Extension School To Offer January Classes

Though students looking to occupy their January days with classes on writing or foreign languages won’t be able to find them at Harvard College, they will be able to find them elsewhere in Cambridge—at the Harvard Extension School.

As part of a pilot program this upcoming January, the Extension School will be offering 14 different courses on topics including Elementary French, Introduction to Food Writing, and The American Revolution in Boston.

Each course will last three weeks, beginning January 5 and running until January 22.

While students from the College and other schools in the University may enroll in the Extension School’s January courses, students will be responsible for paying their own tuition, and any credits they earn will not count toward their degree.

According to Extension School spokeswoman Linda A. Cross, instructors were allowed to submit proposals for courses they would be interested in teaching, and the school selected courses that could be offered in an intensive format.

“Courses that involve research papers and projects, for example, wouldn’t work,” Cross wrote in an e-mail.

Marlon D. Kuzmick, an Expository Writing preceptor who plans to teach “Multimedia Communication: Principles of Visual Rhetoric” during the January Session, said that he thought that instructors teaching during January have to be particularly attentive to how difficult it might be for students with full-time jobs to take long classes that meet frequently.

“That said, I believe that the compressed character of the course will offer students the opportunity to achieve a degree of focus that is simply not possible in a once-weekly class,” Kuzmick wrote in an e-mail.

Cross said that the school has previous experience working with intensive classes, such as the four week English-language courses the school has offered in January and early February during recent years.

College officials announced last April that the College would not be offering programming for undergrads this upcoming January, and students hoping to stay on campus during January must submit an application before Oct. 15.

Interim Dean of Advising Inge-Lise Ameer said that College students hoping to take courses at the Extension School will not be given campus housing in order to enroll.

—Staff Writer Lauren Lauren D. Kiel can be reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu.