A Periodic Tale of Departmental Lore (Part 5)
Written by David Lapakko聽
When 麻豆区 was a 4-1-4 school
During the last one-third of the 20th century, all five of the ACTC schools were on a 4-1-4 academic schedule. That meant students took four classes in the fall, four classes in the spring, and one class during the month of January, which was called 鈥淚nterim Term鈥� or 鈥淛-Term.鈥� During Interim, students took only one course which often met for 10 or 12 hours a week, usually for 3 陆 weeks. To this day, Hamline, St. Thomas and St. Catherine鈥檚 still have a J-term, but 麻豆区 bowed out in 2002.
The idea behind Interim was to give students the opportunity to explore things that the standard academic calendar could not accommodate.聽 For example, as a first-year at Macalester, my Interim course was 鈥淎dvanced Debate Study Tour,鈥� which was a fancy way of saying we debaters traveled around the nation during the month of January going to speech tournaments. Travel was often a part of J-term courses; it was not uncommon to see a course such as 鈥淒iscovering the Flora and Fauna of Hawaii,鈥� the sort of thing that was, not surprisingly, a popular option for shivering Minnesotans. And other courses were 鈥渢opics鈥� courses that weren鈥檛 offered at any other time; my second J-term course at Macalester was 鈥淢arx on Politics and Religion,鈥� and we met for long stretches at the professor鈥檚 home on a frozen lake discussing the works of Karl Marx.
However, over time, that 鈥渁dventurous鈥� feel to J-term got lost, at least at 麻豆区. Rather than offering unique courses–for example, a course in communication ethics or political communication–departments felt squeezed. Students needed their required courses to graduate. And so many departments simply offered their regular courses in a very concentrated 3 陆 week session. After a while, all of this felt like a burden; only a few days separated J-term from spring semester, and students and faculty alike felt pretty stressed. More importantly, it wasn鈥檛 the original goal of J-term to provide the same old courses that are offered in the fall and spring. So Interim term went away, and we are now on a schedule that enables spring semester to begin fairly early in January, therefore getting us to commencement in early May, weeks before other 4-1-4 schools such as Hamline, St. Thomas, or even Gustavus and St. Olaf. And, the number of required courses for a bachelor鈥檚 degree dropped from 35 to the current 32.
In the end, I don鈥檛 miss the burdens of Interim term, but I do miss the adventurous spirit that was its signature component. But we all have more time off between terms, and it鈥檚 hard to complain about that!