Baker University freshmen Bradley Feagans and Brad Newsom entered the school’s cafeteria last Friday knowing they were two credit hours closer to their eventual graduation.

The two took a one-week interterm genealogy class at the Baldwin City campus, which Erin Morris, associate professor of biology, offered Jan. 4 through Jan. 8.

“It was a fun class,” Newsom said. “We used ancestor.com to trace our ancestry. I found out I’m Irish, Scottish and German. My mom’s family did have one member who came over on the Mayflower.”

Newsom and Feagans, who said his Internet searches revealed he, too, was Irish and Scottish, said the two-credit hour class met for three-and-a-half hours a day for the week. Although Newsom said he wasn’t upset about not spending added winter-break time with his family in his hometown of Kinsley, he didn’t have much choice. All Baker freshmen are required to take interterm courses, he said.

That requirement is a longstanding tradition at Baker, Provost Brian Posler said. The tradition extends so far back, he’s not sure when it started.

“I know some of our faculty and alumni say it was in place in the 1960s,” he said. “Back in the day, students were required to take interterm classes every year.”

That requirement was trimmed back to three in the 1990s, and reduced to two about five years ago, a change that gave students the opportunity to spend more time at home during the break, Posler said. Students are not charged extra for interterm classes as the costs are included in their yearly tuition, he said. Although most classes are offered on a pass-fail basis, there a some letter-grade courses that allow students to improve their academic standings, he said.

Faculty members do get added compensation for teaching interterm classes.

With all Baker freshmen enrolled in interterm classes and upperclassmen fulfilling their requirements, there are usually 350 to 400 students taking courses during the winter break, Posler said. But they are not all on the Baldwin City campus.

“The travel courses are by far the most popular,” he said. “Students travel with faculty to destinations like Amsterdam, Spain and Mexico. Last year, one of the most interesting ones were internships with the Peach Bowl.”

Although the date of the tradition’s origin may be murky, its motivation is not. Posler said the classes offers instructors a chance to share their passions in areas of interest with students in subjects outside of the normal school catalog. That helps build the bonds between students and faculty that is a Baker point of pride, Posler said.

This year, interterm classes included one on the strategy of table-top games, a class on cheese that visited a processing plant in Alma, a geocaching course requiring students to visit area historical sites and the return of philosophy professor Don Hatcher’s fly-fishing class, Posler said.

It sounds like fun and games, but course curriculum provides academic lessons. Posler said, for example, Morris, a molecular plant geneticist, included the study of traits passed down through DNA in the genealogy class Feagans and Newsom took.

The two freshmen found the class had another rigorous requirement, which reflected the amount of material covered each day in the weeklong class.

“If you had one unexcused absence, you failed,” Feagans said.

This story has been edited to refer to the winter break classes using Baker’s “interterm” designation.