Starting in 2012, faculty will no longer be paid to teach J-Term courses.
Dean of Faculty Donal O’Shea said that he expects the decision to save the College $50,000 to $100,000.
“We’re just trying to get money any way we can,” said O’Shea. “If I’ve got a choice between spending money on core academic programs or on J-Term, I’d rather spend it on core programs, so that’s the choice I’m facing.”
Last October, Dean of the College Penny Gill told the Student Government Association (SGA) that fewer classes would be taught for academic credit this year, and that non-faculty staff would no longer be paid to teach courses.
“We knew that students needed some two-credit courses, so we talked to professors who were good at lecturing and made the classes big,” said Gill. “It was a way of reducing the budget and still including academic courses.”
Gill said that the College may schedule more two-credit courses during the fall and spring semesters. “We’re really going to try to encourage that, because we know students need those two-credit options, especially the spring admits,” she added, citing the two-credit Global Migration course as an example.
In a separate decision, the Five College presidents, deans of faculty, deans of students and registrars finalized an agreement to coordinate their semester start and end dates. This year, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst scheduled their spring semester to begin on the Tuesday after Martin Luther King Day, usually the third week of January, forcing the other colleges to adjust.
“Two things happened: UMass originally decided it was going to move its calendar all the way up because students had told them they needed to earn more money in the summer, and wanted to start working earlier,” said O’Shea. “Three of the colleges squawked: Mount Holyoke, Smith and Hampshire—and said no, wait a minute, our students love this, we like it. There was some head-butting, and then what happened was, UMass, instead of moving it up two or three weeks, moved it up about a week, and we could live with that.”
Mount Holyoke’s spring semester will begin on the Tuesday after Martin Luther King Day, except when the holiday falls on Jan. 15 or Jan. 16.
Gill announced both changes on Monday in a mass e-mail that was not sent to seniors. According to Gill, SGA President May Yang ’10 told her not to e-mail seniors about the Nexus minor and other issues that did not apply to her class. Yang confirms this and says that Gill consulted her as well.
Reactions to the announcement were mixed.
“I’m a little upset that the break is shorter. In terms of not having credit courses, that isn’t an issue for me. I took a class during J-Term to have fun,” said Kelton Artuso ’13. “The credits were an added bonus.”
Anastasia Kim ’12, who has not yet taken a J-Term class, said the scheduling change increased her work-study hours. “I’m not really against it. I understand that it’s something they have to do. I wasn’t angry,” she said.
“I think it’s weird that seniors didn’t get the e-mail,” said Jess Brezicha ’10. “It’s sad because some of my best memories of Mount Holyoke were during J-Term. It’s not J-Term if it’s not a whole month.”
“Last year, as a prospective student, J-Term was one of the things that made Mount Holyoke stand out against other schools,” said Rachel Foster ’13. "Although it won’t be gone completely, and students can still take classes, I feel that our class, and classes of students to come, will never have the full J-Term experience. It’s sad that budget cuts have come down to this.”
The original J-Term program stopped offering academic courses in the mid-eighties, according to O’Shea, who says he added those courses within the last decade.
“The first couple of years, it was quite a success. Then it became hard to get [tenure and tenure-track] faculty to do it, but other people in the area would offer courses,” he said. It became increasingly difficult to find Mount Holyoke faculty willing to teach over J-Term.
“They’ll do it as a favor to you,” he added. “There’s a perception among folks that the J-Term courses, while they’re fun, are not as rigorous as the regular term courses, so people want to ask themselves how they can best use their time.”
Kalyani M. Jayasankar ’13 contributed reporting to this article.
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- Dean of College Penny Gill to resign at the end of the academic year
- UMass faculty senate postpones J-Term decision
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