Access, Opportunity, and What's Ahead for JMU Summer Session

The James Madison University summer session allows students to explore short-term courses within and outside their academic major and/or minor. Some of the reasons a student may enroll in summer session include: 

• Accelerating the degree to decrease time to graduation

• Obtaining additional credits 

• Building life skills by taking courses that enhance their skills 

• Experimenting with another major 

• Spreading out coursework to decrease the academic load during the regular semester 

Summer session courses are offered in various lengths, ranging from one-week to 12-week sessions. Most courses are online, but there are a limited number of on-campus options available. Students enroll in summer session at the same time as enrollment for fall courses. They should speak with their academic advisors to receive guidance on summer course enrollment and to determine if summer session would be beneficial. The enrollment process is the same as it is for the regular academic term; however, summer session course enrollment is billed separately. Students can obtain summer session enrollment dates on the Office of the Registrar’s Academic Calendar website, or at https://www.jmu.edu/registrar/students/summer_enroll_time.shtml. 
 
Over the past few years, the focus of the summer session has adapted to the changing needs of JMU students. During COVID, all summer session courses were offered online to help students enroll in courses required to stay on track for degree and graduation requirements. This online effort was continued after COVID to help students impacted by COVID make regular academic progress toward graduation requirements. Understanding that we could make summer session courses more accessible with the presence of increased online course offerings, there has been a focus on delivering most summer session courses in an online format where possible. We continue to use data from academic departments and the Summer Session Student Experience Survey to make ongoing program changes that meet our students’ needs. 

For the past two years, we have worked to improve our summer session marketing strategy by collaborating with the JMU University Marketing and Branding department. This department has been instrumental in helping the summer session committee create a vision for summer session and focus on strategic marketing to reach a broader student population. The goal is to create a summer session that offers coursework to address the needs of our current student population. For the future, we plan to increase the number and diversity of course offerings that will expand our reach into Harrisonburg, surrounding communities, and non-JMU students wishing to take courses during the summer break.  

The Student Academic Success team is mostly involved indirectly with summer session. For example, those in advising administration provide information to their advising units about summer session and the advantages for the students they advise. Moving forward, I would like to see more intentional collaborations. For example, we could work with the Student Success Data Analytics team to build a model that predicts which students would benefit from summer session attendance based on certain personal and academic characteristics they disclose on the ISSAQ and other assessments, or those receiving early alert warnings each semester. In addition, working with Pre-Professional Health Advising to determine science and math courses that students in those minors may need that are in high demand during the regular semester. We have begun this discussion and will continue with these collaborations within Student Academic Success. 

Overall, we are having tremendous success with the summer session program. Enrollment is robust. However, we will continue to think about ways we can provide more and different courses that address the needs of JMU students and the surrounding Harrisonburg Community.