Due to winter session’s compressed format (four weeks) enrollment is limited to a maximum of 4.5 credits. However, highly motivated and academically strong students can request permission to enroll in more than the designated winter course load limit.

Strong candidates for approval will answer YES to the following questions: 

1. Do I have a GPA of 3.5 or above?
2. Do I have a proven track record of taking 18+ credits during the semester while maintaining a high GPA?
3. Have I clearly stated my reason for requesting Excess Credits?
4. Has my advisor provided recommendations/comments in the appropriate section?
5. Have I satisfied any Incompletes from the previous semester?
6. If I am allowed to take these Excess Credits, will it enable me to complete all requirements for my degree this semester?

To Request Permission:

1. Download an Enroll for Excess Credit form.
2. Consult with your academic advisor and have them sign your form.
3. Email the completed/signed form to the Office of Academic and Pre-Professional Advising at arc@umbc.edu

Please allow at least one week for review. Decisions are sent to the email provided on your request. If your request is approved, your maximum credit limit will be increased in the registration system and you will be instructed to add the overload course(s).

Enroll for Excess Credit Form

Are You A Visiting Student?

UMBC welcomes students from other colleges and universities who want to earn transferable credits during winter session. Visiting student must also submit an Enroll for Excess Credit Form if you plan to take more than 4.5 credits.. However, you must first be admitted to UMBC as a visiting student before you can register for classes. The deadline to apply for Winter Session 2019 is December 19, 2018.

Once you have been accepted, create your myUMBC account, using your UMBC campus ID number. This is where you will be able to enroll in classes.

“We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‘We, the people.'” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

More than 200 years after it was written, the U.S. Constitution remains the legal backbone of this country. First penned in 1787 (and later amended 27 times), the Constitution governs both federal and state level laws, and its original legal intent is often the topic of debate. 

When Colin Kaepernick expressed his 1st amendment right to freedom of expression and knelt to protest the social injustices facing African Americans in the U.S., it is all anyone could talk about. The debates flooded our news feeds and social media timelines. Was this disrespectful? Was this appropriate? But there was one thing most people could agree on – Kaepernick had the Constitutional right to peacefully protest in any way he deemed appropriate.

HIST 423 – Creating the Constitution explores the creation of the federal Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights, and examines the many crises that the Constitution was designed to solve. Students in the course will also investigate the politics behind the constitutional convention and the contest between the two opposing political movements of that time: Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

HIST 423 is a fully online course and offers Social Science GEP credit. It is recommended but not required that students enrolling in this course will have taken HIST 101. 

Get to know the Instructor:

Terry Bouton is a distinguished author and associate professor of History at UMBC. He is also the 2012-2015 Presidential Teaching Professor as well as a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians(OAH). Professor Bouton has taught courses on the American Revolution, the Early National Period and the Atlantic Revolutions of the late-18th to mid-19th century. Professor Bouton won the 2008 Philip S. Klein Book Prize as well as earned an Honorable Mention for the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award for his first book titled: Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution(Oxford, 2007). He is currently working on a new book titled: “Foreign Founders: How European Financiers Helped Write the Constitution” which explores how the nation’s pillar has been influenced by foreign investors.

“Magic’s about understanding – and then manipulating – how viewers digest the sensory information.” – Teller

Long before David Copperfield, Harry Potter, and Gandolf, there was Magic and Witchcraft in the Ancient World.

This January, ANCS 350 offers you the chance to explore the ancient Greek and Roman roots of modern supernatural/paranormal legends (demons, ghosts, vampires, and werewolves) and discover how those in Ancient Mediterranean used magic to protect themselves from supernatural attacks.  

Examine age-old uses of daily practical magic and curses, as well as how astrology, dream-interpretation, and fortune telling contributed to the development of medicine and philosophy.

You’ll even have the opportunity to create your own curse tablet and a baked-clay amulet!

ANCS 350 is a hybrid course that combines online discussion/writing with in-class lectures and activities.

Register October 22 – January 2.

Get to know the Instructor:

Dr. Molly Jones-Lewis is a social and cultural historian of ancient medicine. She received her Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Swarthmore College in 2003, and earned her Masters in 2006 and her Ph.D in 2009, from The Ohio State University. Her research is oriented around the ways in which doctors and medical theories functioned in the Roman Empire. Some of her ongoing projects focus on theories of ethnicity, the doctor in Roman law and the making and popularization of Eunuchs in Rome. In her spare time, Dr. Jones-Lewis loves to knit, spin yarn, play a baroque recorder as well as spoil her cats.

“I think it is the responsibility of anyone involved in politics to always think of what Japan can do to contribute more to the peace and stability not just of Japan and the region but of the entire world.”

– Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

HIST 459 – Japan Since 1800 begins with the tumultuous end of the Japan’s last shogunate, which was followed by an era–the Meiji period–where the country’s leaders made studied efforts to modernize (and at times, westernize) the once insular nation. What emerged by the first decade of the 20th century was a Japan that was primed to compete on the international scene. The rest of our course will explore Japan’s involvement in the two world wars, its occupation by MacArthur and the U.S. forces, its astounding economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s (and subsequent recession), and finally its internationally renowned popular culture.

HIST 459 fulfills the Culture and Social Sciences GEP credits, as well as the upper level non-western history requirement for History majors. HIST 459 meets TuWeTh 1 – 4:10 p.m. on the UMBC-Shady Grove campus during UMBC Summer Session II. 

HIST 103 or an equivalent East Asian Civilizations class is helpful before taking HIST 459.

View Course

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HIST 459 is taught by Professor Julie Oakes, who received her PhD from the University of Chicago. She published in Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from the Treaty Ports to World War II in 2008.

The summer after graduating high school, I was ready to take on college. But I knew that college would bring a whole slew of new problems, from making friends to really hard classes, and the possibilities of things that could go wrong seemed endless. I had some AP credits transferring, so I knew I would be okay credit-wise, but what I really wanted to do was to spend some time on campus. What better way to dip my foot into the big pool than to take some summer courses? I looked at all of the classes UMBC offered, and decided to start the summer with a stretch and a course in my very own major. I enrolled in Media and Communications 101 and Yoga.

My first day of college was sunny and hot, with the sun ablaze above my head as I stepped out of the car and onto UMBC’s campus. I was nervous about whether I would find the classroom, and whether the teacher would like me. But, it turns out, my professor was wonderful, the class size was small and I was able to really shine. Yoga was a similar experience. The second half of the summer, twice a week I headed over to the RAC to increase my flexibility, and get a general education requirement out of the way through meditation (during which I had the habit of falling asleep).

Throughout the first semester of the summer, I got to know my professor in my class of only about 9 students. I had more time to participate in class and I could share my thoughts with the class, engaging in conversations about the theories behind social media, technology and media. I completed projects like making a whole magazine on my own, and learned about press releases and the definitions of terms like “digital natives” and “digital immigrants.” In the meantime, I was getting to know the campus, eating at Commons and making new friends.

Feeling at home, I switched gears into Yoga at the RAC. I began, nervously in yoga pants with my mat in hand. I handed my Red Card to the desk staffer for the very first time, and wandered down the empty hall with the ellipticals and treadmills on the left-hand side. The instructor, a Health Administration and Policy professor, was kind and encouraged us to take our time, learning each new move slowly and carefully, so as to avoid hurting ourselves.

The classes gave me the opportunity to explore UMBC before the rush and pressures of my first semester, and I believe it’s helped me adjust better to the “college experience,” as it kept it more gradual. Since then, I’ve also taken a course during my first winter break. If you want to get ahead, keep your mind engaged over breaks and stay on track for graduation, check out UMBC’s wide variety of summer and winter classes online.

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Anjali DasSarma has been an intern at the Division of Professional Studies since January of 2018. She is a sophomore Media and Communication Studies major with a minor in Journalism. She is also a Humanities Scholar and an Honors College student at UMBC.

To learn more about UMBC Summer Session, please visit summer.umbc.edu.