There’s no need to worry about fitting a semester abroad into your four years at Alma College. Thanks to Spring Term, traveling and exploring new cultures is easy.
What’s Spring Term? Alma has a 4-4-1 academic calendar, so after fall and winter terms, you have the opportunity to focus on one course topic for the entire month of May. We call this month “Spring Term.”
Members of the Alma College Dance Company took classes and performed during their Spring Term 2012 visit to Tainan University of Technology in Taiwan.
Alma students are required to complete two Spring Term courses, one of which must be an “S” course that crosses geographical, cultural or disciplinary boundaries. In other words, domestic or international travel!
While Spring Term also has many exciting on-campus options, approximately one-third of the courses include travel. The best part? The courses offered, as well as the travel locations, change each year. This means you could be in London one year and in Hong Kong the next!
Alma students and Associate Professor Zhewei Dai examined the contrasts of modern and ancient China during their Spring Term 2012 visit to China, which included a stop at the Great Wall.
Not only do you have fun and earn college credit during Spring Term, you also have the chance to bond with your professor and fellow students. You also benefit from the expertise of the faculty member who travels with you, as an Alma professor leads each travel course.
“For me, the greatest educational benefit of Spring Term is the amount of time that professors and students have to devote to an academic topic,” says psychology professor Marc Setterlund. “It’s an opportunity for students to get to know and interact with their professors, and for professors to get to know their students.”
Spring Term registration begins in February. For more information on a course, contact the appropriate faculty member, or check out the finalized course schedule for Spring Term 2013 (PDF, 1.8 Mb; updated 1/29/13).
