News Collection

Winter Term

Oberlin provides a winter term each year to empower students to discover the value of self-directed education. Students may devise an individual project in collaboration with an Oberlin staff or faculty member, or participate in a group project that has been organized by Oberlin staff, faculty, or other students. These undertakings can happen on or off campus. The Office of Winter Term oversees these projects.

The central objective of this period is to continue the process of personal and academic discovery outside of the classroom.

Explore the on-campus experience

  • The Telephone Winter Term Opera

    This winter term, Oberlin Opera Theater presented two modern operas at the ’Sco: Strawberry Fields and The Telephone . In Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone (seen here), a man tries to propose to his...

  • Winter Term Science Research

    While many students complete their winter term projects off campus, some choose to remain in Oberlin. Of the approximately 855 students who are on campus this winter term, 78 are completing chemistry...

  • What are You Doing for Winter Term?

    Year after year, Obies like you undertake incredible winter term projects, and year after year, we in the Office of Communications love to share them. That’s why we’re asking you to send us your photos and links to other media or blogs to include in an Oberlin OnCampus photo gallery!

  • To the Home of Steel Pan

    Oberlin Steel, Oberlin's steel pan band, travels to Trinidad this winter term to study performance and playing techniques and absorb the culture and history of the country that created the steel pan.

  • Straight to the Source

    Richard Tran traveled throughout Ghana to shadow the makers of traditional and contemporary art forms.

  • A Feel for Therapy

    Double-degree student Matthew DiBiase combined his interests by shadowing music therapists and cognition researchers throughout New England.

  • We Are the Scientists

    Marie Lilly made personal and scientific discoveries while studying sea turtle behavior in Costa Rica.

  • A Job That's Actually Brain Surgery

    During winter term, pre-med student Kendra Lian shadowed surgeons at a hospital in China. In exchange, she helped doctors brush up on their English skills.

  • Oberlin Takes Manhattan... and Cleveland and San Francisco

    Two whirlwind networking tours. Ten days with theater and performing arts alumni in New York. A month with business and finance alumni in three cities. A small investment, big dreams realized. This is how Oberlin does intensive.