UC Students Learn Italian and Intern in Rescue and Social Services in Siena, Italy

Special Curricula Provides Experiential Learning

By Antonio Artese, Director, EAP Study Center in Siena and Randy Arnold, Managing Editor, EAP WORLD

“I began studying Italian with the desire to communicate with my nonna italiana—my grandma—and ended up with the capacity to communicate with the all culture. Because the Siena experience presents a network of opportunity, one must go with the intention to achieve a goal and inevitably you will go beyond it.”
--Gina Pagnella, UC Santa Barbara, Communication Major, Siena Spring 2004

Two EAP students volunteer in an Italian ambulance

Taking note of the sculpture collection at the Museum Santa Maria della Scala

UC students are learning beginning Italian in the classroom and heading out for the field.

As part of a special experiential program in Siena, Italy, students are doing internships and gaining hands-on experience working in public agencies, such as schools, libraries, art museums, and in emergency medical services.

The program, offered through the University of California’s Education Abroad Program (EAP), takes advantage of Siena’s 1000-year history of urbanism, its rich artistic and architectural heritage, and its well-established social services system.

As a key center during the Middle Ages, Siena enjoyed an important location on the main route connecting Rome with major centers of Northern Europe. Urbanism flourished, resulting in well-developed support facilities, including some 50 hospitals of varying sizes, objectives, and architectural splendor. Throughout the centuries the hospitals administered to the sick, and also became the living preserves of local medicine, culture, and art. Today their legacy remains as rich in charitable work as it is in art, architecture, and culture.

“Siena, in particular, opens your mind and inspires you,” says Antonio Artese, EAP Study Center Director in Siena. “Whoever walks and lives here—even for a short time—will able to breathe in and incorporate an outstanding amount of culture, arts, architecture, and beauty,” he said.

The internship option began in the fall of 2003.

Opportunities for EAP students in Siena include volunteer work with the local rescue and social services, where they are trained to perform certain medical tasks, and then conduct fieldwork, including work onboard ambulances.

Students can also participate in an education and language tutoring internship, in which they work with local public schools and tutor Italian students studying English.

Art history is an integral part of EAP students’ studies in Italy, and students may further their studies by interning at the Museum Santa Maria della Scala, where the they can familiarize themselves with general museum operations while getting to know the rich artistic heritage of the museum’s collection.

Students who take EAP’s higher-level Italian language may participate in the Volunteer Course in Library Services. This option enables students to fully employ their Italian language skills as they assist library patrons, and provide critical basic assistance to the library itself by translating signs and working on the library’s Internet site.

The program also includes an Italian culture class that focuses on “Siena and Florence in the Middle Ages” and “Three Thousand Years of Wine Culture in Italy.” The course includes excursions to Florence, Pienza and Montalcino, Villa Casale in Greve in Chianti, and a three-day art history excursion to major cities of Italy.

The EAP Siena program is one-term option is open to UC students who are at least at the sophomore level, and have a minimum 2.5 GPA. Previous study of Italian is not required.

“Studying abroad is a courageous and rewarding experience that, in my opinion, every student should do in his/her academic career,” Artese said.