Hobart and William Smith Colleges

J-Term

J-Term runs from January 3 to January 18, 2024. Current students and non-matriculated students will be able to take one course with an HWS faculty member for 3.5 hours, seven days a week (note that J-Term courses meet on weekends). Classes are scheduled in the mornings, with afternoons and evenings for class preparation, projects and assignments.

Please note: All J-Term courses will be offered remotely.

The tuition for courses is $3,000 for current HWS students, including graduating seniors, and non-matriculated students.

HWS matriculated students can register through their HWS PeopleSoft account from November 17 to December 15. Non-matriculated students should fill out a non-matriculated student application form and send it to Jamie MaKinster at makinster@hws.edu.

2024 COURSES

Body and Self
Birds in Our Landscape
Introduction to Meteorology
Soccer: Around the World with the Beautiful Game
Cultures of Advertising
Feature Sports Writing

DAN 101 Body and Self
Online Course
Dance
Professor Donna Davenport

As a virtual, J-term course, this introductory movement experience, “Body and Self,” will focus on embodied awareness through creative process in movement, yogic principles, movement observation and analysis. Course content will include skeletal and muscular anatomy, Laban/Bartenieff movement theory, improvisation, and movement composition. Students will be active during the class and will be given assignments that include moving, reading, writing, composing, and observing the movement around them. This course fully addresses Goal 5.

ENV 216 Birds in Our Landscape
Online Course
Environmental Studies
Professor Mark Deutschlander

Birds are an apparent and familiar part of our environments, whether hiking in a national forest or spending time in our own backyards. From pristine natural areas to the most urban settings, birds are ubiquitous and serve as sentinels for the health of the environment. Examining population trends and geographical distributions of birds can help us understand the impacts of urbanization, pollution and pesticides, climate change, and more. In this course, you will learn how distributions of birds inform scientists about environmental change and the impacts of change on the function of ecosystems. You will learn, firsthand through field excursions and exercises, to identify local bird species and how to conduct some basic field techniques for direct monitoring of birds. You will learn how scientists collect distribution data on birds using remote sensing and how citizen science has greatly advanced our ability to understand the distributions and movements of birds. You will also learn how scientists communicate their findings by reviewing scientific publications, which we will use as case studies of how birds in our landscape impact us and tell us about our environments.

GEO 182 Introduction to Meteorology
Online Course 
Geoscience
Professor Neil Laird

The influence of weather and climate affect our daily activities, our leisure hours, transportation, commerce, agriculture, and nearly every aspect of our lives. In this course many of the fundamental physical processes important to the climate system and responsible for the characteristics and development of weather systems will be introduced. We will examine the structure of the atmosphere, parameters that control climate, the jet stream, large-scale pressure systems, as well as an array of severe weather phenomena including hurricanes, tornados, thunderstorms and blizzards. Upon completion of this course, we will have developed: (a) a foundation of basic scientific inquiry (b) a basic comprehension of the physical processes that govern weather and climate, and (c) an understanding of the elements of weather and climate that are most important to society. No perquisites for J-Term offering. All students can enroll in this course.

HIST 112 Soccer: Around the World with the Beautiful Game
Online Course
History
Professor Virgil Slade

Soccer (football) is undisputedly the most popular sport in the world and is watched weekly by literally hundreds of millions of people across the globe. This game is said to foster community and is widely understood to generate affective relationships powerful enough to exceed the everyday social divisions which order the world we live in. However, what is not apparent in this rhetorical understanding of the `beautiful game' is how soccer is also implicated in both creating and maintaining the very divides that it supposedly has the ability to transcend. This course provides a whirlwind tour of the sport that explores its industrial roots, its dissemination around the world, and with scheduled pit-stops on five continents, makes visible the sometimes hopeful, oftentimes violent, and always controversial nature of the beautiful game's rich past.

MDSC 200 Cultures of Advertising
Online Course
Media and Society
Professor Leah Shafer

Advertising is among the most pervasive forms of cultural representation in our global society. In this course, we approach advertisements as economic, aesthetic, and ideological forces whose analysis reveals crucial information about cultural attitudes and ideologies of their time and place. We will study the industrial and aesthetic history of advertising by analyzing advertising campaigns as well as their strategies, themes, and practices. Our materials will be drawn from both corporate and non-profit campaigns, global and local campaigns, and from anti-consumerist actions and other resistant practices. Our work will cover diverse media, including: print culture, television, film trailers, mobile marketing, social networking sites, and new media branding and marketing campaigns.

WRRH 219 Feature Sports Writing
Online Course
Writing and Rhetoric
Professor Ben Ristow

The last decade has seen a radical transformation in athletics and the figure of the athlete. Sports writing has transformed from the golden age of print journalism to the hot-takes of modern sports talk radio and social media. Athletes who might have been spectators to the narratives that construct them are—more and more—bringing voice to their stories through the Players' Tribune, taking political or social justice stances on Black Lives Matter, or arguing for fair labor conditions for the Women's Soccer U.S. National Team or unpaid college athletes. Sports journalists try to capture the untold stories of athletes and their teams through traditional genres like game summaries, beat column, opinion pieces, and feature essays. These genres, which you will write in the course, must also account for the ways that athletes, journalists, and fans are being drawn ever closer into ethical questions of social equity. These shared conversations are of central importance to culture and to the root systemic causes of racial, gender, and social injustice. How we write about sports determines the degree to which understand our endeavor toward human rights. Speaking to protestors in 1967, Muhammad Ali, said: 'In your struggle for justice and equality I am with you.'

ADDITIONAL FINANCIAL INFO

Refund Policy
Notification of withdrawal and requests for refunds must be made in writing and addressed to the appropriate Dean. A full refund will be given to students who withdraw before the second day of classes. After this deadline, the refund of tuition and return of federal and education loans and other sources of payments are prorated based upon the percentage of the term that the student is enrolled. If the student is enrolled past 60% of the term, there is no refund of costs of attendance. The official withdrawal date used by the appropriate Deans Office will be used to determine the prorated refund.

Loan Information
Students taking one class during J-Term can apply for a private alternative loan to assist with the costs.

For more information regarding summer aid options, please contact the Financial Aid Office at 315-781-3315.