At least in terms of paperwork, taking a leave of absence is much easier than studying abroad or even tackling the housing lottery. And scores of students are doing it each year, leaving College Hill for San Francisco, Spain and even Lebanon.
According to Executive Associate Dean of the College Robert Shaw, students take leaves of absence for a variety of reasons: They want to work or travel, they want to be closer to home, they want to study at another institution in order to access other course offerings or they simply want to take a break to reflect on their education. When they return, they often return better equipped to take advantage of what Brown has to offer.
About 156 students took personal leaves each year between 2000 and 2003, and another 42 per year took medical leaves, a total of 198 per year.
Christina DesVaux '05.5, a leave-taking co-coordinator at the Curricular Resource Center, has taken two separate leaves of absence during her time at Brown. The first time, after the fall of her freshman year, she spent three semesters studying at Whitworth College in Washington state, making sure before she left that all the courses she took there would transfer back to Brown for credit. The second time, after spending a semester back at Brown, she enrolled directly in the University of Santiago in Spain for a semester, forgoing a more formal study abroad program because she hadn't fulfilled Brown's language requirement.
"That time it was more about just living there, learning the language and not doing it for credit," she said.
DesVaux said the confusion and pressure surrounding leave-taking came from family and friends rather than from the University. "How easy the process is on an administrative level totally quelled my fears that I had just participated in something really destructive to my education," she said.
In order to take a leave of absence for personal reasons or to study at another institution, students simply need to file a leave-taking form, which involves checking off a single box and requires the signature of a dean. When they wish to re-enroll, students must notify the University by a firm deadline before the start of the semester.
The process is more complicated for taking emergency or medical leaves, which require the authorization of Health Services or Psychological Services and the Office of Student Life.
Students are not required to have a plan of action for their leave of absence approved by the administration - they can do whatever they want with their time away. "We encourage people to come in and talk to us about why they're doing this and what they plan on doing, but they don't have to," Shaw said.
Stefanie Simons '06.5, a Herald contributing writer who took a semester-long leave after the fall of her first year in order to work at a hip-hop fundraiser run by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said when she first received permission to take a leave of absence she "freaked out" because she had been expecting a much longer and more complicated process.
But ultimately, she said, "I really felt the need to be independent in leaving, so not having a lot of infrastructure was perfect for my sentiment of 'I can do whatever I want.'"
"You never need to explain why you want to take time off or prove that it's academic. They really trust that you've decided that it's a good idea for you and that you're self-directing," said Gretchen Peterson, program coordinator of the Curricular Resource and Academic Support Centers.
She said the purpose of the Resource Center, which she called "a bridge between students and University Hall," is not to "hand students a plan on a platter," but to facilitate the leave-taking process by helping "students to think about their ideas, and to think about how to actualize their ideas."
DesVaux said she views the simplicity with which students can take a leave of absence as one of the most progressive aspects of Brown. "Instead of feeling like you need to drop out, instead of feeling like there's something wrong with you, they say, let us show you this way to learn about learning outside the classroom," she said.
According to Shaw, the popularity of leave-taking among Brown students is one of the reasons Brown, though it has a very high six-year graduation rate, has a low four-year graduation rate relative to comparable institutions. He said that for the class entering the University in 1998, the four-year graduation rate was 83 percent and the six-year rate was 96 percent.
"The current practices are ones that encourage people to sometimes step out for a while and take a little longer to graduate," Shaw said.
When DesVaux went to discuss leave-taking with a dean for the first time, he was supportive of the idea, telling her, "We want you to want to be here," she said.
Mary Elston '07 took a yearlong leave of absence after the fall of her sophomore year in order to study Arabic in Morocco and Egypt and to teach English at a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
"One major reason I left was because I felt very apathetic academically. I realized that this is such an expensive and possibly wonderful education, and I just wasn't taking advantage of it," she said.
After taking time off, Elston's attitude towards her education changed. "Now I have a specific interest that I really care about, rather than just going through the motions and going to school," she said.
For many students, coming back to academic life at the University after taking a leave of absence is not a totally smooth transition. According to Simons, after her "productive and liberating" time away, returning to Brown was challenging.
"When I left school I supported myself, I lived with five 30- to 40-year-old men, and all my co-workers were older than me. My lifestyle was really different, so coming back to Brown, back to these very utopian spaces, was very difficult," she said. "The tradeoff was that it is a privilege to be here, to be this safe, to have this many levels of support."
Simons said her leave of absence gave her a new perspective on her education, making her somewhat more focused on preparing herself for the "real world."
"I was ready to feel like I'm a part of Brown, ready to get to know the system, ready to take advantage of things, only after leaving and realizing that the real world is scary. I thought: It's going to be awesome to come back to Brown and take whatever classes I want, but also to know that to be in the real world I need to take Econ 11 in order to know what's up. I need to take a (computer science) class to get a good job on that basic entry level."
Peterson said she thinks "Brown really greases the wheels" for students wishing to take a leave of absence because of a desire to maintain continuity with the New Curriculum philosophy. "The ideology is that learning can happen everywhere," she said.
And according to Shaw, "We believe that what we do is help people tie together diverse experiences to complete a good education, and that might mean taking time off sometimes."
