As registration comes to a close for the spring 2005 semester, many students find that the courses they need are full.

In these cases, students can find an answer to their setback by signing up for a Winterim course.

Senior Mike Carroll said he signed up for a Winterim course to help him graduate on time.

“It gets three credits out of the way early,” he said. “It will make my last semester easier, too.”

Students like Carroll will find benefits to taking a Winterim course and keeping graduation on schedule, said Jan Morse, administrative officer for Academic Affairs.

“The benefits are great,” she said. “Students who have fallen behind can catch up, and high-demand classes students have trouble getting into are more available.”

Morse said other benefits include more relaxed interactions with professors and smaller class sizes.

Professor Eric Jamelske, who is teaching microeconomics over Winterim, said he feels the small class sizes are the biggest benefit.

“You get a chance to know the students very quickly and work intensively with them,” he said.

Jamelske said many students come ready to work on a regular basis, knowing it will be a lot of work in a small time period.

“They seem to be more motivated to work hard and focus,” he said.

Jamelske said although there are advantages to taking a Winterim course, there also are challenges students face.

He said the biggest challenge is the time aspect. With the quick pace of a Winterim course, he said, he worries students aren’t retaining the information.

“They don’t really get time to digest everything,” Jamelske said. “They have to take in the information, be tested on it and then move on.

“You really have to treat one day as a week. Whatever you learn over a week is actually having to be learned in just one day. It’s very overwhelming, and I wonder if students are just substituting actual learning with cramming.”

Senior Greta Wagner took a Winterim course last winter and said the short time was the one disadvantage she found.

“You cannot fall behind, because you have a test every couple days, so you cannot get behind on your work,” she said. “It was a lot of info to take in at one time, and you couldn’t let it sink in. You had to learn it and move on right away.”

However, Wagner said, she did find taking a Winterim course to be beneficial.

“It’s really nice to only have to focus on one class instead of five,” she said. “(The professors) really focused on you, and you had all the time in the world to stay after class and get all the help you need.”

Morse said while more juniors and seniors take Winterim courses rather than freshmen and sophomores, more sophomores are signed up this year.

“Students that are getting closer to graduation seem to take Winterim courses in order to graduate sooner,” she said, “but more sophomores are starting to understand the value in taking a Winterim course and take the opportunity early on.”

Morse said there have been additional sections added for courses in high demand.

“We’ve had two or three extra sections in certain departments, but this year, we have four extra sections,” she said, “and all four sections are full.”

She said communication and journalism, economics, math and psychology classes seem to be the Winterim courses highest in demand.

If students are interested in taking a Winterim course, it’s not too late, Morse said.

Winterim will run from Jan. 3 to Jan. 21 and offers more than 60 classroom courses and five Web-based courses.

Morse said the program, originally suggested by students, has come a long way since its inception in 1996.

In that year, she said, there were 325 students enrolled, and last year, the number grew to 1,341.

Morse said she is pleased with how the program has been going over the years.

“It’s been very successful and beneficial,” she said, “and we hope for continuing success in the future.”