What is Short Term?

Bates’ unique academic calendar: two semesters and a four-week spring Short Term (4-4-1)

Short Term at Bates — four weeks at the height of Maine’s spring, from late April through May — is a time for intense, focused work. You’ll live and breathe one class, and one class only. It’s an immersive experience, often off campus, and you’ll be a better student at the end of it.

This is what Short Term looks like

CMS S31 Sistine Chapel
A new course in 2025, Classical and Medieval Studies (CMS) S31 travels to Rome, and viewing the city’s 3000 years of continuous habitation as a palimpsest of layers, explores the ways in which the fabric of the city (walls, roads, ancient and modern buildings) record human history. Photo by Carly Philpott ’26
Short Term in Rome

In May of 2025 the Bates students and faculty in CMS S31 were on hand to witness a once in a generational event with the election of a new Pope at the Vatican.
Photo by Carly Philpott ’26

CMS S31
CMS S31 – Short Term 2025. Photo by Carly Philpott ’26

And this

DCS Short Term course

Becky Philips ’25 of San Francisco, Calif., stands beside a display for an interactive digital map tracing the history of downtown Lewiston’s Lisbon Street, 1850–1940.

The project, developed by students in the course “Public History in the Digital Age,” taught by Anelise Hanson Shrout, associate professor of digital and computational studies and history, made its soft launch in Pettengill Hall, where students presented their research and digital work to the campus community.

Short Term course
Anelise Hanson Shrout, associate professor of digital and computational studies and history with members of the May 2025 Short Term class “Public History in the Digital Age”

And this

Short Term 2025
Central European Theater and Film
Budapest, Hungary and Krakow, Poland

“A study of Hungarian and Polish history, theater and film since about 1945. Our focus is on the impact on theater and film of the cataclysmic social and political changes in Central Europe since the Hungarian uprisings of 1956.”

“To me, though, it is a testament to the immersive experience of this part of the Bates school year — at few other schools would I have had the opportunity to experience such new and valuable history in person while exploring the way the ancient layers of this eternal city have recorded human history. I am lucky, I am grateful, and I am awed to be here in Rome.” – Carly Philpott ’27

Past Short Terms have included:

  • geology field studies in Colorado
  • architectural visualization: past and future
  • English course on cinema and space
  • biomedicine and human rights in Chile
  • art and culture in Vietnam
  • Shakespeare in London
  • Short Term practicum: spies, special agents, and the presidency
  • the complex legacy of genocide in Rwanda internationally
  • modeling & data analysis in the physical sciences
  • the economics of Maine’s marine resources
  • ceramic tilework and design

New Courses Every Year

New for Short Term 2026
EDUC S24 Rural Education in Zambia
This Short Term course will explore aspects of education in Zambia, focusing on the rural area of Kaoma in the Western Province, an under-resourced province with a comparatively low Human Development Index based on income, educational opportunities, and life expectancy.