Business Institute, Portuguese, Italian courses will be available for students
This summer, students will be taking classes at USC a little differently.
Instead of studying in the designated Maymester, Summer I and Summer II periods as in previous years, students will choose from eight different overlapping terms ranging from a few days to nearly two months.
Welcome to Summer at Carolina.
The new program is designed to allow students to complete degrees “on your time.”
“You’ll hear President (Harris) Pastides saying that a lot,” said Helen Doerpinghaus, vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies.
Doerpinghaus said Pastides has led the effort to make summer classes more flexible for students so they will have more options for graduating early, taking the fall or spring semester off to complete an internship or working on grade forgiveness.
New programs for language and business are being launched along with the program. The Summer Language Institute allows students to earn 12 credits in either Italian or Portuguese — the equivalent of two years of study. Doerpinghaus said the programs have been popular and are quickly filling up.
“Portuguese is the language of Brazil, one of the countries that’s a huge force in South America, and students are interested in working there,” Doerpinghaus said. “This program allows us a chance to offer the skills they need.”
Doerpinghaus said the Italian program is also important, as it is in fairly high demand, though the Italian major was cut in 2010.
The Business Institute, designed for students not majoring in business, consists of two consecutive sessions and is already at full enrollment, according to Doerpinghaus.
“There’s been tremendous demand,” Doerpinghaus said. “It filled up in a few days.”
The program offers two management classes, an accounting class and an economics class over the two six-week sessions. A student who participates in both would have two-thirds of the work toward a business minor complete by the end of the summer.
But the new summer schedule isn’t just tailored to special programs. Doerpinghaus said more “lower division” and general education courses will be available, as well as select upper-level classes.
“We did a careful study to see what students wanted in summer school and what they didn’t,” Doerpinghaus said.
The study reached out to students who both had and had not taken summer classes previously with the aim of finding out what types of programs would attract the most people, Doerpinghaus said.
And while enrollment hasn’t closed for summer yet, Doerpinghaus said USC is “cautiously optimistic” about the program’s success, which would mean more students staying in or coming back to Columbia for the summer months.
“We expect we’ll do well,” Doerpinghaus said.