Five of the eight Justice Brandeis Semester programs originally offered for summer 2010 have been canceled due to alack of student enrollment and for administrative reasons, according to Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe. Jaffe said that each JBS summer program originally required the participation of eight students in order to occur but that all programs for which seven students signed up will still take place. The three programs that will run this summer are "Environmental Health and Justice,'' "Health and Society," and "Web Services and Mobile Applications." Jaffe wrote in his e-mail that approximately 30 to 35 students will take part in the three approved programs.

Fewer than seven students signed up for the "Beacon Hill Report,'' "Collaborative Theater and the Theatrical Essay," "Ethnographic Fieldwork" and "Inside Criminal Law programs," according to Jaffe. Consequently, these programs will not run this summer.

Another program, "The American Jewish Community," will not be launched this summer "due to administrative and logical complications," according to the JBS Web site. In an e-mail to the Justice, Jaffe explained that the curricula for the three courses that were to be offered as parts of the program could not be worked out. The JBS Web site states, "Brandeis will continue to explore innovative ways to make the resources of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program and the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies available to Brandeis undergraduates."

According to its Web site, a JBS is "an engaging, immersive academic program in which small groups of students explore a thematic topic through inquiry-based courses linked to real-world experiential opportunities." The Web site also states that a summer JBS program counts toward one of the seven semesters required for graduation, meaning that summer JBS students can graduate a semester early. The creation of a JBS was proposed by a subcommittee of the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering committee last year.

"A couple of [the JBS summer programs] had very few students, and so we made the decision to cancel them soon after the deadline. A couple of the others were closer, so we waited to see if they might drum up a few more customers before deciding it wasn't going to happen," Jaffe said.

Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences Elaine Wong said that the low student enrollment in the canceled programs can be attributed to the cost associated with participating in a summer JBS program. "I don't think those students are realizing that it does count for residency and it actually is less expensive. If you think of it as one of your seven semesters at Brandeis, it actually is a discounted semester." According to the JBS Web site, "The summer JBS program is projected to cost 75 percent of the fall 2010 semester tuition. It is estimated that tuition for the summer JBS program will be $14,636 with no fees."

"It shows that it was smart not to make [JBS] a mandatory program because students don't necessarily seem to be wanting to do it. . We also still don't know ... how it will affect the rest of [participating students' plans] whether they'll take the fall off, whether they'll take the spring off or graduate early, so we'll just have to keep studying it," Jaffe said.

Jaffe said that students will be systematically polled in the future in order to assess what kind of JBS summer programs should be offered. Wong said that Jaffe and Senior Vice President of Students and Enrollment Jean Eddy will also meet with the student and faculty members of the JBS committee in order to make "preliminary directional decisions" on whether to offer summer or academic year JBS programs.

"The whole fate of the program won't be decided on for a while because we want to run the pilot for not only this summer but see what it's like next summer to see if the interest is stronger next summer. . If the interest diminishes next summer that will be also telling of something else," Wong said.

Prof. Elizabeth Ferry (ANTH), who proposed "Ethnographic Fieldwork," wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that between five and seven people applied for the program but that it was "a little hard to calculate [the number of students who applied because] people were at different stages with the application."

Alex Huse '12, who registered for "Ethnographic Fieldwork," told the Justice that he was interested in the summer JBS because he wanted to learn how to conduct "ethnographic fieldwork in a structured hands-on way."

Huse said that he did not consider the program to be expensive, as he was considering taking a semester off, but that he could understand how the program would be expensive for students not following that plan.

"I think the bottom line is that it is a pilot year for the program, we learned much and will regroup and revise for next summer," wrote Prof. Adrianne Krstansky (THA), who proposed "Collaborative Theater and the Theatrical Essay."





-Miranda Neubauer contributed reporting.