Join a clinical therapist, urban educator, and bestselling author as he shows how to leverage the emerging science of purpose and belonging to help students and education professionals find meaning in school, work, and life. 

TIM KLEIN, LCSW is an award-winning urban educator, clinical therapist, teaching fellow at Harvard University, and lecturer at Boston College. He has worked intensively with marginalized students to equip them to pursue meaningful and fulfilling lives. Prior to his work at Boston College, he spent five years as the Outreach Director for Summer Search, a national youth development nonprofit serving historically underrepresented student populations. As an entrepreneur he helped launch a Stanford University education start-up that now serves over 30,000 students all over the world.  In addition to his work as a lecturer at Boston College, he works with schools, colleges, and companies all over the world to help them infuse their work with the science of purpose and belonging to help people thrive. 

Klein is the co-author of the bestselling book How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Navigating School, Career and Life.

General topics: PEDAGOGY, CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

Overview: You might have experienced the magic that happens when gap year participants start making things happen, saying things like, “I met a guy at the gas station who works in a soup kitchen, and we’d like to work there,” or “We all want to spend the next three days busking and trying to live off the money we make,” or “We met a fisherman and brought home dinner.” 

When it happens, participants come alive and feel empowered and start planning not only the rest of the program but their future lives. The staff are free to focus more on relationship and process rather than logistics. The buzz and inspiration is palpable. Everybody wants more of it. So the next year you build more participant improvisation into your program, and sometimes it totally falls flat. You beg the participants to take charge and they either can’t or don’t want to.

This session is a conversation about how to teach the skills, design the structures, and overcome the plethora of obstacles to creating the improvisational, self-directed magic in gap year programs.

Audience: Program providers

Speakers: Dev Carey, Director of the High Desert Center, and Blake Boles, author and Director of Unschool Adventures

General topics: CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, OUTREACH/MARKETING, RECRUITMENT

Overview: Do you want to expand your organization’s offerings? Is your spring enrollment consistently lower than your fall? Are you curious about current trends in the gap year space? This interactive 2-part presentation will address the gaps in the gap year space and help you assess if your organization wants to help fill them! First, accredited gap year consultants Julia Rogers and Jane Sarouhan will share the state of the gap year field (popular destinations and program models, average gap year budgets, post-pandemic gapper needs, etc.) Second, you will evaluate your organization’s resources and interests in exploring new second-semester programming to help meet our current gappers’ interests and holes in market offerings. You will leave this presentation with a better understanding of the current gap year landscape, and a new template program to share with your organization’s team.

Audience: Program providers

Speakers: Accredited Gap Year Consultants Jane Sarouhan of J2Guides and Julia Rogers of EnRoute Consulting. 

General topics: DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, ACCESS

Overview: Young people are increasingly identifying as neurodivergent and proud of that identity. Colleges, universities, and employers are taking notice and devoting resources and attention to this population. As these students make up a significant portion of today’s gappers, the gap year community must be intentional about including, supporting, and empowering them. They think outside the box, learn outside the box, and are perfect candidates for experiential learning. This session will explore why experiential learning, and internships in particular, are a beneficial vehicle for empowering young people who identify as neurodivergent, and how to include and accommodate these students in gap year programs.

Audience: Counselors/consultants, program providers, higher ed professionals

Speaker: Carolyn Jeppsen, Co-Founder & CEO/President of BroadFutures

General topics: DEIA, CURRICULUM DESIGN, HIGHER ED, CREDENTIALIZATION, 

Overview: Gap year experiences, formal and non-formal, provide exceptional skill development; HOWEVER, many youth don’t know how to translate their experience into a currency that employers, schools, and scholarship grantors use. CanGap and GYA have a tool that individuals, gap year programs, and post-secondary institutions can leverage! Consultants and programs can issue standardized digital badges to participants, backed by CanGap and GYA, thus validating competencies and adding credibility to both the program/consultant and the young person. Come explore what exists and discuss how we can grow the Student of Leadership & Humanity Award.

Audience: Counselors/consultants, program providers, higher ed professionals

Speaker: Michelle Dittmer, President & Co-founder of the Canadian Gap Year Association (CanGap)

General topics:  RECRUITMENT, ADMISSIONS, STANDARDS & ACCREDITATION, OUTREACH/MARKETING, ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Overview: Gap Year Consultants are a rare breed indeed! Join Accredited Gap Year Consultant and Ambassador to the GYA Board, Jason Sarouhan of J2Guides, for a lively discussion on who gap year consultants are, what they do, and how they can best support you and your program. Whether you are a veteran program director or a brand new admissions associate, gap year consultants can be tremendous allies in recruitment, student support, and programming development. Join the conversation to peek behind the curtain of how gap year consultants make their referrals, as well as to share your desires and feedback for how the Accredited Gap Year Consultants can best support your organization’s needs. This workshop will include: a presentation of a gap year counselor’s process when working with students, a dialogue with attendees on how consultants are most effectively working with programs, and reflective exercises on how to maximize your organization’s relationship with accredited consultants in the future. 

Audience: Program providers

Speaker: Accredited Gap Year Consultant Jason Sarouhan of J2Guides

General topics: BEHAVIORAL HEALTH, CURRICULUM DESIGN, RESEARCH

Overview: Mental health has increasingly become a major concern for adolescents and young adults, and it is projected to worsen. Why is this the case? What role can gap year experiences play in mitigating and potentially reversing this epidemic? We’ll explore the societal factors that are contributing to the mental health epidemic and explain how gap year experiences, by design, offer antidotes to these factors. We’ll offer suggestions on how gap year programs can take advantage of these antidotes to provide their participants with increased mental fitness.

Audience: Counselors/consultants, program providers

Speaker: Danny Recio, PhD, Co-founder of the Supportive Immersion Institute

General topics: ADVISING

Overview: Join Stephanie Hall, Associate Director of College Advising at Culver Academies, as she facilitates a discussion around the gap year option for high school counselors. Connect with other high school counselors around the trends they are seeing among their students, and how gap years can fit into their advising toolkits on their high school campuses.

Audience: High school counselors, gap year professionals interested in connecting with high school counselors

General topic: CLIMATE CHANGE, SUSTAINABILITY, PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

Overview: Climate Change is real. It’s the elephant in every room, not just for Generation Z, but for humanity. Our field has a lot to own up to when it comes to our impacts, though it may be that no program can honestly be carbon-negative given air travel alone. However, we can at least be honest that our greatest contributions are through student education and the long term benefits that can drive. This session will provide participants with facts, resources, and strategies to minimize the footprints of travelers and support the next generation (our students) to do the work we all know they’ll shoulder in the coming years and decades. Join the conversation if you’re curious about how to do the work of transitioning to a carbon-forward strategy and how to market that work. Students are on the horizon parched for this learning … and the ability to connect concepts to impacts, which is sort of our bread and butter.

Audience: Program providers, counselors/consultants, higher ed professionals

Speaker: Ethan Knight, Founder and first Executive Director of the Gap Year Association and Founder of Carpe Diem Education

General topics: DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, ACCESS

Overview: Carpe Mundi, the Dragons Fund, and Where There Be Dragons formed a partnership in 2021 with the intention of increasing access to gap year programming for underrepresented students. Thus far, this partnership has helped seven students to access Where There Be Dragons programming with full-ride scholarships that include mentorship support, and has provided substantial scholarships to two more students.

In this presentation, we’ll explore how this partnership formed, the lessons we’ve learned, and the value the partnership adds to our programs and the students we serve. By working together and leveraging various organizational strengths, this partnership is increasing access for more students. We want to serve as a model for the gap year field at large to pursue innovative methods of increasing access beyond traditional scholarships. 

Audience: Program providers, counselors/consultants

Speakers: Rachel Anderholder, Executive Director of Carpe Mundi, and Alex Biddle, Digital Marketing & Admissions Associate for Where There Be Dragons