For the vast majority of Rutgers’ 50,000 students, winter break offers a welcome chance to recover from fall finals, reconnect with family and friends, and celebrate the holidays. But for a small-but-growing number of students, winter is a chance to spend a few weeks focusing on one course in a subject they need for graduation – or just because it sounds interesting.
Enrollment in winter session on the New Brunswick Campus has grown from 19 in 2000, the first year it was offered, to 828 in 2007. In 2003, the first year when figures were available, 39 undergraduate and two graduate courses were offered; this winter, there will be more than 70. Courses run the gamut, from animal science, short fiction, and Chinese calligraphy to America in the 1950s and Latin-American cinema.
The intense schedule – classes start December 26 – is ideal for some subjects, said Elizabeth Hough, director of the Winter/Summer Session on the New Brunswick Campus. “For example, acquiring foreign language or public speaking skills, which requires students to make behavioral changes, is easier in a compressed term that provides significant rehearsal time over a short period,” Hough said.
Classes usually are three to four hours long, meeting four or five days per week. Students enroll for winter session for most of the same reasons they stick around for summer: to accumulate credits more quickly, complete a second major, or graduate early.
“Because of budget cuts across the country, it has become more difficult for students to graduate in four years since they can’t always get into courses they need,” Hough said. “Winter session is a survival strategy for a lot of students.”
And because of declining state support and rising tuition costs, more and more students work at least part time while they pursue their degree. “In many cases, students can use these sessions to stay on track to graduation without requiring an additional semester or two to complete their degree,” said Richard Novak, associate vice president of continuous education and distance learning. Winter and summer session programs are under the auspices of the Division of Continuous Education and Outreach.
A voluntary online survey that Hough administered earlier this year found that 44 percent of respondents took winter classes to complete courses for an undergraduate major, 31 percent to complete undergraduate general education requirements, 21 percent to “learn about a subject of interest to me,” and 21 percent to complete courses for an undergraduate minor or second major. A survey of students in the much larger summer session – about 12,700 students enroll each summer at the main campus, making Rutgers No. 7 in the country for summer enrollment – found similar results.
Hough’s survey found that students reported high satisfaction with the winter session; 92 percent of 2006–07 winter students rated their learning experience as “excellent” or “good.” Winter students praised the convenience of classes’ locations, schedules, and availability. Once enrolled, students often found they like the wide-open campus spaces, easy parking, and more in-depth interactions with faculty.
“I always tend to do better in an accelerated format,” said Scott Arnold, a Rutgers senior in criminal justice who also is a fire inspector for the Department of Emergency Services. “The winter schedule is very demanding, but I think it allows you to learn more and to connect ideas presented at the end of class with what you learned during the beginning.”
Dorthy Koncur, now a first-year law student at Seton Hall, took a Spanish course last winter to help her get her undergraduate degree a semester early. “The class itself met often, and it was very small and made it easier to learn the material,” she said. Koncur said she also took summer classes.
Norman Markowitz, an associate professor of history who teaches the popular America in the 1950s course, said students can learn more in winter because they are immersed in their coursework. “They are able to interact with the instructor and get to know him – and instructors get to know them,” he said.
Rutgers’ state funding is built around regular semester offerings, so winter and summer classes are self-supporting through tuition and fees, Novak said. In fact, “These special programs will generate excess revenue over expenses that can be used to help support the traditional academic work of the university,” Markowitz said. One significant source is revenue from non-Rutgers students, many from high-tuition private universities, who take winter or summer courses while home on break; last summer 17 percent of summer students were not from Rutgers.
“We get a lot of folks from Princeton, NYU, Yeshiva University,” Hough said. “It changes the mix and adds to the diversity of experience and perspective in the classroom.”
While the New Brunswick Campus has the largest summer session by far, Camden has conducted winter sessions longer (by one year) and has nearly as many winter students (757 last winter) on a much smaller campus. The Newark Campus has offered winter session since 2002, when it enrolled 429 students.
Although Rutgers in January doesn’t feel much like the bustling campus of fall and spring, students still can see Scarlet Knight basketball games, wrestling matches, jazz concerts, and Zimmerli Art Museum exhibits, Hough said. “It’s pretty quiet that first week [between Christmas and the new year], but after that it feels more like a collegiate experience. It’s a great time to get caught up, to focus, or to get ready to graduate.”
For more information on winter session at Rutgers–New Brunswick, go to wintersession.rutgers.edu .