RELEASED: Dec. 9, 2004

DANVILLE, KY—In the typical college experience, students return from the winter holiday break having eaten too much home cooking and having slept until afternoon for two weeks straight. They come back to short, dark days, a chilly campus and (yawn) more of the same from their professors.

Not at Centre College.

It’s that time again. With the advent of January comes CentreTerm, the three-week learning experience that sets Centre College apart and takes its students all around the world—to locales as far-flung as Australia, Russia and Rome, and to places as commonplace as the corner café and their own back (or front) yards.

Centre is unusual among colleges with its 4-1-4 school year structure. Students take four courses in the fall, four courses in the spring. In between, there is CentreTerm, a three-week total immersion into unexpected and interdisciplinary topics.

CentreTerm can take many forms. Students can pursue internships and independent study projects, or take courses, many of which take place abroad. This year students will have an opportunity to explore:

•The ideology of economic development in Ecuador;

•Art, architecture and choral music in Rome, Venice and Florence;

•Literature in New Orleans;

•Sustainable architecture and permanent agriculture in Australia;

•Russian culture in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

While some of the CentreTerm offerings take place on campus, none are conventional classes. The courses feature field trips, dinner discussions, labs and other special activities. The field trips might take students to the Chicago Board of Trade or to local coffee shops to study café culture. Freshmen enrolled in FRS 142 will visit local homes, in search of historical, social, artistic and environmental insights into what biology professor Anne Lubbers describes as “An American Obsession: The Lawn.”

The CentreTerm experience has brought a great deal of national attention to Centre. Last year, professor David Hall’s class, “Basketball as Religion” made national headlines. National Public Radio ran a four-minute segment on the course, Paul Harvey commented on it, and it was the subject of a nationally syndicated Associated Press story that ran in newspapers from coast to coast. Professor Ken Keffer’s class “The Art of Walking” was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education and was named one of the Top Ten Odd College Courses in Microsoft’s Encarta online encyclopedia.

It will be interesting to see which of this year’s offerings captures the media’s imagination. Will it be “French Comic Books” or “Indian Magic”? “Under the Influence” or “Stemcells, Cloning and You”? Stay tuned.

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

For news archives go to http://www.centre.edu/web/news/newsarchive.html.

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