Academics
January Term
Only four weeks in length, and beginning the week following the New Year, the January Interim Session—or "JanTerm," as it's called by students and faculty alike—offers a winter break of a different kind.
During this "mini-semester," the range of opportunities and level of interactive study are a big draw for students, as is the possibilities for travel abroad, a feature of many of the JanTerm courses. Destinations such as Chile and Paris, Rome and Mexicali, even to Los Angeles' own urban center and nearby deserts all present a chance to convert the world outside into a classroom, and to apply learned lessons to real-world scenarios and settings.
Among past JanTerm offerings are courses such as:
- Managing Multinational Corporations, led by business professor Dan Duran. In this course, students spend the first two weeks in class, grappling with high-level theoretical questions surrounding challenges in managing a corporation accross cultural boundaries. They then cross over into Mexicali and meet with CEOs and heads of operational divisions of several companies, from superconglomerates to native owned businesses and maquiladoras, and learn first-hand the inherent difficulties when labor and management forces comprise both foreign and indigenous peoples, cultures, and languages.
- Students enrolled in Working with Children in Diverse Communities work approximately 20 hours at a selected community agency that either provides care and services or promotes advocacy in the South Los Angeles area. During the term students—through the work experience, journaling, and other academic study—explore race, culture, ethnicity, community, and neighborhood as it pertains to child development, as well as the role of these community agencies in diverse neighborhoods.
- In Race, Religion, and Gender in South American Politics, students in political science professor Deborah Norden's class first academically explored the origins, organizations, and political implications of various manifestations of diversity in South America, then headed to Argentina and Chile to observe and analyze these origins still evident today.
- La Flâneur, taught by French professor Andy Wallis, begins in the fall semester with academic preparation for individual, investigative projects, culminating in the three-week, JanTerm, fieldwork course, during which students live in and travel throughout Paris, and study distribution of ethnic groups, socio-economic factors, and various uses of public space.
- And coming in January 2009 will be the course Looking for Islam. Team-taught by religious studies professor Marilyn Gottschall and Dr. Gary Libman, this course will examine representation, culture and religion—in the exotic locale Fez, Morocco.
For a list of current JanTerm offerings, please consult the Schedule of Courses.
