Course Info and Itinerary

Program Dates

May 19 - June 27, 2025

Excursion to Bologna

All students participating in Pathways to the Steger Center will join in a shared trip to Bologna during their program. The Bologna excursion is included in the program fee.

Courses

European Food Practices (ITAL 2984)

3 credits, Pathways 2

In this course, students will explore the cultures that produce and are reproduced by our current food practices in Western Europe, touching upon the local, national and global dimensions. This course will examine the cultural, ecological, political, and geographic forces at work influencing the chain of production from farm to table. In particular, students will consider the contemporary food systems in France, Italy, and Switzerland as well as their cultural and historical roots. Students will learn more about what it takes to become an active food citizen as the class considers where food comes from here in Europe and how the food we eat shapes who we are, both literally and figuratively. This course includes a travel component in Italy where students will study first hand some of the concepts discussed, including terroir, slow food, and local farm to table movements.

Create! (ENGE 2094)

3 credits, Pathways 6d

Create! is designed to lead students through the process of creative inquiry, design, and collaboration to explore the nexus of the arts, science, and design. Through activities and discussions students will build an understanding of the ties between multiple disciplines. To identify these ties, students will engage in activities that build participation and questioning strategies for workshops and lectures, problem finding, analogical and metaphorical thinking, and collaboration in multiple formats. The collaboration of students, faculty, and visiting artists will encourage students to explore their own interests as they are situated within the boundaries of disciplines and provide strategies to create and innovate within and among disciplines. ENGE 2094 fulfills requirements of the Innovation Minor, Design + Technology + Creative Expression Minor, Innovation Minor and Technology, Humans and the Environment Minor.

Italian through Creative Practice: Cooking, Acting, Travel Writing (ITAL 3954)

3 credits, Pathways 6a

The emphasis in this course is on “doing”, the gerund form of each of the verbs in the course title. We will dig our hands into the creative acts of cooking, travel writing, and acting, learning related specifics of the Swiss Italian context, connecting with your peers, and led by expert faculty. Within each unit, you will produce a memorable final project, from which we hope that you will be able to retain some memento that you will cherish. This course is an opportunity to apply and practice the specific language objectives already acquired in your first semester Italian course taken in Blacksburg (ITAL 1105) through hands on introductory level creative experiences of the arts taught in the Italian language and supported by Dr Dodi, our expert in second language acquisition at the Steger Center. Through this practice, you will learn to understand and produce the spoken and written language better, imbedded in the specific culture of the language.