Nearly a semester into the College’s curricular review, professors charged with leading the undertaking gave their first public update yesterday, solidifying the priorities previously laid out by University President Lawrence H. Summers and other top deans while revealing at least one surprise—a proposal for a one-month January term.

In a letter to the community, the Curricular Review Steering Committee identified six main themes that will guide the review: internationalization, a focus on science, interdisciplinary study, faculty-student interaction, increased student research options and expanded undergraduate work with other University schools.

The mid-year report goes on to outline the long list of questions that four faculty committees have opted to tackle over the next semester, among them the question of the academic calendar.

According to the report, a committee that is examining pedagogy will consider the possibility of moving exams before winter break, a proposal in line with a push by Harvard administrators to synchronize schedules University-wide.

But the proposal mentioned in the report goes a step further, suggesting a “4-1-4” schedule that would add a one-month term in January “to create new opportunities for innovative instruction and student-faculty contact.”

A variety of colleges—especially New England liberal-arts schools—use a so-called “J-term” to offer students the chance to branch out from traditional curricular offerings.

Faculty and administrators said yesterday that the report merely outlines vague possibilities, of which the 4-1-4 plan is one.

“What we describe [here] is neither a detailed curricular structure nor a fully-developed philosophy to guide us in making proposals,” the report says. “We are not there yet.”

The report was made public late yesterday afternoon after it was reviewed by the Faculty Council—the 18-member body of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences that advises the dean and sets the agenda for Faculty meetings.

Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman, a member of the council, said that although the report was one of the council’s main agenda items today, there was little discussion or debate due to the document’s vagueness.

“There’s not a whole lot of substance in it,” Feldman said. “I didn’t sense any particular issue at this point, because there are no real proposals yet.”

The themes mentioned were also familiar ones, hewing closely to the “aspirations” that Summers sketched out in a Commencement address on undergraduate education last June.

Globalization of the curriculum, increased attention to science instruction and improved faculty-student interaction were all tenets of his address.

He has frequently harped on other themes, like encouraging interdisciplinary study and work between the University’s schools.

Members of the Steering Committee said the report’s six guiding themes were their own—emerging from internal discussions and feedback from the four committees, faculty and students.