Tufts 1+4 Program supports gap year alternatives

The Tufts administration has promoted the new Tufts 1+4 Bridge-Year Service Learning Program a great deal over the past year. The program allows incoming students to take a gap year through the Tisch College to work in locations ranging from Santa Catarina, Brazil to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for one year before their next four at Tufts. Students engaged in the program will spend an entire year at their placements, learning about the cultures and sometimes the languages of the communities where they will live. This program is a material example of the Tisch College’s work to inform Tufts students’ lives as active citizens both at Tufts and around the world, welcome additions to the opportunities students have to learn and grow.

High school seniors with a yearning to see the world and make a change can find a rewarding experience by giving back to a community. At the same time, students who are unsure about jumping right into the career-building academic experience of a four year college can take that extra year to see and know a larger world. As a high school senior who may have never left his or her town before encountering life at college, engaging in a year’s worth of work in a very different place may provide a stepping stone between one phase of life and another.

Having a specific program that is marketed to incoming students may be important in its own right. Many students arguably do not even consider the prospect of taking a gap year. A student who could benefit from taking a gap year could be dissuaded from doing so because of the absence of a clear, well-reasoned option. By providing a menu of options, the university can offer uncertain students the tangible possibilities that make a gap year more conceivable.

Current undergraduate students will not be able to take advantage of this new program, but we as a student body would do well to inform each other and people considering Tufts of the possibilities included in the 1+4 Program. Gap years deserve more attention as an option for those who are privileged enough to have them. Students should rightly be excited and a bit jealous of the incoming students who can access this option to broaden even further the experience of being and learning at Tufts.