Wofford’s faculty and students have returned to campus today to start the Interim. This year marks the 45th time that the college has devoted the month of January to these non-traditional projects. After nearly half a century, Interim is as much a part of Wofford’s culture as Main Building.
What was the first Interim like? I dug out the catalog for Interim 1968 to see what projects were offered in that first year. I was interested to see that the projects (we don’t call them courses!) were arranged by departments, with only a few at the end that were described as “multi-departmental.” It took until 1971 to break the practice of listing courses by department.
The 1968 catalog of projects did not list professors with projects, but a separate list indicated who was leading each project. Some professors proposed two projects, though they seemed to be directed-research-type projects.
Here are a few pages from the catalogue. These projects were sponsored by biologists, political scientists, historians, psychologists, and religion professors. I’ll make the whole catalogue available elsewhere. And, over the next few weeks, I’ll try to look at some other notable Interim projects.
