SCU eliminates J-term beginning fall 2025
The change is one among several calendar revisions being implemented for the 2025-26 school year, including a longer summer break and an optional university-wide switch to eight-week course lengths
By Natalie Nemes
Denise Baird, co-provost and senior vice president for academic operations and student success, announced in an email to College for Women (CFW), College for Adults (CFA), Graduate College and Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA) online students on Oct. 25 that the university would be switching to a new academic calendar beginning fall 2025.
St. Kate’s will no longer operate on the 4-1-4 calendar model, eliminating J-term and instead following the two-semester calendar used by most higher education institutions. Additionally, all programs will have the option to implement eight-week-long courses instead of the current 16-week-long schedule used by all schools except the OTA online program.
This means that winter break will be four weeks long instead of the current six weeks that includes J-term. The spring semester will start and end two weeks earlier, elongating summer break.
Attached to the email was a Q&A Google Doc addressing several of the reasons why the university decided to make this switch. The primary motivators were implementing more frequent course starts to best serve adult learners in the CFA program, adopting a consistent calendar across all schools and programs and allowing graduates to enter the job market at the same time as those from other institutions.
More frequent course starts for adult learners
Baird explained that the faster turnover between course starts allowed by eight-week-long classes works better for nontraditional students who may have to take time off to attend to other responsibilities.
“That population of students is best served with eight-week-long courses throughout the year that allow them to kind of balance and manage,” Baird said. “I can focus my energy for eight weeks and complete a course or two, and then it might be a busy time at work or with my kids or for whatever reason, and I can decide whether to pursue another eight weeks. But I can hop right back in eight weeks later, and I don’t have to wait a whole semester.”
Baird stated that while the new academic calendar will allow programs across every school to implement eight-week-long courses if they so choose, it will not require any program to adopt this model. She anticipates that CFW programs will mostly continue with the 16-week-long course model. This course length change will primarily affect CFA students because adult education programs typically operate on these types of schedules.
Consistent calendar for all programs
The OTA online program currently starts a week later than CFW, CFA and grad programs. This caused several difficulties for various departments, Baird explained. “[The OTA program’s different schedule] creates certain kinds of challenges for our billing office, our financial aid office, our registrar’s office, to maintain all of the different operational pieces needed,” she said.
Additionally, classes taken by students across both calendars, such as prerequisite courses in biology and the social sciences, are currently offered separately even when it would be advantageous to commingle, Baird said. The consistent calendar will allow students in the OTA program to enroll in the same classes as students in other programs.
Ensuring graduates are competitive in the job market
The semester ending two weeks earlier may not make much of a difference for some new entrants to the job market. But for graduates of certain programs, they may need to take a licensing exam after they finish their degree before they can apply for a job, Baird explained. With students graduating two weeks earlier under the new schedule, “you’re able to get out on the job market and get actively engaged in that interviewing process sooner such that the most attractive job opportunities are not already filled.”
Baird also pointed out that the same logic applies to summer jobs, which may start at a certain date because they are driven by tourism or other season-specific employment constraints. Under the current model, those positions “might also be filled before our graduates really kind of get out, get a breather after the end of our semester and [are] able to be ready to pick up their full-time employment for the summer.”
Applying financial aid to external online courses
While not listed as one of the motivating factors behind the calendar change in the Q&A document, Baird said that the university currently faces difficulties with applying students’ financial aid to external online programs such as Acadeum and Rize under the current 4-1-4 calendar. These courses begin in early to mid-January, Baird explained, “But our spring term doesn’t start until February, and our financial aid rules and regulations per the federal government meant that we couldn’t use our spring financial aid to let students pick up coursework in— during January with those partner organizations.”
According to Baird, these external partner organizations provide students with further academic program offerings that the university does not have the capacity to launch on its own, like neuroscience and cybersecurity. With the constraints of the late spring semester start, “We had to pause on an initiative to work towards creating new academic program opportunities for CFW students in particular, because we couldn’t get our calendars to sync up with the calendars of these partner institutions and organizations,” Baird said.
Potential obstacles
This new academic calendar is a significant change for students, and the transition will have its obstacles. One of the most prominent is the elimination of J-term study abroad courses.
“There are a number of options for short-term, faculty-led study abroad even without J-Term,” the Q&A document read. “In some cases, travel can take place over spring break. Summer semester is also an option for faculty to lead study abroad courses. Staff in Global Studies will be fully engaged in designing a new model and approach for short-term, faculty-led study abroad.”
Kiara Gomes in front of the Duomo in Milan, Italy during a J-term study abroad course. Credit: Kiara Gomes
These changes in short-term study abroad offerings will be made in collaboration with faculty who have historically taught J-term study abroad courses, according to Baird.
However, Baird anticipated that applying financial aid to these new forms of study abroad would crop up as an obstacle. “Some of the trickiest aspects of this particular piece have to do with the restrictions around when you can disperse aid and the federal Department of Education’s restrictions around whether aid can be used in between terms.
“This is the same issue that pertained to us not being able to take advantage of those program opportunities in January. The same set of rules works in a different way that limits options for how we can apply the aid for students studying abroad after the end of an academic term or before the beginning of an academic term and still have the aid apply.”
Solidifying what these short-term study abroad options will look like is still a work-in-progress, although opportunities for students to use their aid during the summer term have already been in place for a number of years, according to Baird.
The elimination of J-term may also impact grad programs that currently rely on J-term courses. These programs will need to figure out how these courses will fit across different term lengths, Baird said.
Programs may also face challenges with rearranging course material to fit the eight-week model. “For those programs that want to move to the eight-week model, the eight-week term model, they will need to do some thinking about where their content, learning outcomes and content goes,” Baird said. “So they might need to swap content from one term to another term and really think about how they map out the entire course of curriculum.”
Potential benefits
Baird brought up several potential benefits of switching to a semester-based calendar that were not necessarily primary motivators. With a shorter winter break, she anticipates that the university will “see a little bump in our fall to spring retention for our students,” for example.
Baird also mentioned that, “Four-week courses during January term are really intensive and in a number of cases not the ideal situation for student learning and the development of skills, which take practice.” Global Search for Justice courses, for example, are often offered over J-term but are writing intensive courses that have to squeeze a lot of writing practice into a short amount of time. It can be better to distribute the workload more evenly over the course of a semester.
Student perspectives
One student expressed mixed opinions on the calendar change. “I think that it’s largely okay,” said Tara Harbo ‘25 (English/Studio Art). “[J-term] is often expensive to run on [its] own. I am a little frustrated with the plan to start two weeks earlier though.”
Another student said she was concerned by how the elimination of J-term would affect students in her program. “I don’t really agree with the changes,” said Alyssa Solis ‘24 (Sonography). “I really appreciated having J-term and honestly I don’t think I’d be graduating if we didn’t have J-term. I also feel like this kind of screws over the sonography program students as our program has tight deadlines, especially in terms of clinicals and when we start them, but I’m sure they’ll figure [it] out and adjust to everything.”
Solis questioned whether it would be possible to make a calendar for CFA and the OTA program that is separate from CFW’s. “Even with the reasoning of being able to enter the job market earlier I really don’t see the benefit that two weeks gives someone, but maybe that’s because in my program many people get hired by their internship sites or have connections elsewhere so I’m not particularly worried about it like other people might be.”
Solis went on to express further concerns over students who take a class in J-term to stay on top of their coursework during the spring semester. “I really do think having J-term allowed me to graduate on time because I could take courses during January and allow it to count for spring semester, which allowed me to use my scholarship on those credits,” she said. “It really helped me stay on top of my work load and mental health by taking J-term classes and I worry for future students who might have the same struggles as me. I feel like it really screws us over for not a lot of benefits.”
As an out-of-state student, Kiara Gomes ‘25 (Fashion Design/International Studies) said she was not happy about the change because she appreciated the extra time J-term allowed her to stay at home or travel. “I am an out of state student so I don’t get to go home very often,” she said. “J-term also allows me to study abroad without falling behind in my courses which I really appreciate.”
Whatever students’ feelings are about the shift, they will have some time to adjust as changes will not be implemented until fall 2025. For those wishing to view the new academic calendar in more detail, it can be found here as a PDF.
