The Experienced Counselors at The Center for Interim Programs

The Center for Interim Programs Counselors:

Holly Bull, President (Princeton, NJ office)
Joanna Lazarek, Vice-President (Cambridge, MA office)
Kate Warren, Director of Research (Princeton, NJ office)
Cornelius Bull, In Memoriam

All our counselors have over ten years of gap-year counseling experience.
Between us, we have visited almost every continent in the world during our annual program site visits.
Holly Bull is the only gap-year counselor in the United States who combines the personal experience of her own two gap years with twenty years of professional experience solely focused on gap-year counseling.

Holly Bull

Holly Bull, President
(Princeton, NJ office)

Experience

The Center for Interim Programs LLC

The Center for Interim Programs:

ITHAKA Cultural Study Programs in Greece

The Center for Interim Programs.

Interim Programs Attended

Tracking/Survival School:

Cetacean Research:

Social Service Work:

Academic/Cultural Study:

Dude Ranch Work:

Academic/Cultural Study:

Aquaculture Internship:

Education

Holly Bull, president of The Center for Interim Programs LLC, is one of the original Interim students. When her father, Cornelius Bull, pioneered The Center for Interim Programs in 1980, Holly took an Interim Gap Year before college to follow up on her interests in marine biology and Greece. In the fall of her year, she volunteered at an aquaculture research institute in Hawaii; in the spring, she attended an academic cultural study program in Greece. Hawaii made her realize she did not want to be a marine biologist (useful to know before potentially majoring in that field in college) and Greece gave her the rare experience of fully integrating formal study with the culture around her. She came away appreciating learning for its own sake without the pressure of tests and grades.

After two years at the University of Virginia, Holly took a second Interim Gap Year to travel in India and Nepal, attend a semester program in Greece, and finish up with service work in Appalachia. Following her B.A. in Anthropology at UVA in 1986, she joined her father in his work in Interim and began counseling students through their own gap-year experiences. For two years, she also directed the U.S. office for the first program she attended in Greece. In 1994, Holly completed her Masters in Education at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and continued her counseling work at Interim, interspersed with travel to visit programs in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Europe and Turkey. She spent eight years of her childhood abroad in Turkey and Austria and speaks a smattering of French, German, Spanish, and Greek. To date, Holly has placed over a thousand individuals in programs in the 20+ years that she has been counseling people through the Interim process.

Joanna Lazarek, Vice President
(Cambridge, MA office)

Experience

The Center for Interim Programs LLC

The Center for Interim Programs

Personal and Professional Travel

Education

Joanna Lazarek became interested early in her life in travel and experiential education. She volunteered at the local aquarium in junior high school, attended a vocational agriculture high school and did an educational tour to England in her junior year. Like many Interim students, Joanna was an avid learner but an unmotivated student, yet when given the option to work before going to college, she refused with the protest "all of my friends are going to school!" After one semester on the dean's list at the University of Connecticut, she spent the rest of her freshman and sophomore years on academic probation. Her parents finally pulled the financial plug and Joanna left college to establish her independence and work her way back to school. After two years of working and taking part-time classes, she returned to the University of Connecticut a more mature, independent and motivated student, and earned her BA in art history. She pursued her interest in cultural immersion by living in Florence, Italy in her junior year, studying Italian language and history.

To further her goal of reaching out to high school students for whom school was difficult, Joanna joined the graduate program in education at the University of New Haven, and interned in a high school special education department. After earning her MS in education, she decided to combine her love of travel with her desire to encourage young people to learn about the world through hands-on experience. She began by working as a tour consultant at EF Educational Tours, and then continued this work in a much broader vein at The Center for Interim Programs. She has satisfied her passion for travel evaluating gap-year programs for Interim in Hawaii, Italy, Fiji, New Zealand, India, Nepal, Ghana, and South Africa, and attending a Spanish language program in Bolivia. She has also toured Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Turkey, Morocco and Mexico.

Joanna has been able to use her experiences and education to help hundreds of young people to experience the world hands-on, find a passion, reignite their interest in learning, and build up the maturity, independence and motivation to get the most out of their education.

Kate Warren, Director of Research
(Princeton, NJ office)

Experience

The Center for Interim Programs LLC

The Center for Interim Programs

Civic Involvement

Personal and Professional Travel

Education

Kate Warren has complemented her professional life with many civic volunteer positions and her passion for music. She is a member of the Board of Directors of her local housing authority and serves to ensure safe, affordable housing to low-income individuals and families. She is currently co-chair of the local juvenile justice conference committee, a division of the family division of the superior court whose primary goal is to get juvenile offenders back on track. She is a life member of both the NJ State Firemen Ladies Auxiliary and the Mercer County Firemen Ladies Auxiliary, and currently serves as President of her local auxiliary. Kate is politically active, having run for public office on several occasions. And, in addition to being a member of several choral groups, she has fulfilled a lifelong ambition to perform at Carnegie Hall.

Since joining Interim, Kate has visited and participated in several gap year programs to learn, first-hand, what Interim students encounter during a gap year. She spent several weeks engaged in a political internship in the western US and participated in a life skills and nature leadership school in Canada. She visited a southwest US "arcology" experiment focused on alternative methods of urban development, and also an archaeological research and education center focused on the demographics and migrations of Puebloan peoples. She spent a day as a blacksmith student in Colorado and observed students engaged in a hands-on gunsmith course.

Kate's colleagues have dubbed her a "super sleuth" in recognition of her steadfast quest to locate new experiential learning opportunities worldwide. Her willingness to let no stone go unturned has resulted in the addition of myriad new program options for Interim students to consider. She genuinely delights in matching students' interest with just the right program as they launch on a journey of self-exploration and personal growth.

Neil Bull

Cornelius H. Bull, In Memoriam
(Princeton, NJ and Cambridge, MA offices)

Experience
Consultant - The Center for Interim Programs LLC 2003 - 2004
Founder & President - The Center for Interim Programs 1980 - 2003
Director of Development - Salzburg Seminar, Salzburg, Austria, 1982 - 1985
Director of Development - Sterling Institute, Craftsbury Common, VT, 1980 - 1984
Headmaster - St. Mary's Hall, San Antonio, Texas, 1976 - 1978
Headmaster - American International School, Vienna, Austria, 1971 - 1976
Headmaster - Verde Valley School, Sedona, Arizona, 1966 - 1970
Headmaster - Robert Academy, Istanbul, Turkey, 1960 - 1966
Teacher - Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, NJ, 1950 - 1955; 1957-1960

Education
M.A. University of Virginia, Class of 1960
Middlebury College Spanish School, 1954
B.A. Princeton University, Class of 1948
Lawrenceville School, Class of 1944

Cornelius H. Bull III, In Memoriam, 1925-2004

Cornelius Holland Bull III, teacher, school headmaster, and founder of The Center for Interim Programs, died peacefully on March 16, 2004 at his home in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

During an active life spent in the U.S. and overseas, Mr. Bull gained a reputation as a dynamic headmaster, and, after he left the arena of formal education, as a passionate proponent of alternative education, the virtues of which he expounded on in many media interviews and in the speeches he was invited to deliver at schools all over the U.S.

After graduating from Lawrenceville School in 1944, he served for two years in the U.S. Navy during WWII and then went on to take his B.A. from Princeton University in 1948, followed by an M.A. in 1960 from the University of Virginia. Between degrees, he returned to Lawrenceville School to serve as a history teacher, housemaster, and wrestling coach.

Convinced that his future lay in school administration rather than teaching, he moved to Istanbul, Turkey in 1960 to become the headmaster of Robert Academy, a post he held for six years. After his departure from Turkey, he went on to direct Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona and then, in the 1970s, the American International School in Vienna, Austria and St. Mary's Hall in San Antonio, Texas. In the early 1980s, Mr. Bull served as the Director of Development for the Salzburg Seminars in Salzburg, Austria and Sterling Institute in Craftsbury Common, Vermont.

In 1980 Mr. Bull founded The Center for Interim Programs, a service designed to assist high school students in making a more effective and meaningful transition to college, and college students who were reassessing their goals. Prior to the advent of the Internet, he put together a comprehensive database of unique programs upon which he drew while counseling his clients about taking interim time and "following their bliss" for a period of one to two years. True to his nature, he rejected the idea of retirement and ran this program for the last twenty-three years of his life. He placed thousands of young people in apprenticeships, volunteer positions, and cultural study programs, while continuing to campaign for alternative education during visits to U.S schools and in many interviews for T.V., radio, magazines, and newspapers.

His daughter, Holly Bull, continues this work in Princeton, New Jersey as president of the The Center for Interim Programs LLC, with the assistance of Kate Warren, director of research. Her vice-president, Joanna Lazarek, and associate, Allyson Raimondi, run the Interim office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Center for Interim Programs Counselors:

Holly Bull, President(Princeton, NJ office)

Joanna Lazarek, Vice President(Cambridge, MA office)

Kate Warren, Director of Research(Princeton, NJ office)

Cornelius H. Bull, In Memoriam(Princeton, NJ and Cambridge, MA offices)

Holly Bull, President
(Princeton, NJ office)

Joanna Lazarek, Vice President
(Cambridge, MA office)

Kate Warren, Director of Research
(Princeton, NJ office)

Cornelius H. Bull, In Memoriam
(Princeton, NJ and Cambridge, MA offices)