But while students point to the substantial coursework, Kolesar says that many faculty members feel that students are not working hard enough during Winter Study.

“The faculty have mixed feelings about it,” he says. “Many students don’t put as much effort into the Winter Study courses…it’s been discussed as to whether the courses should be graded.”

Similar lines of discussion have filled the administrative halls of the University of Virginia (UVA), where a non-mandatory January term will be implemented for the very first time this year.

UVA Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Edward L. Ayers and Vice Provost for Academic Programs Milton Adams, both big proponents of the program, said they just began working on the details last spring.

According to Dudley J. Doane, director of the Summer School and January Term, due to an immovable calendar system, the newly planned J-term will last from Jan. 3 to the 13, translating to approximately 40 total hours of class time.

And UVA’s program, the newest on the block, seems to have arisen under similar circumstances to the Harvard proposal. Doane said the idea for a January Term came from administrators as part of their curricular review.

Like the discussion of the proposed Harvard J-term, UVA’s program is designed to encourage students to go abroad and to allow for greater student flexibility. “We wanted to create…more opportunities for travel with faculty, and more interdisciplinary work, but there was little flexibility in our current schedule,” Ayers says.

—Staff writer Risheng Xu can be reached at xu4@fas.harvard.edu.