February 2012 – DEV – The Umbra Institute – Study Abroad in Italy

The Umbra Institute has long promoted study abroad not only as a fun-filled adventure in exploring another country’s culture, but also as a way to become a better global citizen. Today’s world, for better or for worse, does not revolve solely around national politics: whether we like it or not, we are part of an increasingly interconnected world. A recent study confirms the important role of study abroad in the development of a global citizen.

Professor Michael Tarrant from the University of Georgia demonstrates how designing specific outcomes for study abroad programs–not simply linguistic but also cultural competencies–can be tested empirically and shown to be crucial for developing a body of future scholars and leaders equipped to work in a global environment.” This only confirms the need for a serious, well-structured study abroad curriculum, complemented by co-curricular field trips and extracurricular activities geared towards helping students integrate in the local community–in other words, the Umbra model.

Tarrant, M. 2010. A Conceptual Framework for Exploring the Role of Studies Abroad in Nurturing Global Citizenship. Journal of Studies in International Education 14 (5):433-451.

Umbra Study abroad student Maria Papapietro (here through CIS) is keeping a blog on GoAbroad.net with her reflections on her experience here in Perugia. Themes include her goals for this semester abroad, what she’s doing with her classes, and how much she misses dryers. Have a look at her blog on study abroad in Italy.

If you find/have any other blog about life in Perugia send it in: we’ll post is as a featured blog post.

perugiasotterreanea — This is a screenshot — check out the full video after the jump!

Our good friend and Tuttoggi.it correspondent Nicola Palumbo went on the underground tour of Perugia this past Sunday and filmed his experience for Tuttoggi. We saw it this morning and were blown away: there’s great video from under the Duomo (officially Cattedrale San Lorenzo), the Etruscan Well, from the aqueduct leading to the Fontana Maggiore, and from a World War II-era air raid shelter — for this last one, there are also artifacts there were found inside.

Check out the full video after the jump! (more…)

Pellegrino Artusi,who in 1890 wrote Italy’s first modern cookbook, had grown up in Emilia-Romagna (a region in the north known for its hearty food) but lived out his adult life in Tuscany’s capital, Florence. Despite lots of culinary contributions from the south and far north, this area of Italy is considered the country’s food heartland. As part of their extensive list of extra-curricular activities, students taking the core course of the Food Studies Program had the opportunity to visit three small producers in the region.

The first stop was the Salumificio La Perla, in the windy hills above Parma. Students met Carlo Lanfranchi, a self-described farmer’s son and heart of the small, family-run factory where over ten thousand fresh Italian hams are turned into delicious prosciutto each year. Students saw the various stages of salting and Carlo explained the special text with a small horse-bone probe before the group went upstairs for a hearty lunch of cheese-and-herb filled ravioli and (of course) prosciutto. (more…)

Another Umbra Institute pizza night, another success! After a tough loss in the semester’s basketball game against ONAOSI, an Italian school, players and fans both tromped through the cold and snow to Il Paiolo, a pizzeria in the center of Perugia.

There were no hard feelings about the baseketball game, though, and some of the Italian players that study at Umbra even came to join in.

There, as you can see, they had steaming-hot Margherita pizzas in the cozy comfort of a well-lit Etruscan cave, a welcome respite from the blustery weather outside. Buon appetito!

Underground Tour of Perugia

Text translated from original flyer (attached):

Below the soil of Perugia, there exists a city even more ancient than the one that can be admired from the surface: a hidden world where speleology and archaeology become intertwined with history and where one can discover the many cultural treasures that are so often ignored.

The Speleological Group of Perugia will show you the secret crannies lying underneath the city, doing guided tours of the various sites, some of which will be opened just for this occasion. The visits will be led by art historians, speleologists, and archaeologists, who will illustrate the happenings and the secrets of this medieval city.

For contact information, click the read more link!

(more…)

Some enterprising young Perugians decided to take advantage of the snow that we got all weekend and go for a ski! Lucky them: local schools have been closed since last Thursday, which allows plenty of time for antics like skiing down Via Alessi in Centro! Some of you may remember this as the street you take to get down to Il Paiolo, where Umbra pizza nights are held.

And some young Assisi residents decided that skiing in front of the Basilica of St. Francis would be a good idea, too!

Guest Speaker, Professor Edwin A. Locke, discusses “The Case for Induction”, in Professor John L. Dennis’s INIT 350 Academic Internship & Seminar, Psychology.

Professor Edwin A. Locke, the world’s foremost scholar in the area of goal-setting research, recently gave a virtual guest speaker talk on “The Case for Induction,” where he described how induction is the only method for developing well-validated theories.

The virtual guest talk was hosted at The Umbra Institute using video conferencing software with Professor Locke calling in from his office in Westlake Village, California and students actively participated in a lengthy Q&A period.

In his talk, Professor Locke discussed how everyone who publishes in professional journals in the social sciences knows that you are supposed to start your article with a theory, then make deductions from it, then test it, and then revise the theory. He described how this policy demands premature theorizing and often leads to making up hypotheses after the fact.

Professor Locke examined how this policy is based on the hypothetico-deductive method of Karl Popper’s falsifiability theory which retards scientific progress because it demands scientists to show that something is not true rather than discovering what is true.

In discussing three major theories from psychology, (Beck’s cognitive theory of depression, Bandura’s social-cognitive theory, and Locke & Latham’s goal-setting theory) Professor Locke identified how these theories rely on observation, introspection and the identification of causal mechanisms – i.e., the inductive approach.

Professor Edwin A. Locke is the retired Dean’s Professor of Motivation and Leadership at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the co-author of goal-setting theory, which is one of the most widely respected theories in psychology and he is the most published organizational psychologist in the history of the field. He has published over 260 chapters, books and articles.

We remade our old Arrivals and Orientation video to reflect some improvements that we’ve made! This video is accurate for students doing any of our non-Direct Enroll programs for the spring, fall, or summer. Direct Enroll students get here slightly earlier and are generally moved straight into their apartments.

Take a look and tell us what you think! Umbra Alums, do you have any suggestions, additions, or memories from your first few days in Perugia?

The Zumba Crew — The zumba crew pre-workout

Last week, one of Umbra’s talented students, Ciera Kalnoski, invited her fellow classmates to a Zumba class. She led 16 eager participants through a series of catchy choreography to latin dance music in one of the school’s classrooms. Zumba, a dance-based fitness program, is quite a workout, incorporating exercises for the whole body in the form of fun, upbeat dance moves. Ciera was a fantastic instructor and thanks to the participants, Umbra transformed into a Zumba party!