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Tory Brundage, UW College of Education, shares about Education Rome, a three-week study abroad program that focuses on gender, multiculturalism and education in Italy.

Education Rome aims to help students develop a better understanding of how, as social constructs, gender and multiculturalism have some roots in Italian history. That history helps analyze modern-day social issues, with particular focus on issues of education, in Italian society. Students engage in field research and photo elicitation to explore historical, contemporary, and artistic concepts of gender and race. This was the third year that we have run the program and we intend to go back to Rome a fourth time next summer.

This year we took 14 students to Rome. It was an incredibly diverse cohort with 10 participants coming from the Brotherhood Initiative, a program that serves Black, Latino, Native, Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian male undergraduates. Additionally, the group had students from all class standings as well as from a wide range of majors – education, public health, business, environmental studies, engineering, informatics, life sciences, etc.

My personal favorite memory from this year’s trip was taking the students on a street art walking tour in the Ostiense neighborhood. It was a good way to get off the beaten path in Rome by exploring art and political commentary that you definitely won’t see in the Vatican Museums. There was a stretch that included depictions of influential people for each letter of the alphabet. One was an American rapper that many students immediately recognized and the excited discussion that followed was an absolute joy to witness. The students were clearly having fun and made connections across the globe as well as across course themes in a unique and adventurous way.

In addition to the street art walking tour, we visited the Vatican Museums, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Palpatine Hill, the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, and La Sapienza, University of Rome.

 

UW Alumni Tours, the travel program of the UW Alumni Association, was delighted to visit the UW Rome Center during a recent three night stay in Rome as part of ‘A Portrait of Italy’ tour.

Amity Neumeister, Resident Director of the UW Rome Center, greeted the group of 14 UW alums and friends and gave them an overview tour of the recent renovations to the UW Rome Center. The group was excited to see the various classrooms, along with the lovely terrace overlooking the Campo de’ Fiori, once a flower market of historical Rome. The travelers, with UW degrees ranging from Business Administration to Aeronautics & Astronautics to Microbiology, were impressed by the study abroad opportunities for current UW students. A few UW alums mentioned being tempted to re-enroll at the UW in order to spend more time at the UW Rome Center!

Following the tour, the group enjoyed a walking tour of the surrounding area by a UW affiliated instructor at the UW Rome Center, Mariella Mastrogiacomo, an archeologist who has worked on excavations in Rome and its suburbs. Seeing the exact place where Julius Caesar was assassinated was a highlight of the walk!

The evening ended with a gastronomic event at Osteria Romana de Simmi. Mamma Mia! The multi-course dinner with local specialties was incredible.

The group regrettably said goodbye to Roma and departed for the hilltop village of Orvieto.

Upcoming UW Alumni Tours

 

 

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Rhiannon Hayes-McQueen

Hometown: Seattle, Washington
Class Standing: Freshman
Major: Engineering
Study abroad program: Freshmen Study Abroad: Travel Writing in the Eternal City
Destination: Rome, Italy

Tell us about your background.

I am from Seattle. I went on a study abroad trip to Barcelona with my sister the summer after my freshman year of high school. Other than that and a couple of family trips to Canada, and one to Mexico, I had never been abroad before studying in Rome.

Describe your study abroad program in a few sentences.

This program is a writing program in Rome, but much of the journey was about learning how to be travelers rather than tourists. We spent almost every morning going somewhere new and exciting- Trevi Fountain, churches, the Pantheon, the Forum and so much more, and the afternoons and evenings were time for us to explore the city on our own. Two weeks was the perfect amount of time for me, and it was an amazing opportunity to meet people I would be able to see around campus- before even getting to UW. The trip was led by Shawn Wong, an amazing professor and person, and Lauren Easterling, from UW Study Abroad. They know Rome very well and led us through all the highlights.

What was something unexpected that you got out of the experience?

I wasn’t expecting to feel so independent while in Rome. It was an amazing way to explore my independence and learn who I wanted to be before the pressure of starting my freshmen year at the University of Washington. Additionally, I really learned what it meant to be a traveler rather than a tourist, and I realized that I really enjoyed being a traveler (as opposed to a tourist).

Do you have a favorite memory from your time in Rome?

Professor Shawn Wong took us to Giardino degli Aranci, orange tree gardens with the most spectacular view. Just sitting, overlooking the view, surrounded by new friends was so peaceful, and I look forward to going back one day. While we were there I, along with a couple of my peers, participated in Tai Chi with some locals. Never before have I felt so relaxed.

What building or site first comes to mind when you think of Rome?

Before going to Rome I thought of the Colosseum, but now I definitely think of Giardino degli Aranci and Villa de’Este.

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Three UW alumni reflect on what they remember most from studying in the Eternal City and how their experiences at the UW Rome Center impacted their career trajectories.

Elizabeth Cooperman: Freelance Editor and Writer

What do you remember most about your time in Rome?

Rome is a swirl to me. When I think of it, I’m standing in front of a small marble statue of the goddess Diana in the Capitoline Museum trying to draw her hundreds of breasts in my spiral notebook, and the next moment I’m eating zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovy (a delicacy the likes of which I’ve never before tasted), and the next I’m at a flea market purchasing a single tear drop-shaped crystal from a deconstructed chandelier which the seller has laid down nonchalantly all over the street (as if it weren’t a miraculous sight), and then I’m back at the apartment with classmates and we’re sipping wine and discussing classical mythology, the zodiac, painting, and the soul, when finally I find myself in a dark piazza where children launch colorful spinnerets into the sky. Rome is this kaleidoscope of images and tastes and sensations that I can’t tweeze apart—and wouldn’t.

Have you stayed connected to the UW Rome Center since studying abroad?

Yes, so connected that I’ve studied at the Rome Center three times! UW’s creative writing program in Rome is intentionally set up to accommodate learners of all levels, with beginners writing alongside highly accomplished poets and scholars. In fact, it’s one of the most unique learning communities I’ve ever experienced. I first attended the Rome Center in 2005 as a complete beginner, second in 2009 as a graduate student, and third in 2017 in a teaching role, and each time my relationship to writing and to Rome was forged and re-forged. I cannot imagine a more beautiful classroom, by which I mean the illustrious halls of the Palazzo Pio, which houses the Rome Center, and Mama Roma herself. I guess I just can’t stay away!

How has the UW Rome Center impacted your life?

I return again and again to the writing methods I learned in Rome—namely the emphasis on looking and listening. As conceived by Richard Kenney, the program urges you to “keep your pencil on the city” and not agonize over your own daily mark-making. It’s not about you! It’s about Rome. And that’s oddly freeing. There will be time enough after you leave Rome to revise your work, but while you’re abroad, try to really engage the city. This is a way of approaching the discipline of writing that I still practice, much like drawing or painting en plein air, but it’s also (a wise and challenging) way of approaching life. Metaphorically speaking, I continue to try hard to keep a pencil on all the cities that matter to me.

Too, in a very real way, I’m sure I would not be a writer at all if not for the UW’s program at the Rome Center. That program convinced me I’d love to get an MFA in Creative Writing, which I received from the University of Washington in 2010. Afterwards I went on to co-edit an anthology of brief prose with UW professor David Shields, co-author a book about Rome, The Last Mosaic, with poet Thomas Walton, and compose my own collagistic personal essay named after a painting by Picasso, Woman Pissing, which comes out this fall from University of Nebraska Press. In the second two books I write frequently about visual art. Of course, it was in Rome that I began working in an ekphrastic mode. I’ll never forget the time at the Galleria Borghese that poet William Camponovo and I spent forty minutes writing and talking about Bernini’s statue of Pluto and Prosperpina. We were studying the marble figures so closely that it took us forty minutes to make a single circle around them.

Tell us more about the book you co-authored about Rome, The Last Mosaic.

My co-author, Thomas Walton, and I created this book after spending summer 2017 at the UW Rome Center. Thomas and I engaged the writing prompts for the UW class every day and subsequently came home to the United States with notebooks full of descriptions of ancient sculptures, street performers, nuns feeding turtles, etc. Rather than let these prose sketches rot away in our notebooks, we decided to excavate our notebooks and expand our favorite sketches. In part, we were still so in love with Rome and hesitant to leave it behind. Making the book was a way of lingering in Rome—lingering in the art museums, the cafes, and especially on the city streets—months after returning to Seattle. We fashioned our co-authored book in the form of a mosaic, which we agreed suits the city itself, with its ruins, headless statues, wobbly cobbles, broken arches, and river worming through it all. The Last Mosaic is a poetic guidebook to the city and very much our love song to Rome.

Theresa Maloney: Assistant Director, Foster School of Business’ Global Business Center

What building or site first comes to mind when you think of Rome?

My absolute favorite site in Rome is one shared by many…Piazza Navona! To me Piazza Navona feels like the very heart of the city and is always abuzz with Romans on their nightly stroll, or tourists snapping a photo in front of the famous Four Rivers Fountain by Bernini. Since Piazza Navona is just a short walk from the UW Rome Center, I visit it often when leading study abroad programs to Rome to soak up the sounds and energy of the city.

What study abroad program did you participate in at the UW Rome Center?

As a UW undergraduate, I participated on the Art History Seminar in Spring Quarter 2010 and I was also the UW Rome Center Student Intern from 2012-2013. Both those experiences allowed me to dive into the rich history of art and architecture found around every corner of the city. Since 2015, I have organized and led many Foster undergraduate study abroad programs to the UW Rome Center, helping over 160 UW students study business in Rome. My favorite part of my job is getting to be in Rome with students and helping them as they navigate the city.

Did your experience in Rome prepare you for your current role?

My first experience in Rome on the Art History Seminar has shaped my whole life. By getting to build deep connections with the Program Faculty and Staff Directors (thank you Lauren Easterling, and Stuart and Estelle Lingo!), I was able to find my way back to the UW Rome Center for the Student Internship at the end of my UW undergraduate degree. That experience of living in Rome for a whole year showed me that a career in international education was possible. I am now 9 years into my career in international higher education and I literally would not be where I am today without that first study abroad at the UW Rome Center in 2010. I love supporting students (and faculty) as they explore Roman culture, learn about business in Italy, and fall in love with Rome like I did on my own study abroad experience.

Tell us about your job at the Global Business Center at the UW Foster School of Business.

At the Foster School of Business’ Global Business Center, I advise students on undergraduate business-focused study abroad programs, support a range of programs that allow over 350 UW undergraduates to study business abroad each year, and I have the great pleasure of organizing and leading Faculty-Led Programs including the Foster Rome Program every summer. Needless to say, I love my job and the opportunity to help make students’ time abroad as enriching and impactful as possible!

Alongside my work at the Foster Global Business Center, I am also currently pursuing my MBA at Foster. To finish out my MBA, I am exploring another part of Europe by participating on an MBA Exchange at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark.

Doug Schnitzspahn: Founder, Artemisia Media; Editorial Director, Outdoor Retailer Publications; Editor-in-Chief, Elevation Outdoors

Do you have a favorite memory from your time in Rome?

One of the great pleasures of Rome is enjoying the place without too much of a plan—it’s best to look for small secrets (I recommend something along the lines of Bernini’s Blessed Ludovica Albertoni off in a quiet part of Trastevere) and let life happen around you. Drink an espresso; explore a basilica. Too many visitors try to do too much. They rush to see the big sights and miss the rhythm of the city and wonders that inhabit every corner.

The Pantheon, with its oculus open to the sky and (false) inscription that Marcus Agrippa built it (well, the original; this remodel was built by the architect emperor Hadrian), is my favorite place to return over and over in Rome. I first went there when I was a freshman in high school, studying Latin and obsessed with ancient Roman history and mythology. During my time writing at the UW Rome Center, a group of us visited the building and a bird that circled inside the dome ended up in all of our poems in some form. The massive domed building is a skull and an eye, a representation of the divine in the human and, I think, the most wonderful ancient structure to have survived to the present day.

No surprise, one of my favorite memories in Rome happened here. I was walking through the city with a group including my friend/mentor/professor Richard Kenney and (my now wife) Radha Marcum, when it began to rain. It hit me. I turned to them and shouted, “To The Pantheon!” We rushed to the building and, once inside, stood under the oculus where we felt the rain coming down through the vast space of the dome onto our faces. It was a brief moment of communion with the beauty of the natural world and human creativity. It didn’t last long, however, before an angry group of guards shooed us away and put up a barrier to keep tourists out of the shower. But it was enough to last a lifetime. I only hope to be there one day for a rare snowstorm.

What did you study at the UW Rome Center?

I studied poetry and creative writing at the UW Rome Center for three summers with Professor Richard Kenney, a MacArthur Fellow and winner of the Rome Prize in Literature. The dynamics varied each year: The first year, another grad student and I mentored and taught undergrads. The second and third were more of a convocation of grad students in the UW MFA program, a few undergrads, and professional writers and artists. Studying poetry in Rome encompasses far more than simply putting words on a page, especially under the auspices of a mind as curious, keen, and far-reaching as Kenney’s.

We immersed ourselves in all aspects of the city—we learned about architecture and art history, took cooking lessons using fresh produce gathered from the market in Campo dei Fiore, spoke Italian with local baristas, toured catacombs and museums, read poems at Keats’ grave, performed Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar on the banks of the Tiber, and discussed the dynamics of writing that attempts to capture all this. In short, we drank in all we could of the Eternal City. And, most importantly, we wrote every day, exercising our ability to observe and imagine. The highlight of each day was gathering together to share and dig into our writing.

How did studying in Rome influence your career?

Though it was not required, the Rome program was an essential part of my Master in Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from UW. It gave me the chance to study with Professor Kenney in a relaxed environment while also putting more intensity into the craft of writing. The program gave me insight into the wide scope of art and history and immersion in another culture. It gave me depth (and a good dose of Italian levity). I have never been the same since. The ability to focus on writing here gave me more confidence in my work and encouraged me to travel more, see more, experience more.

All of this has been invaluable in my career as a professional editor and publisher. I have more compassion when I work with writers and I am more willing to take chances with new and young writers thanks to my experience mentoring students in Rome. On a strictly professional level, I have used my experiences living in Europe and speaking Italian to make connections with European colleagues and outlets over the years. I would not be the professional or the person I am today without this program. It is one of the highlights of my life. The Rome Center gives you the space to work through ideas in a city full of creativity and human achievement and it gets you collaborating with inquisitive and accomplished minds in a wide range of disciplines.

Tell us more about your career in editing, writing, and magazine publishing.

I have been lucky to combine my two great passions, writing and wilderness, in my career. As a contract editor and freelance writer, I must piece together several jobs. Some of them, editor-in-chief of Elevation Outdoors and Outdoor Retailer magazine, function more like full-time jobs. I fill that in with freelance writing opportunities—such as recounting time skiing with Sami people, who towed us in via snowmobile in Lapland for Skiing magazine or providing National Geographic online with an ongoing series of the world’s greatest hikes—that fulfill my desire for adventure. As an editor, I see myself as both a curator and a mentor, bringing together a diverse range of voices in a publication and helping them do the best work they can on the stories they most want to tell. Running the Outdoor Retailer trade show Daily publication, I am responsible for publishing a 70-page print magazine every day for three days of a national trade show and getting all of that content to the printer by 5 p.m. each afternoon. It’s an exercise of finding focus and joy in chaos and that, of course, reminds me of the streets of Rome.

I have also founded my own publishing company, creating print magazines, online content, and photography and film for clients including the towns of Dillon and Silverthorne, Colorado. I was once told that all I would be able to do with an MFA in creative writing was “wait tables.” I have rejected that cynicism in my career, proving that this degree also gave me the leverage and authority to make the money to raise a family and travel the world. I have not had the time I would like to focus on the creative side as I raise my kids, but I have had work noted in Best American Essays and by the Colorado Council on the Arts and I am busy on a narrative podcast project tentatively titled “Collision: The long-lost story of the worst shipwreck in history, the American experience, and a family mystery.”

Would you like to share a story about the UW Rome Center? Email uwoga@uw.edu. 

The UW Rome Center is housed in the historic 15th century Palazzo Pio in the heart of Rome’s Centro Storico. Since 1985, thousands of Huskies have studied at the UW Rome Center, the UW’s home in Rome. Resident Director Amity Neumeister reflects on the UW Rome Center and where it’s headed next.

What is your role as Resident Director of the UW Rome Center?

As Resident Director, I oversee the strategic development and operational excellence of the UW Rome Center (UWRC). In collaboration with faculty and my colleagues in Seattle, we are working to develop new and to grow existing educational opportunities for UW students in Italy, as well as to expand opportunities to support faculty and student research.

I also oversee the UWRC’s day-to-day operations, program organization, marketing and communication activities. For the last three years, I have overseen the renovation work of our classroom space and apartments, which we hope to complete next year.

What services does the UW Rome Center offer?

The UWRC primarily hosts educational programs led by UW faculty, and programs sponsored by other universities. Our services include itinerary consultation, budget preparation, coordination of extracurricular activities, arrangement of housing and transportation, program and student support in the country, administrative services, etc. We also host a number of educational and/or research focused conferences each year.

How did  the COVID-19 pandemic impact the UW Rome Center?

Unfortunately, the UWRC was closed to students for the majority of 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant no programs and no revenue for nearly two years. In order to maintain the UWRC, we dramatically scaled back our operational and personnel budgets, and modified our expenditures related to the renovation project. We were also very fortunate to receive support from the Office of the Provost as well as several UW colleges and departments in order to remain afloat during this difficult period.

What are you most looking forward to in the next two years?

I look forward to continuing to grow our new Rome in Residence program, which we began in January of this year. This program is unique in that we’ve hired locally based faculty who are experts in their fields to teach the program, and the courses all meet general education requirements, so the program is accessible for students at all stages of their academic career. The response of students to the Rome in Residence program has been great thus far, and word of mouth about the quality of the experience is spreading. We hope to expand the course offerings and to continue to grow the program, offering it every quarter in the future.

What are the UW Rome Center’s most notable achievements?

The UWRC quietly celebrated 35 years of academic programming in 2020, and so it’s hard to say what are the most notable achievements of the UWRC in its long history here in Rome!

However, I can definitely say that completing renovations of our academic space has been amongst the most notable achievements in recent years. We began renovation work on the 1st floor in 2019, with the goals of maximizing the educational space and modernizing our educational technology, while preserving and honoring the historical features of the Palazzo Pio. We’ve worked closely with our architects to accomplish these goals, continuing the work throughout the pandemic. We completed renovations of the 1st floor and the 3rd floor at the end of 2021, right in time to welcome UW programs back to the UWRC for the first time since early 2020. Faculty and students have been delighted with the space, and we’re excited to be finally filling our classrooms again now that study abroad is back! We are now in the final phase of the project, working on the 4th floor where we have our faculty apartments, and we’re looking forward to completing the last part of the project sometime next year.

 

Before I landed in Italy for the Rome in Residence study abroad program at the UW Rome Center, I imagined my life for the next three months would be nothing less than an Italian vacation. Cappuccino for breakfast, pizza for lunch, pasta for dinner, every day on repeat. Visiting ancient ruins and learning Italian as I immersed myself in a new culture and lifestyle, I’d bring my old self to the city and take a new version of myself on the way out. Study abroad would be a life-changing pathway to the new me — a more fun, social, adventurous me.

Now that my time in Italy is over, I have more insight into what they don’t tell you in the studying abroad handbook: No matter how much you prepare and research about a new city, unexpected surprises are inevitable and unavoidable. Just because you’re in a foreign country 5,000 miles from home doesn’t mean all problems in the world immediately come to a halt. Even as I was immersed in a brand new cultural setting, life was not always beautiful in the most beautiful city in the world.

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