This blog documents the experiences of students currently studying at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy, offering an account of their day-to-day experiences, extra- and co-curricular activities, and special events. We hope you gain some insight into what adventures Umbra students find outside the classroom during their semester in Perugia, a medieval town in the mountains of Umbria. Cheers!
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?
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!
Starting on March 3rd , there’ll be a new show, titled Americani a Firenze or Americans in Florence, at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. It’ll run until July 15th but, as you’d know if you read our other post about visiting Florence, it will almost certainly be extended.
As Prof. Adrian Hoch put it: “It’s pretty, it’s glamorous, and it’s when America became rich; it’s the beginning. It’s all about Henry James and the grand tour [of Europe].”
The painters featured will be many, including: Winslow Homer, William Morris Hunt, John La Farge, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and many, many others.
You can find the official posting for the show on the Palazzo Strozzi website.
While apparently our friends and family back home are experiencing unseasonably balmy temperatures, Italy has been hit with some of the coldest weather in years. It started snowing yesterday and hasn’t stopped yet! Via Bartolo is blocked off for all traffic, and local schools have closed for the day. Bundle up and watch out for snowballs in the piazza!
This time in the semester marks an exciting period at Umbra. Volunteer opportunities, service learning projects, and internships are well underway.
Volunteering:
Students interested in volunteering with Monimbò, a local Fair Trade cooperative had an informational session yesterday with Milena, the volunteer coordinator of the Perugia bottega, Michele, the cooperative’s very own president, and Francesco, a fellow volunteer. They discussed what Fair Trade (equo solidale) is, how it looks in an Italian context, what student volunteers’ tasks will be, and the local and national events they can help with. The next meeting will take place tomorrow beautiful, newly remodeled bottega in the city center.
The Unicef workshop, where Umbra and University of Perugia students will make Pigotta dolls with the guidance of Italian volunteers, begins next Tuesday and will continue throughout the semester. The workshops are held in an old convent with lovely frescoed ceilings, a shot distance from Umbra. It creates the perfect energy to design and sew a unique, life saving Pigotta doll. Each doll is adopted and raises enough money to fund a vaccine kit for a mother and her child in a developing country.
Last Thursday, Umbra students attended a wine tasting at a local Perugia enoteca. The professional sommelier, Silvia Bartolini, demonstrated how to use our sense of smell, taste, and sight to examine a wine’s quality and age. Students sampled three types of wine to judge for themselves whether they found hints of green apple and almond here or honey and blackberry there. Flaviano, the owner of the enoteca, also showed how to properly open a bottle of wine and asked for a volunteer to help. The student received a round of applause for her ability to open the bottle without turning the label away from her ‘customer’.
The true test came when students were asked to pair the wines with the different types of finger foods based on their complimentary nature. The night ended with a guessing game of which type of glass is for which type of wine. Now, the next time students share in the bottled traditions of Italy at a dinner party, they can show friends and family how to be knowledgeable wine connoisseurs.
Rita held up her hands to the Umbra Institute students and said, “This is my trademark, my guarantee.” To say they were calloused is an understatement—no pesticides means more pulling weeds—but it makes any sort of organic label redundant. As she showed students in Umbra’s “Sustainable Food Production in Italy” course her famous mixed salad greens and award-winning squash, she talked about how zero-kilometer veggies helps not only the environment, but also the local economy.
The visit was a teaser designed to get students thinking about local, organic, and fair and what these labels mean: all are themes of the course, which is part of the Umbra Institute’s innovative Food Studies Program.
Harvard student and Umbra alumna Teagan Lehrman recently submitted a paper to the ASFS, the Association for the Study of Food and Society,the professional association of scholars who study food and food culture from various points of view. Lehrman, a Junior, studied in Perugia last semester and was one of the students who completed all three courses for the Food Studies Program. She had written the paper that was accepted for the conference, “Steamed, Sealed and Delivered” (about the history of sauces and their development with technological change) for her History and Culture of Food in Italy course here in Perugia, the core course of the Food Studies Program. Lehrman will deliver her paper in New York in June. Congratulations!
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