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Over a thousand sign up for Wintersession

USG’s pilot Wintersession program, which took place over Intersession, ended with 53 course offerings and over a thousand participants.

Students said they appreciated the opportunity to learn subjects outside of the pressure of grades and schoolwork, but students and instructors noted the attendance rate in classes was low and the variety of classes could have been improved upon.

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U-Councilor Laura Du ’14, the project leader for the Wintersession program, said the primary goal of the program was to provide an environment where students could explore various academic and non-academic fields of interests without much pressure.

The Wintersession program also brought together diverse members of the Princeton community, U-Council chair Elan Kugelmass ’14 noted. Kugelmass said 12 staff members, 42 undergraduate students and five graduate students participated as instructors, and 189 graduate students, six staff members and one faculty member signed up for at least one course.

The program attracted many more people than the organizers had expected, Du said. She explained that while the USG had originally estimated a target of 100 to 200 students and thought that to be ambitious, it was exciting to see the numbers climb past 200 and eventually reach over 1,000.

Wintersession went very smoothly considering it was the first time such a program took place on campus, Du explained. She added that the program was especially well run in terms of funding and scheduling. Funding for the Wintersession program was $7,745 in total, with roughly half spent on instructor compensation and the other half on the closing reception and seven individual courses.

“In terms of funding for the project, we did a very good job of keeping below our budget, which was estimated for a program of only 100 to 200 students,” Du noted.

Student instructors said they enjoyed the teaching experience as well as the opportunity to share their passion for fields that are not widely known on campus.

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Katie Dubbs ’14, who taught Intro to Sight Singing, said she enjoyed teaching such a diverse group of people.

“I wanted to teach this class because sight singing is one thing on campus that is not fully addressed or catered to in already existing groups. It's hard if you love music, but you don't want to do it at an intensive level,” Dubbs said.

Edgar Yu ’17, who took Ballroom Dance Camp, said he valued the opportunity to learn a skill that he always wanted to learn but had never had the opportunity to study elsewhere. Likewise, Poupae Sinsub ’17 said she appreciated the chance to take courses on subjects she was interested in but was too afraid to take as formal courses.

However, organizers, instructors and students all noted that there are still some areas that could be improved upon and expanded in the Wintersession program.

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Du suggested that the program website might need to be improved in the future and added that the USG would have liked to have had more funding and more people to help instructors.

Instructors and USG members also noted the low attendance rate. According to Kugelmass, the average course was only attended by 50 to 60 percent of registered students. Drew Wallace ’17 noted that only 25 out of 45 students who registered for his course actually showed up, and only 10 continued until the last session.

“You can’t make people go, but I’d like it if they [USG] said [to students], ‘If you signed up for a course, please actually go, or don’t sign up if you aren’t planning on going anymore,’ ” Wallace, theVideo Game Development instructor,said, “because my class was full, and there’s a good chance that other people wanted to take it but couldn’t.”

Students said that the variety of course offerings could also be improved. Sinsub said she registered for two courses but only went to one session for one course because the other course was too easy for her. She suggested that she would have preferred if some courses were offered at varying difficulty levels for students with different backgrounds and experiences.

Yu explained that he hoped there would be more sessions per course and that class sizes would be larger.

“I wanted to sign up for Archery, but it was filled up, and other classes like Finance and other popular classes filled up really quickly too,” he explained.

Both Du and Kugelmass said the USG is very enthusiastic about the Wintersession program and is willing to offer it again in the following years, although Kugelmass added there have been no formal plans yet.

“I think that we’re hoping this will be a long-standing Princeton tradition, so even though I won’t be here, we’re definitely going to make sure that within the USG team, we’re able to pass this on to future generations,” Du said.