CRC Annual Report
2017-2018
Coordinators: (fall) Matt Dang '17.5 and Julianna Bradley '17.5; (spring) Addy Schuetz 19.5 and Soyoon Kim '19
About Leavetaking
About 200 students take a leave every year.
In the fall, Julianna and Matt hosted a number of community-building events for returned leavetakers, and information sessions for prospective leave takers. These included a dinner for students returning from a leave and a series of lunches and writing workshops, to help ease the transition back to academics. The coordinators also endeavored to forge intentional and critical partnerships between CRC's leavetaking program and other campus centers such as the First-Generation Low-income (FLi) Center / First-Gens at Brown community, Office of Student Support Services, and others.
Fall 2017 programming culminated with a senior send-off for students completing their degree requirements in December 2017.
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As new coordinators, Addy and Soyoon continued to build on intentional partnerships initiated in prior semesters. They welcomed the students returning from a leave in spring 2018 with a dinner. In a similar vein with previous semesters, Addy and Soyoon hosted information sessions in a variety of locations, including at the FLi center to help meet the CRC's greater DIAP goals and actively commit to broadening accessibility to leavetaking information and processes.
During Fall Orientation, the CRC hosts an event for incoming first-years who took a gap year before staring college. Below are some of their stories:
Addy and Soyoon also collaborated with the Writing Center on writing workshops for returned leave takers, and they maintained active liaising relationships with the Office of Financial Aid, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), and Office of Student Support Services (OSSS). They continued the work of collecting stories from leavetakers past and present and are in the process of putting together a leave taker blog to launch in 2018-19. To wrap up the year, Addy and Soyoon sent off spring 2018 leavetakers with a meal and journal for students to record their reflections during their time away.
Gap Year Stories from Fall 2017
