by Marlena Chertock, November 4, 2010
Before starting college, junior Sophie Nielsen-Kolding wanted to find herself. She participated in a gap semester program in Copenhagen in 2008, to go back to her Danish roots.
Gap programs, a break between high school graduation and college, are part of an expanding industry.
There are countless websites that offer services for domestic and international programs, language immersion programs, service or volunteer opportunities, opportunities to teach English abroad and other programs. The university is working to have an Elon gap semester program in place by fall 2012.
“The strategic plan, the Elon Commitment, calls for innovative graduate and undergraduate programs,” said Susan Klopman, vice president of Admissions. “This is the charge.”
Klopman is working together with Woody Pelton, dean of International Programs, and Smith Jackson, vice president and dean of Student Life, on this part of the strategic plan.
But Nielsen-Kolding said she is a bit apprehensive of a gap semester program specific to Elon.
She said she thinks these types of programs should be personal.
“(If you do the Elon gap program,) you might as well be doing another year at Elon,” she said. “The gap semester or year is about independence, responsibility, maturity.”
She said taking time off from school should be filled with something a student really finds meaningful, something personal. For her, it was a search of where she came from, she said.
Klopman said there are usually five to seven students every year who defer admission for a gap program.
“They design their own program,” she said. “We ask them to submit their plan for the year and based on that we decide whether there’s a deferral.”
The Elon gap semester program would make this more formal, according to Klopman.
“It would enable us, as a university, to embrace the whole notion of deferred admission and it would give us the opportunity to have additional students come into the university,” she said.
Pelton said there’s nothing automatic about being ready for college after high school.
“So (a gap semester program) is a way for students to pause before they enter their formal, full courseload towards the bachelor’s program,” Klopman said. “Many cultures make provisions for this.”
The Elon gap semester program would be open to students who were waitlisted and couldn’t gain admission in the fall, Klopman said. She said there could also be room for them in the spring.
This year is the first time admissions has allowed students to be admitted in spring 2011 and Klopman said there might be 25 to 30 students coming in, compared with the usual six.
“We offered spring admission to waitlisted students in order to build enrollment in spring semester,” she said. “And to acknowledge the fact that more and more students want to attend Elon, so are there other times that we can make that work.”
Pelton gave another reason for the gap program.
“When we tell students you’re admitted but not until spring, the students and parents wonder what to do now,” he said. “(The Elon gap semester program) is a way to answer that question. When they arrive in February, they arrive with credits and already had an opportunity to become part of Elon culture, even if it’s away from campus.”
Klopman said she doesn’t see the gap semester program as an option for students admitted to the fall semester and has talked to other universities about how they structure gap programs.
“One of the cautions that they had raised was if you admit somebody for fall, that’s their option,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll never know what your freshman class is. Our first goal is to fill the fall semester freshman or first year class, so students who are admitted to that either stick to that or they are going to have to have a very special, compelling reason why they would defer.”
The university is looking into locations for a gap program where there are established study abroad programs.
“Our conversations so far have led us to (want to) offer a number of ideas,” Klopman said. “From affiliating with established programs, like the group that supports our London semester. They could manage a program for us, for these students. We’re thinking about an international semester.”
Pelton said they are also looking into the Costa Rica Elon Centre as another option.
“We’d only go with a provider if we could control the courses being offered and make it an Elon-based program as opposed to a provider-based program,” Pelton said. “If we just directed students to other programs, they wouldn’t feel like they were an Elon student.”
Klopman said that any coursework that students do with the Elon gap program would be transferable to Elon credits. It becomes less definite when students want to participate in a gap program that is not affiliated with the university, she said.
“If it’s an emersion experience there probably isn’t any formal study,” she said. “There probably wouldn’t be any credit. We’ll approve it because (we) know the value of it. But to say it substitutes as an Elon course, that would probably not happen.”
Klopman said the Elon gap semester program would have a series of experiences during the fall.
“My ideal gap program would bring students to Elon in August, before school starts, for an orientation,” she said. “Then off they’d go for the semester. It could be a combination of either international experience, leadership experience, National Outdoor Leadership Service, big city experience that could include internships, that kind of thing.”
Klopman said she envisions bringing the students who participated in this program back to Elon for Winter Term.
“They could spend a part of the day with the typical Elon-orientation experiences,” she said. “A concentrated Elon 101, and then spring semester they’re launched.”
For her gap semester, Nielsen-Kolding lived with international students in Denmark. Although she didn’t speak the language fluently, she took a course focused around food, she said.
“It was a daily frustration of I can’t tell people what I’m trying to say, and everybody’s in college, why am I here,” Nielsen-Kolding said. “But it was a fantastic experience, and I totally learned how to take care of myself.”