About Rayvin Gierwatowski…

To learn about my (’26) Individual Major Capstone Project, R.I.P. Lair,
click here.

Hi! I’m Rayvin- I recently graduated from St. Olaf College with a Major in Design for Events and Community Engagement and with two concentrations in International Relations and Business and Management Studies.

During my time at St. Olaf, I had the opportunity to study abroad twice, once in Seville, Spain (with all my coursework in Spanish) and once in Milan, Italy (with *some* of my coursework in Italian).

St. Olaf is home to a one-of-a-kind student venue space, modeled after First Ave in Minneapolis and built in 1999, called the Lion’s Pause. I was extremely fortunate to have the chance to hold the position of Executive Student Leadership: Lion’s Pause Venue Coordinator for two years. In that role, I led the Concert Board, the Marketing team, and Facilities.

I had a lot of freedom and responsibility in this role- and I got to be a part of carrying on traditions (Fall Block Party, SpringFest, and Rock the Hill) and creating new ones (like Boiler Room: World Tour) as well as other new types of events (Just Dance, Tiny Desk Concert, Mane Stage Madness, etc.)

St. Olaf is also home to the Individual Major program, where students can- with the approval of a faculty review council- design their own major and capstone project. I thus created Design for Events and Community Engagement, and my capstone project, titled R.I.P. Lair.

R.I.P. Lair is a project designed to uplift student creatives through event programming. I held two pop-up concerts featuring entirely student artists in unexpected venues (our on-campus art museum and our on-campus barbershop!). This project was hugely fulfilling, draws on expertise in event-planning, collaboration, design thinking, project management, feedback and metric tracking, digital photo and video design, marketing (print design and social media) and more! You can learn about it here.