J-Term

NYUAD’s J-Term courses are designed as two-week, intensive, and highly immersive learning experiences during January. They intensify student focus, offer site-specific fieldwork, and engage students deeply with the people and the places where they study.

Students focus exclusively on one subject while learning directly from the people, communities, environments, and institutions around them in over 25 countries. By immersing themselves in a place and a central question that location can uniquely help answer, they discover connections that are difficult to make from a distance. 

The result can transform how students understand a subject, the world around it, and ultimately themselves.

Fulfill Core Curriculum Requirements

All J-Term courses count in the NYUAD undergraduate curriculum within the Core Program as “J-Term Core Field Colloquia.” Students must take two J-Term Core Field Colloquia over four years, one course in Abu Dhabi and one course abroad.

During J-Term, the World Is Your Classroom

J-Term courses invite students to look up from their books to engage directly with the cities, people, and questions their classes explore.

Courses taught in Abu Dhabi use the UAE as a “real-world text.” Courses taught abroad are based in NYU’s distinctive Global Network of program sites, or fully taught in countries outside of the Global Network — such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Greece, India, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Rwanda, and South Africa.

World-renowned Faculty

Courses are taught by scholars, writers, artists, journalists, and policy analysts, who teach only during the J-Term, as well as distinguished professors from NYUAD, NYU New York, and other leading universities.

Although the J-Term is short, the intensity of shared experience between professors and students tends to foster an unusually strong bond that lasts long after J-Term ends.

J-Term Around the World