Hobart and William Smith Colleges

J-Term

J-Term runs from January 3 to January 18, 2023. Current students and non-matriculated students will be able to take one course with an HWS faculty member for 3.5 hours, seven days a week (note that J-Term courses meet on weekends). Classes are scheduled in the mornings, with afternoons and evenings for class preparation, projects and assignments.

Please note: All J-Term courses will be offered remotely.

The tuition for courses is $3,000 for current HWS students, including graduating seniors, and non-matriculated students.

HWS matriculated students can register through their HWS PeopleSoft account from November 19 to December 17. Non-matriculated students should fill out a non-matriculated student application form and send it to Jamie MaKinster at makinster@hws.edu.

2023 COURSES

CHEM 198 Miracle Drugs in the Time of Pandemics, David Slade
When global public health is “normal,” a search for a new miracle drug requires medicinal chemists to make hundreds or thousands of new molecules that might treat some disease while avoiding nasty side effects… but the timeline for success is on the order of a decade or more. What can drug companies do to speed up the process amid a brand-new viral pandemic? Unfortunately, HIV/AIDS was one of VERY few viral diseases that we had good drugs for, which complicates the search enormously. This course will answer questions like: Why was there so much interest in testing old, well established drugs like hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, remdesivir, and dexamethasone against COVID-19? How do we know whether a drug is doing anything useful at all? Why are the timelines for developing a new vaccine as drawn out as they are? What are the various vaccine platforms and how do they differ? What are monoclonal antibodies, and how do they work? There’s a very old idea that’s worth exploring: can we treat patients with the blood of patients who have already recovered? The backdrop of a pandemic serves to illustrate the pitfalls, challenges, and interesting questions of drug discovery, and the interactions of molecules and viruses with our immune systems. This course is intended to improve scientific literacy while developing analytical skills.

ENTR 201 Quantitative Tools, Craig Talmage
This course teaches the basic accounting, statistical, and Excel skills necessary for success in the Entrepreneurial minor. All of the examples will be done using Excel. The accounting techniques covered will include: accounting terminology; the accounting equation; how to prepare and analyze financial statements ( the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows): operational costing considerations; cost behavior and cost-volume-profit analysis; differential analysis and product pricing; and budgeting. The statistical concepts which will be covered include: data collection; basic measures of summarizing data; presenting data in tables and charts; hypothesis formulation and testing; sampling techniques; normal distributions; and simple regressions techniques.

ENV 216 Birds in Our Landscape, Mark Deutschlander
Birds are an apparent and familiar part of our environments, whether hiking in a national forest or spending time in our own backyards. From pristine natural areas to the most urban settings, birds are ubiquitous and serve as sentinels for the health of the environment. Examining population trends and geographical distributions of birds can help us understand the impacts of urbanization, pollution and pesticides, climate change, and more. In this course, you will learn how distributions of birds inform scientists about environmental change and the impacts of change on the function of ecosystems. You will learn, firsthand through field excursions and exercises, to identify local bird species and how to conduct some basic field techniques for direct monitoring of birds. You will learn how scientists collect distribution data on birds using remote sensing and how citizen science has greatly advanced our ability to understand the distributions and movements of birds. You will also learn how scientists communicate their findings by reviewing scientific publications, which we will use as case studies of how birds in our landscape impact us and tell us about our environments.

HIST 112 Soccer: Around the World with the Beautiful Game, Virgil Slade
Soccer (football) is undisputedly the most popular sport in the world and is watched weekly by literally hundreds of millions of people across the globe. This game is said to foster community and is widely understood to generate affective relationships powerful enough to exceed the everyday social divisions which order the world we live in. However, what is not apparent in this rhetorical understanding of the ‘beautiful game' is how soccer is also implicated in both creating and maintaining the very divides that it supposedly has the ability to transcend. This course provides a whirlwind tour of the sport that explores its industrial roots, its dissemination around the world, and with scheduled pit stops on five continents, makes visible the sometimes hopeful, oftentimes violent, and always controversial nature of the beautiful game's rich past.

MDSC 100 Intro to Media and Society, Jiangtao Harry Gu
This course provides an introduction to various media and their modes, methods, and themes. We will explore the role of the media in shaping social consciousness, global economies, and material culture. Examples drawn from film, television, print media, and digital environments will be contextualized, analyzed, and theorized as crucial elements of our media culture. Students will gain an appreciation for the social, cultural, economic, and political influences of global communications while performing close readings of conventional media objects. Writing assignments, exams, and projects will help to cement insights gained through close investigation of films, TV shows, advertisements, video games, music videos, and more.

PSY 221 Introduction to Psychopathology, Jamie Bodenlos
This course primarily focuses on understanding the diagnosis, etiology, and evidence-based treatment of adult psychological disorders. Emphasis is placed on understanding psychological disorders through theoretical models, empirical evidence, and through the reading of memoirs of individuals with a variety of disorders.

WRRH 219 Feature Sports Writing, Ben Ristow
Glenn Stout, series editor of Best American Sports Writing, argues that sports writing is more about people and what concerns us—love, death, desire, labor, and loss--than about the simple results of a game or competition. This course builds from the premise that sports writing offers readers and writers important ways of making sense of our worlds. Whether we are reading Roger Angell's description of a baseball, considering a one-eyed matador, watching a high school girls' softball team, or contemplating a one-armed quarterback, we immerse ourselves and our readers in making sense of the world. We explore such questions as: Why are sports so deeply imbedded in our culture? What are the ethics of sport? How do sports disenfranchise certain populations? To answer these and other questions, students write game summaries, beat column reports, feature essays and revise each of them in a final digital portfolio.

ADDITIONAL FINANCIAL INFO

Refund Policy
Notification of withdrawal and requests for refunds must be made in writing and addressed to the appropriate Dean. A full refund will be given to students who withdraw before the second day of classes. After this deadline, the refund of tuition and return of federal and education loans and other sources of payments are prorated based upon the percentage of the term that the student is enrolled. If the student is enrolled past 60% of the term, there is no refund of costs of attendance. The official withdrawal date used by the appropriate Deans Office will be used to determine the prorated refund.

Loan Information
Students taking one class during J-Term can apply for a private alternative loan to assist with the costs.

For more information regarding summer aid options, please contact the Financial Aid Office at 315-781-3315.