Starting this upcoming summer, the Jandoli School of Communication will offer a study abroad program in Sorrento, Italy through the Santana Institute for five weeks.
The program will start June 25 and end in the first week of August and exists single-handedly because of Anna Bulszewicz, a lecturer in the Jandoli School of Communication.
“I did it by myself with the support of the university,” Bulszewicz said. “I put forth a grant proposal and received money to go on a site visit. I had been in touch with an institute I partnered with called Santana Institute.”
She partnered with Santana Institute for about a year, several months of which were spent planning everything, such as housing and coursework, over Skype. After this, she thought it was important to see Sorrento herself before fully committing to the program.
“All I knew is that it was in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and was that even true based off the pictures?” Bulszewicz said. “I went there this summer and spent a week diligently planning every day and so I created it, I was supported by St. Bonaventure in terms of, go ahead, go see, and then Santana is the housing institute, the educators there helped me bring it to life, so it’s a little bit of both.”
Bulszewicz will be joined by Liam McGurl, an integrated marketing communications graduate student, who will serve as the junior dean.
“It was a definite, immediate yes to helping her with the program, in terms of marketing it and attending as a junior dean,” McGurl said. “On a personal level, I think it will, for me, garner a really good global outlook that will better equip me in a professional sense in the future. The programming she has set up is phenomenal. This programming gives them professional development, personal development and travel all at the same time.”
The program is customized, offering an international relations digital content creating course and an international politics course, fulfilling a journalism elective and social sciences requirement.
“It’s two classes made up of three credits apiece, so the student earns competitively what they would earn at Oxford and at Perugia,” Bulszewicz said. “You can only take up to six or seven credits, but you earn six credits, but all of the students are doing everything together.”
According to Bulszewicz, the program is $6,750, which is what Oxford costs. Broken down, it’s $150 per course, and a $5 transfer fee, so the cost to take six credits is dramatically different from what it is to take six credits here. Students will pay $305 apiece in tuition for their courses, she said.
“When you see the list of everything included, all of our trips—a trip to the US Embassy, Pompeii, Naples, I mean everything is included in that, and then some,” Bulszewicz said. “The cost is $6,750, but out of that, 300 are classes. That’s the point of the program. It’s a backpack journalism experience, partnered with the international relations courses feed each other.”
Bulszewicz’s colleague at Santana, Marco Caputo, will teach the international politics class. With an intensive background in international politics, he will touch on the United Nations and the Great Eight. He will also explain the political journalistic climate overseas, compared to Europe, and what the concept of fake news means in Europe.
Caputo is well-versed in the immigration crisis and he volunteers with an association that funnels in immigrants.
“We, as journalists, go with the international relations professor to this immigration site where we’re going to interview the immigrants and we’re also going to seek the other side of that from the government and that’s actually one of the final projects,” Bulszewicz said.
Bulszewicz also spoke about the fun activities they will do during the program.
“We’re going to meet up with a chef, a gourmet chef, and we’re going to eat the food, learn how to cook it, but then we’re going to write with a lifestyle journalist on how to be that type of journalist,” Bulszewicz said. “We’re going to talk with a BBC journalist via Skype from England who’s going to teach us international press laws and rights, and this person has been doing it for years, he’s a good friend of mine.”
McGurl is excited about this program because he considers himself someone who has a global outlook based off information consumed from news, social media and different digital platforms.
“I don’t think you can call yourself a global citizen until you actually go abroad and see how people live in other spaces and other contexts,” McGurl said. “I think it’s going to put me, as well as the students who attend, with a good sense of what it means to be a global citizen, and I think there’s a lot of value to seeing the way that other people live.”
