What is J-Term?

J-Term, or January Term, is a special month-long period of study in January in which Carthage students explore subjects outside their majors or minors, discover new interests, and test their creativity through classes held both on campus and around the world. It's a month to experiment, create and dream.

During J-Term, students travel to rainforests, islands, deserts and excavation sites for hands-on biology, geography, history and archaeology lessons that can’t be taught in the classroom. Other students stay on campus for innovative course offerings. They may build telescopes, create museum exhibits, stage operas, study forensic science, or prepare for law school.

Students must complete two J-Term courses during their time at Carthage, although most Carthage students choose to participate in J-Term every year.

Recent J-Term Courses

• Tropical Ecology of Costa Rica. This biology trip took students to Costa Rica, where they spent their days tracking, observing, identifying and collecting specimens from the wild.

• Movies on the Edge: Close Encounters of the Cultural Kind. Students studied international feature films produced over the last 80 years to examine what happens when disparate cultures come into contact with one another.

• No Idle Hands: The Social Context of Knitting. In this popular course, students learned basic knitting concepts while exploring the links between knitting, spirituality and creativity. Read more.

• Good Vibrations: The Science of Music. In this physics course, students created instruments, studied the physical groundwork of music, examined the workings of the human ear, attended a concert to determine decibel sound levels and visited a professional radio studio.

• Geography and Biology of Nicaragua. For the past seven years, a group of students have addressed medical needs in a remote region of Nicaragua, while also studying the area’s biology and geography with kayaking and hiking trips.

Click here to see courses that were offered during J-Term 2010. For more information about past J-Term courses, including slideshows from previous study tours, click here.

More stories about J-Term:

• Art Meets Biology in J-Term Trip to Arizona
• Ecology and Tropical Medicine in Nicaragua
• "The Magic Flute" — An Opera in 3-1/2 Weeks
• Forensic Science
• No Idle Hands: The Social Context of Knitting
• Telescope Making
• Unearthing the Past: J-Term Trip to Omrit
• Up in the Air: Introduction to Aviation and Meteorology

Be Adventurous.

Do something wonderful. Do something outside of your realm. Whatever it takes, do it.

And be a little bit afraid of what you're going to take and where you're going to go. ... You should be a little afraid, because that's the excitement."

— Prof. Laura Rodman Huaracha on J-Term

J-Term at Carthage

Carthage students treat patients in medical clinics during a J-Term trip to Nicaragua. Watch the video.

Art Meets Biology. Students photograph biodiversity in Tucson, Ariz.

No Idle Hands. The Social Context of Knitting.

Unearthing the Past. Students travel to Israel to excavate Roman temples of Omrit.