Review Ponders Adding January Term

In addition to tinkering with specific requirements, this curricular review has also examined the timetable of a Harvard education.

Motivated by University President Lawrence H. Summers’ desire for all of Harvard’s schools to align their calendars, the Working Group on Pedagogy spent this academic year discussing an overhaul of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) calendar.

The University Committee on Calendar Reform recommended last month that FAS, along with Harvard’s nine other schools, adopt a uniform academic calendar that starts each year soon after Labor Day, moves Commencement to late May and ends the fall semester before winter vacation.

Aaron S. Allen, a graduate student in the Department of Music and member of the Working Group on Pedagogy, says his committee assumed that first semester exams would be moved to December, so that January could be used for unique academic experiences.

“We worked under the assumption that the calendar would change and that [second semester] classes would not start January 15,” he says. “And then we said, now, what would we do?”

According to working group members, the curricular review report will propose several options for what professors and students could do with the January term, or “J-term.”

Everything from film festivals to laboratory research will be on the table if the College ultimately institutes a J-term.

“There are many creative ways such a block of time could be used,” says Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Richard M. Losick, who is also co-chair of the pedagogy working group.

Any four-week term is bound to have strengths and weaknesses different from a standard 13-week semester. In particular, Allen explained, students enrolled in J-term would take one course or focus on one specific activity.

“Do you acquire knowledge and understanding over a long period of time...or would you get it better six hours a day for three weeks?” he says. “The option of doing one thing can be very invigorating—to just read great Russian novels or just read minor Latin American poets, or to just think about astrophysics.”

Professor of Philosophy Richard G. Heck suggests that a month-long focus could be ideal for learning foreign languages, while Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn says that “there’s been some discussion about...using the J-term for some public service activity.”

Allen says a J-term could also ease the pace of College life.

“One of the problems of the intensity of the regular semesters here is the multitasking,” he says. “Intensity of study can also be relaxed.”

While the report will not recommend whether or not a J-term should be mandatory for all four years of college, the pedagogy working group has contemplated requiring students to participate.

“If we require it of everyone most likely it will not be innovative; if we require it of no one there’s the concern that people would find too many other things to do,” Allen says. “Nothing would end up happening even though departments would have to be very innovative in their approach to it to encourage lots people to come in.”

In order to ensure participation in J-term, the pedagogy working group has contemplated requiring students to participate.

Undergraduates could be given complete liberty to avoid J-term entirely, required to enroll in a J-term activity all four years, or somewhere in between.

“If we require it of everyone most likely it will not be innovative; if we require it of no one there’s the concern that people would find too many other things to do,” Allen says. “We’re going to say these are the extremes and it seems more logical to do something in the middle.”

Mendelsohn says that giving students complete flexibility with their J-terms could lead to a wasted month.

“I worry a bit about it being left a bit too open,” Mendelsohn says. “Mid-way through the year you can have some fatigue—if you leave things too open, I’m not sure students will take full advantage of the opportunities available.”

Allen adds that he does not personally support making a J-term mandatory.

“If J-term were to happen, then it should be something that’s innovative, something that’s really special, that provides for greater flexibility in student schedules [and] that offers people the flexibility of either doing it or not doing it,” he says.

CREATING A TERM

If a J-term is to be created—let alone required—faculty members will need to develop and teach new types of classes.

Jones Professor of American Studies Lizabeth Cohen, who is co-chair of the pedagogy working group, says that professors will be encouraged to participate by having a J-term course counted as a normal class towards their teaching requirements.

“Rest assured that we are fully aware that such a January model would only work if faculty and students alike received full credit for participating,” Cohen says.

But not all Harvard professors are sold on the idea.

Keenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 says he expects a strong faculty opposition to J-term when the curricular review report is presented to the Faculty in May.

“If it’s a choice between having more teaching and less teaching, I can guess which way the Faculty will go—and students will follow,” he says.

Mansfield adds that, despite the numerous possibilities available for J-term, January classes and other activities are unlikely to be educationally valuable.

“I don’t think one could get something serious started and over with, and so it’s likely to be something less serious. That’s not what we need,” Mansfield says. “I think experience elsewhere has shown that this J-term is goof-off time.”

Assistant Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies J.D. Connor says that in addition to the effect of downplaying academics, moving the school year forward could harm students’ other activities.

“For those students who imagine a future in academia and other highly motivated students, the yawning gulf between the last day of classes in December and the end of exams can be filled with sparkling original research,” Connor says. “Pushing exams back, compressing reading period and exams, etc. will thwart that kind of work, and no J-term can make up for it. I fear that we may trade seriousness—about academics, the arts and athletics—for a stress-free holiday and some smorgasbord course offerings in January.”

A J-term for undergraduates will only be possible if Harvard adopts the University Committee on Calendar Reform’s recommendation to end the first semester before winter break and start the second semester in late January or early February.

Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies Jay M. Harris, the co-chair of Overall Academic Experience, said the University-wide committee’s decision to make way for a J-term was not intended to force the College to institute one.

“The Calendar Reform Committee has no ability to tell FAS what they should be doing,” he says. “It’s more a matter of having the curricular review represented on the calendar committee and I think that’s certainly happening and happening well.”

In order to ensure collaboration between the pedagogy working group and the calendar reform committee, Cohen was also a member of the University-wide committee and approved the recommendation to end the first semester before winter break.

The calendar reform committee’s report will be discussed by the Faculty at its April 20 meeting, which will foreshadow the discussion of the curricular review report, which is scheduled to take place on May 4.

Mansfield says changes in the January calendar could, aside from providing questionable academic benefits, hinder professors’ research.

“Your calendar is your life and your life is your vacations,” he says. “It’s during your vacation that you can do your own work.”

Other faculty members also say that starting the academic year earlier and shortening reading period by three days in order to accommodate a J-term is counterproductive and results in logistical difficulties.

Higginson Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Philip A. Kuhn, who is chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, says that asking professors to teach during January would be problematic for administrative reasons.

“January is a terrible month from our point of view because it’s graduate admissions month, so we have a heavy administrative load,” Kuhn says. “I think undergraduates would not get the best of our efforts.”

Professor of Psychology Daniel M. Wegner adds that any calendar change may have an adverse effect on the other two semesters.

“The rest of the semester [would need] to be foreshortened,” Wegner says. “Students feel reading period is an essential part of their [learning] process.”

A Crimson poll of 363 undergraduates in December found 45 percent support taking first-semester exams before winter break. Forty percent of students are opposed, with a three-point margin of error. The poll did not ask about a J-term specifically.

—Staff writer Joshua D. Gottlieb can be reached at jdgottl@fas.harvard.edu.