend! Scheduling classes this way allows study abroad students to be engaged and present in their classes, while giving them enough time to explore Norway and the rest of Europe. Additionally, ACN has a week-long break during fall semester (fall break) and spring semester (winter break). During these breaks, students can plan longer trips.
Airfare in Europe on charter airlines is inexpensive and with airports located just north and west of Moss, the rest of Europe is at your fingertips. You can also connect to other cities in Norway and Europe from the local train station. ACN’s experienced and knowledgeable staff are a great resource for travel tips and recommendations. Don’t be afraid to ask for help!
With no classes scheduled on Friday, ACN staff frequently plan excursions in the area and day trips to Oslo. ACN has ventured to local art galleries and cafes to Oslo’s many museums and famous landmarks.
TRAVEL COURSES
ACN also offers travel course opportunities where students can gain university credit. ACN has studied Arctic affairs in Svalbard, Norway’s northernmost territory, experienced London’s theatre and art scene, explored Ireland’s Viking history and beyond! To find out if ACN is offering a travel course during your semester abroad, see our course offerings for the year.
Click here to read about ACN’s Arctic expedition to Svalbard!
Click here to read about ACN’s London and the Arts travel course offered during the Spring 2018 semester!
HOUSING
Moss, Norway
The American College of Norway has been located in Moss, Norway since its inaugural year. Having a program like ACN in a town such as Moss helps create a sense of community for our students, faculty and staff. And with classes housed in one building and on-campus residence halls just up the street, students truly get to know one another. This environment helps create a tight-knit, living-learning community where everyone has a sense of belonging.
ACN is located in Moss, Norway, a charming, friendly coastal town located on the Oslo Fjord with all the benefits of a large city, but with a small-town feel. Moss is only a 40 minute train ride from Oslo, Norway’s capital. From the local train station, a short walk from campus, you can make easy connections to cities in Norway, Sweden, and beyond! Additionally, the Norwegian coastline, “skjærgård,” is all around you!
Since the Middle Ages Moss has been an industrial city. In 1720 it was given city status (that’s older than the U.S.!). The inhabitants were mainly farmers who were drawn to the city because of its great location in the middle of the Oslo Fjord (as well as in-between Oslo and Sweden). Today Moss has approximately 30,000 inhabitants. In the neighboring municipalities there are 25,000 people who use Moss for shopping and leisure activities.
Moss is considered one of Norway’s cultural cities. If you are interested in art it is strongly suggested that you visit Galleri F15 on Alby, which is one of the leading art galleries in Norway. Downtown there is also an art gallery called Moss Kunstgalleri. Since the 1970’s Moss has carried the nickname the “city of rock”. Naturally, this has affected the culture. On weekends there are often bands from all over Scandinavia. At the end of summer, Moss hosts Festivalen Sin, a large-scale music festival frequented by famous Norwegian artists. Every year, Moss also hosts a festival for contemporary art called NonStop. This goes on for over a month with theater, films, live bands and so on. Moss also has a new movie theater in Møllebyen, a very short walk from our school.
If you wish to go out to eat there are many possibilities. Greek, Thai, Chinese, Norwegian and so on, the choice is yours. If you feel like a night out on the town, Moss has many pubs, bars and clubs to choose from. If you want to see a concert, musical acts often perform in Moss or nearby Oslo. The shopping possibilities consist of many different grocery, clothing, music hardware and drug stores. There are two major malls in Moss, they are called AMFI Senteret and Mosseporten. Besides the malls, there are many other specialty stores downtown.
The Moss region is also famous for its beaches. You can enjoy the sunshine and the water virtually undisturbed. In addition to the Oslo Fjord, Moss has a nearby lake called Vansjø, and on the east side there is a large forest area called Mossemarka.
One of the most exciting parts of the city is Jeløy, Moss’ famous island, with its lava formations, originating from a volcanic eruption. The local climate, geology and soils create conditions for agriculture, forestry and biological diversity. The island has some rare and protected species.
To read more about Moss, Norway and the Østfold region, click here!
Staff and faculty
Staff
KRISTA LAURITZEN
Krista Lauritzen is the Executive Director of the American College of Norway, a position she has held since the college’s founding in 1991. She is from Two Harbors, Minnesota and has her higher education from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, MN. While in college she participated in an exchange program at the University of Trondheim and is committed to helping students to study abroad!
Siv Lønningdal
Siv is the Office & Accounting Manager. She is from Os in the western part of Norway, but has lived in the area since 1974. She has been with ACN since 1993 and is likely the first person you will meet here. She handles the college’s finances and assists with information about such things as rent and student tuition payments.
Tonje Kristiansen
Tonje is the Marketing & Event coordinator at ACN. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Event Management at the University of Winchester, and her Master’s degree in Tourism Studies from the Arctic University of Norway. Tonje grew up in Moss and is passionate about making sure students explore the town, and she is always looking for opportunities for students to engage authentically with the local community.
HEIDI BENJAMINSON (on maternity leave)
Heidi is the Academic Advisor. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communication from ACN’s partner school, University of North Dakota and spent half of her junior year studying abroad at ACN, where she met her husband, a Norwegian ACN student. After graduation, they lived and worked in Norway for a few years before moving to Scotland where she earned a Master of Science in Education focusing on international education and study abroad. Heidi spent nearly a decade in Brisbane, Australia working with inbound and outbound international students before moving back to Norway.
COLIN SOLAAS
Colin is the Resident Assistant at the on-campus dorms. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He started his college education at ACN in 1999 and has taught accounting classes here.
DR. TAMI CARMICHAEL
ACN FACULTY SPRING 2021, SPRING 2022, SUMMER 2022, FALL 2022 and SUMMER 2023
Tami Carmichael is the Interim Pro-Rector for Academic Planning and Faculty Assessment. She is a Professor of English, Theatre Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of North Dakota (UND). In addition, she coordinates the university’s American College of Norway collaboration. She has taught at ACN many times and visits frequently. Carmichael received her Master’s degree and her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Currently, in both her teaching and research, she focuses on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She enjoys working with students and creating student-centered learning projects that integrate issues, ideas, and data across the disciplines so that students can gain a wider perspective on areas of real-world significance. Dr. Carmichael publishes and speaks extensively on interdisciplinary education, integrative general education, learning communities, the assessment of student learning, and international teaching and learning. She believes that students should be given every opportunity to develop the skill sets that are essential in the real world: critical and creative thinking, evidence-based reasoning, collaboration, and integrative thinking. Dr Carmichael has received several national awards including the CASE/Carnegie state Professor of the Year award (2008); the national STIRS (Scientific Thinking and Reasoning Scholar) Scholar award (2014) from the Association of American Colleges & Universities; and in 2015 she was named as one of five United States’ AAC&U STIRS Fellows. In her free time, Dr. Carmichael enjoys skiing, hiking, yoga, traveling, and her dog.
DR. ELAINE JENKS
ACN FACULTY FALL 2019, FALL 2021, SUMMER 2022, FALL 2022 and SUMMER 2023
Lainey Jenks is a Professor of Communication and Media at West Chester University. She teaches courses in interpersonal communication, friendship communication, communication and disability, public speaking, and film. Lainey has won three teaching and two service awards. Her scholarship focuses on interpersonal communication and disability from an ethnographic perspective. Lainey has researched the communicative behaviors of individuals who are blind or visually impaired in summer camp, friendship, family, and athletic settings. Lainey lives in Delaware outside of Philadelphia and has two sons. Her oldest son is a member of the USA Men’s Goalball Team. Her youngest son lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Lainey enjoys traveling, reading mystery novels, writing, listening to music, walking her rescue dog – a Pointer mix named Buddy, studying Swedish, and eating Nidor Smørbukk Originals.
ABBEY SCHNEIDER
ACN FACULTY FALL 2022 and SPRING 2023
Abbey Schneider is a social sciences lecturer at the American College of Norway and Bjørnholt videregående skole in Oslo. She is from Washington, DC where she taught for several years in Maryland high schools, the American University and Georgetown University before coming to Norway as a Fulbright Roving Scholar in American Studies in 2007. For the last twelve years she has been teaching psychology in Oslo. Abbey is passionate about equity in education, student well-being and the role of education in democracy. Outside of her professional interests, Abbey is active in the international community in Oslo. She spends her free time trying to keep up with her daughter and the family dog.
DR. ROBIN SMITH
ACN FACULTY SPRING 2023
Robin Smith is a femme, queer, writer & scholar originally from Northern California. Robin is the author of the chapbook “Confessions of a Love Addict” (Dancing Girl Press, 2020) and two full length collections Love Glut (Rebel Satori Press 2021) and Willow Abuelo & Me (UND ProQuest 2023). She is the winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Katherine B. Tiffany Award, among others. Her work has appeared in By & By poetry review, Aji Literary Magazine, Visual Artists Collective, Zoetic Press, Red Ogre, Westwind, Legendary Review, PACIFICReview among many others. Her work has also been featured in anthologies such as Bliss and Drawn to Comics. She was the lead poetry editor for the Northridge Review, and is an associate editor for Voicemail Poems. Robin Smith was the judge of the 2019 Rachel Sherman award for up and coming poets. She received her B.A and M.A in Creative Writing (poetry) from California State Northridge and recently graduated the University of North Dakota where she received her Phd in Creative Writing and Literature. Robin currently lives in Norway where she teaches Composition for the American College of Norway. She is a huge fan of Taco Bell and was proudly rejected by Taco Bell Quarterly this year and she also loves literary gossip and trash TV.
DR. TURK RHEN
ACN FACULTY SPRING 2023
Turk Rhen is professor of Integrative Biology at the University of North Dakota (UND). He has taught genetics, genomics, molecular and cell biology, endocrinology, animal behavior, and scientific writing. He strives to provide his students a rigorous education so they become broad, integrative thinkers. His undergraduate and Masters degrees are from UND. After earning his Ph.D. at the University of Texas-Austin, he did postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Dr. Rhen has developed expertise in areas of biology ranging from molecular biology to ecology and evolution. He is particularly interested in sexual differentiation as well as how genes and the environment interact to influence animal development. Dr. Rhen has published 56 peer-reviewed papers on these topics and secured over $2 million in funding from the US National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health to support his research. In his free time, he enjoys traveling the world with his wife and children.
ACN’s world-class faculty bring their extensive knowledge and experience to the classroom. Meet them here: