Committee gives green light to bridge-year program

The University’s “bridge year” program, originally proposed in February, has been given the green light by the working group appointed to study its feasibility.

The new offering will enable students to defer matriculation for a year to participate in community service abroad either through University-affiliated programs such as Princeton-in-Asia or through other established service organizations that meet the University’s criteria.

The committee — a 14-person body made up of students, faculty and staff convened by President Tilghman — identified several wide-reaching goals for the program, including preparing students for life in an increasingly globalized world, working group and comparative literature department chair Sandra Bermann said.

“[The program] should challenge the students to begin to understand cultures other than their own, to think in new ways, gain maturity and begin a life in which service to others is an important ingredient,” Bermann said. “It should also affect life here on the Princeton campus, as students who have this experience give serious thought to their academic and extracurricular priorities here.”

Though the details of the gap year are still being hashed out, she explained that program offerings could include teaching English, improving water quality and providing health education in developing countries. The University will partner with organizations with a background in international service programs to more fully develop the program, and exact locations will be determined at a later date.

Karolina Brook ’10, a member of the working group, said that the age of prospective participants played a role in her recommendations regarding the type of opportunities the program would offer.

“While it would be wonderful for students to treat people with malaria in third-world countries, it needs to be realized that these are 18-year-olds just coming from high school,” Brook said. “We wanted to explore types of community service that would be, perhaps, better suited to someone of that age ... This is why we largely discussed volunteering in hospitals or clinics, schools, [or] environmental or technological grassroots organizations.”

Bermann stressed that projects would involve hard work and would minimize any disruption to local communities where students were volunteering.

“We want the program to be serious community service for the students and much attention will be given to this — and to the benefits desired by the community members as well,” she explained.

Bermann also noted that she thought the international focus of the program was important, even though there is a need for domestic volunteerism as well.

“There are currently rather few service opportunities abroad for young people,” she said. “We hope our students will take this opportunity to get some deep knowledge of another culture by living in it, working in it and learning of its often very different challenges.”

Brook explained that the bridge year should be an addition to students’ current involvement in community service on campus.

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“One of the most important points we wanted to underline was that the bridge year should not take away from any other community service a participant would want to engage in,” she said. “There is no reason for [bridge year participants] not to participate in the numerous domestic community service opportunities available through Community Action, Pace or SVC.”

In 2009, a pilot bridge year will be open to about 20 students. Selection criteria will ultimately be determined by a yet-to-be-named director of the program but “would not be a matter of the usual academic grades and test scores,” Bermann said.

Admission will be open to both U.S. citizens and international students without regard to their ability to pay for the program.

“[The small size of the pilot] might initially exclude hopeful and deserving participants,” Brook said, adding that the program will expand in the future.