The Feb. 24-27 study abroad forum held in the medieval hamlet of Castiglion Fiorentino in Tuscany, Italy and organized by the Texas A&M College of Architecture, was widely characterized by participants as a seminal, watershed event, which provided insight that promises to greatly influence the future of study abroad initiatives at all participating universities.
Participating in this first-of-its-kind forum were the directors of Texas A&M’s Office of International Studies, deans and department heads from the Texas A&M College of Architecture and representatives from four other U.S. universities. They were joined by the College of Architecture’s European faculty and other representatives from the college’s four primary European study abroad venues — Düsseldorf and Bonn, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; Manchester, UK; and the hosting facility, the Santa Chiara Study Center in Castiglion Fiorentino.
For many participants, and some who also traveled to other Texas A&M study abroad locations, the trip to Italy marked the first time they’d viewed and toured the various programs and facilities that provide a semester-long home-away-from- home for their students.
“It is one thing to have a conceptual idea about these programs,” said Forster Ndubisi, head of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M who also visited the program in Barcelona, Spain, “but it is exceedingly more beneficial to have working, first-hand knowledge of these programs and their faculty. The trip was very helpful and useful.”
“Because our department heads are charged with allocating funds for their departments, it was very important for them to understand exactly what goes on at these European venues,” added Charles Graham, executive associate dean of the College of Architecture. “In many ways, these are branch campuses of the college, staffed by faculty who our on the college’s payroll.”
Tim McLaughlin, head of the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M, traveled from Italy to Düsseldorf and Bonn, Germany with Graham and Elton Abbot, the College of Architecture’s dean for special projects. Düsseldorf, the hub of Germany’s media industry, provides the backdrop for a study abroad venue that is popular with the college’s visualization students.
McLaughlin said excellent faculty members, including practicing architects and faculty from the University of Cologne, lead the visualization section of the German study abroad program. He discovered that the program can easily accommodate architecture students as well as visualization students.
Joe Horlen, head of the Department of Construction Science at Texas A&M, echoed his colleague’s statements, saying the trip provided insight that will allow him to talk with students from an informed perspective about study abroad opportunities.
Horlen traveled from Italy to the Texas A&M Qatar campus.
One of the biggest advantages of the Santa Chiara summit, said Tom Regan, dean of the Texas A&M College of Architecture, was the participation of representatives from the university’s Office of International Studies, Suzanne Drolesky, executive director, and Jane Flaherty, director of study abroad programs. Not only did they benefit from learning about the European programs, he said they also identified other international Texas A&M initiatives that the college can exploit in the future.
Abbott said getting to know Paolo Barucchieri, a member of the Santa Chiara faculty who’s been affiliated with the Texas A&M program since 1983, was a highlight of the trip. Barucchieri, whose father was curator of a Florence museum, proved to be a perfect guide, he said, and remains an “extremely valuable resource” to the college and its students..
At the study abroad forum, which was characterized as hard work, action-packed, engaging, and fruitful, each participant made a presentation about their specific program, highlighting best practices and sharing ideas for new directions for study abroad programs.
“We asked participants what it would take to raise our programs to the next level,” said Regan.
“We developed a collective vision and strategy for the future of study abroad that many participants said would have a profound influence on the direction of their individual programs,” added Graham.
In addition to setting the stage for future collaboration between the college’s various European units, the forum participants also made headway in establishing connections with the University of Florence, where they visited with faculty from the architecture and landscape architecture departments.
The European forum participants included Paolo Barucchieri and Peter Lang from the Santa Chiara Study Center; Miguel Roldán and Xavier Costa from Barcelona, Spain; Rainer Zaech and Larz Zimmerman from the Academy for International Education in Dusseldorf; and Andy Turner and Chris Fortune from the University of Salford in Manchester, UK.
U.S. universities participating in the Texas A&M-led event were the University of Texas, Kansas State University, Colorado State University and California State Polytechnic Institute, Pomona.
