May Term at McMurry University is a special one-month semester which allows students to immerse themselves in a single, intensive, non-traditional academic experience. In May of 2006, eighteen McMurry students studied Religion and the American Revolution, team-taught by Dr. Bob Wettemann of the History Department and Dr. John Miller of the Department of Religion. The class culminated in a week-long tour of historic and religious sites in the Boston area, with an optional free evening (for the truly fanatical) at a Boston Red Sox game.
The trip, in the words of the local populace, was “wicked awesome.” After eight days of intensive study on the origins of religion in America and the events leading up to the American Revolution under the leadership of professors Wettemann and Miller, the class set forth for one of the nation’s oldest cities, where it took in all the sights — religious, historical, and otherwise.
Included on the itinerary were the Boston Common; Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party sites; Paul Revere’s Home; Christ Church (better known as Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung for Paul Revere – one if by land, two if by sea); and a number of cemeteries that are the final resting places for such notables as John Winthrop, John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, the victims of the Boston Massacre, and Puritan leaders Increase and Cotton Mather.
 Side trips included Lexington and Concord, the Battle Road, Bunker Hill, the U.S.S. Constitution (Old Ironsides), Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower II, Plimouth Plantation, and Fenway Park.
Dr. Miller and Dr. Wettemann discuss what to do next. To find out what they did do, click here for the course syllabus (in PDF format).
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History and Biology of Whaling
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 For the May 2007 semester, Wettemann teamed up with Dr. Joel Brant of the Biology Department for a repeat visit to the Boston area to study the early American whaling industry.
The course, “History and Biology of Whaling,” quickly became known among the students as “Whales and Sails.” Highlights of the eight-day trip included a visit to Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut, to see the world’s only extant wooden whaling vessel; a stop at New Bedford, Massachusetts and the Seaman’s Bethel, the setting for chapters 7, 8 and 9 of Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby Dick; and time below deck on the U.S.S. Constitution, including touring the captain’s cabin, the bread room, and the powder magazine (areas normally off-limits to tourists). The trip culminated in a visit to the Stellwagen banks, where the class saw humpback, fin, and minke whales, as well as a pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins.
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