May 28, 2010
More than 170 CUA students are traveling the world this summer, and not just for vacations. Students will spend from a week to three months - sometimes in exotic locations - studying, volunteering, performing and designing.
"Global education is no longer a choice - it's a necessity," says Tanith Fowler Corsi, assistant vice president for global education. "Amid our current globalization revolution, universities have an increasing responsibility to internationalize and prepare their students to become 'Global Citizens' - that is, citizens who transcend national boundaries and who understand how their actions impact the global web. I think we are on our way toward doing that here at CUA."
Thirty-six undergraduates will travel for classes and internships through programs facilitated by CUAbroad.
The largest CUAbroad program, CUA Summer in Rome, will place 11 students in Italy for three weeks - two in Rome and one in Capri - under the leadership of Stefania Lucamante, associate professor of modern languages and literatures. CUA's London Parliamentary internship program will send five students to England to complete a nine-week practical work experience in the House of Commons.
Professor Rett Ludwikowski will lead the Columbus School of Law's 19th International Business and Trade Summer Program in Cracow, Poland. For six months in June and July, 23 students from CUA will study alongside law students in Poland.
Mission trips are part of a long tradition of volunteerism at CUA. The most recent mission trips began May 18 when 33 students traveled with campus ministry leaders Rev. Andy Santamauro, O.F.M. Conv, and Jeff Ossinger to Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica, and Punta Gorda, Belize.
Puerto Jimenez is a new destination for the ministry group. Students will build a chapel for the local Catholic community they will live and work with until they return on June 1.
The trip to Belize is the fifth one by CUA volunteers. This year students will work with children at St. Peter Claver School and build a library for a school in a nearby village.
Studying and volunteering aren't the only options students are pursuing abroad over the summer months. Some are getting practical experience in their academic area of concentration.
From May 6 to 11, 35 students from the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music traveled with Dean Murry Sidlin to Budapest, Hungary, to perform Sidlin's "Defiant Requiem" before an audience of 5,000. Sidlin's concert/drama depicts the prisoners of Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp, who learned and performed the Verdi "Requiem" as an act of symbolic defiance against their imprisonment.
Three voice majors will also travel with Associate Professor of Music Sharon Christman in July for her annual trip to Perugia, Italy, for a music festival. Students will attend classes and perform with world-renowned teachers and musicians.
The School of Architecture and Planning is offering a number of opportunities for study abroad. Students will go to Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Jerusalem and Finland. During their three-month program, they will study and sketch local architecture. Students in some locations will complete studio projects and models.
One of the groups travelling to Finland will do so through the Spirit of Place, a yearlong design and build program in which students study a location and its culture. As the culmination of the current year's program, students will travel to the site they have studied in Finland to build the structure they have designed to reflect the place and its culture.
Through its International Program Associates initiative, the National Catholic School of Social Service will send four students abroad for 10 weeks this summer. Students will have social work placements in El Salvador, the Philippines and Jerusalem, working with local organizations to help communities.