Tag: Winter Break

  • Nation & World

    Wonders of Wintersession

    Wintersession and Winter Break offer many chances to try out a new skill or return to a passion.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Applications for Winter Break grants

    Harvard University President Drew Faust today announced the opening of the 2013 Winter Break grant cycle for the President’s January Innovation Fund for Faculty. Proposals may be submitted online until Sept. 21.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    College touts success of Wintersession

    College officials are analyzing students’ Wintersession 2012 evaluations and say that the response to January’s programming was strongly positive. They credit the success of the optional period of student- and faculty-led activities to a focus on real-world knowledge and a greatly expanded schedule of offerings.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Designing in the human context

    For a week in January, 40 students from a variety of backgrounds — comparative literature to computer science — engaged in a “design thinking” workshop led by IDEO, an internationally renowned design consulting firm. Throughout, the human element was key — How do people actually use a product? — as was a certain amount of…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Students give homeless a break

    More than two dozen Harvard undergraduates returned to campus early this month to help provide meals and beds to guests at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter during Winter Break.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sounds of the Silk Road

    The Silk Road Ensemble concluded its January Harvard residence with a Learning From Performers concert featuring four newly commissioned works.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Writing, clear and simple

    Clarity and simplicity are frequent themes in the Harvard College Winter Writing Program, a two-week Winter Break seminar where undergraduate nonfiction writers learn from some of the country’s best authors, teachers, and journalists.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A winter wellness workout

    Dozens of Harvard undergraduates started the year with a new emphasis on wellness, thanks to the Optimal Health program. With presentations from a lifestyle medicine consultant, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a sleep specialist, and a stress manager, Optimal Health emphasized prevention and fitness.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Your grandparents’ Tea Party

    To conservatives, the Tea Partiers are patriots; to liberals, they’re a scourge on progress and civil society. Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, used different terms to describe the activists to undergraduates: grandma and grandpa.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A key to modernity

    Rummaging through worm-eaten layers of parchment at a monastery in southern Germany in 1417, the scribe Poggio Bracciolini discovered a poem titled “De Rerum Natura,” or “On the Nature of Things,” by the Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus. On that day, according to Professor Stephen Greenblatt, history swerved and modernity began.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Breaking away

    Harvard College officials applaud students who choose to spend Winter Break away from campus, where they can recharge and reconnect with loved ones. Officials say that the “nothing” that undergraduates often think they’re doing — sleeping, eating well, and tending to relationships — is actually vital for academic success, and for physical and mental health.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    In January, a learning smorgasbord

    Graduate students and others will be able to take part in January @ GSAS, a series of more than 80 workshops, seminars, and classes on topics that range from how to write fellowship proposals, to using online citation tools when conducting research, to social events such as film screenings and tours of Harvard museums.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Winter bounty

    As winter break approaches, College officials strongly encourage students to spend time away from campus and to reconnect with friends and family. But those hungry for something to do can return on Jan. 13 for Wintersession 2012, 10 days of innovative programming for students interested in exploring a creative passion, developing a new skill, or…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Faculty invited to seek January grants

    This summer, Harvard faculty may want to start thinking about proposals for the President’s January Innovation Fund for Faculty, which begins accepting new applications on Sept. 1. Launched last year, the fund provides grants to faculty across Harvard for the development and implementation of creative learning experiences for students during Winter Break.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A break with the past

    Harvard undergraduates and College administrators are looking back on winter break 2011 to evaluate the many new programs, and to ponder changes. One thing is already clear: winter break provided experiences not usually available to students during the semester.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Raising the bar on disaster relief

    One year after the deadly earthquake in Haiti, Harvard undergraduates and faculty from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are trying to develop a way to quickly provide shelter to victims of disasters. The Rapid Deployment Disaster Relief Shelter is one of a dozen initiatives funded by the new President’s January Innovation Fund for…

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The space in between

    Scores of Harvard undergraduates will participate in nearly 100 activities — from stand-up comedy to public service — during Harvard’s inaugural Optional Winter Activities Week (OWAW), Jan. 16-23. College officials say that OWAW is a response to the new academic calendar and to student interest in programming during the downtime between fall and spring semesters.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fellowship lands Harvard pair in Israel over break

    Harvard students Beth Brucker ’13 and Daniel Brandt ’12, along with more than 100 other student leaders from more than 60 universities across the United States and Canada, traveled over the holiday break to Israel to participate in the Hasbara Fellowships Israel Activism Training Program.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Winter Break recharge

    For many undergraduates, Winter Break (Dec. 22-Jan. 23) will be a welcome opportunity to recharge after the fall semester. At the same time, students looking for something to do between semesters will find plenty of exciting activities offered by Harvard and its alumni, on and off campus.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New January Innovation Fund Established

    Harvard President Drew Faust today (Sept. 10) announced the creation of the President’s January Innovation Fund for Faculty, a special venture fund to support the development and implementation of creative academic or co-curricular experiences for students during the January break period.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Break, but no vacation

    Harvard students volunteer for service projects overseas — targeting malnutrition and aiding literacy and athletics — during winter break.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Undergrads act up

    A new collaboration among the A.R.T. Institute, Harvard’s Office for the Arts, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club offers students an intense, three-week immersion program involving graduate-level training in the dramatic arts.

    5 minutes