Brethren Colleges Abroad recently decided to suspend their Rome, Italy program for the coming year. Newly hired Director of Academic Affairs Dr. Stephen Burwood, explained why students interested in traveling abroad to that location can look forward to a completely redesigned curriculum in the near future.
“What was happening was that we were getting a few people applying but not enough to really run the program. I think Italy has broad appeal for a lot of people, and so what we are spending this semester doing is talking with a lot of people to craft a program with the right partner in Italy that will be more appealing,” Burwood said. The decision that led to the suspension of the Italy program this year was reviewed by Burwood, the program manager for Italy, and the resident director there. “I reached out to our consortium schools to seek their advice. The feedback I received weighed very heavily to convince me the existing program was not working well enough and needed to be suspended for now until we can replace it with something more directly relevant to more students,” Burwood said.
Although the suspended program was BCA’s only semester-long offering in Italy, they are looking to develop some shorter programs which may be entirely in Italy or partially in Italy.
“We have a new leadership team at BCA Study Abroad,” Burwood explained. “One of the things that I’m doing is a comprehensive review of all of our programs together with the interim president to see what we can do to make them better, more relevant and more appealing. I’ve discovered that our Italy program is not really appealing to anywhere close to enough people.”
The current Rome program focused heavily on Italian language and Italian studies. “We are looking now at other partners,” Burwood said. “Italian language in the United States is a very small proposition, so it makes a lot of sense for students to learn some conversational Italian. But that is not enough. They need to be able to take courses that count towards their major, and that’s our aim for the new program.”
Burwood is convinced that BCA needs an Italy program, but the current offering wasn’t working well enough, which is why it was decided that the course needed to be suspended temporarily. At various times, BCA may need to upgrade or replace an offered curriculum in a certain area. Rarely, that will mean suspending a program for a short time.
Other programs offered through BCA are actually being strengthened to include more English-taught opportunities, thus allowing more students to go abroad to areas most applicable to their majors. One example of this is the Dalian, China program that is developing tracks where one does not have to be a Chinese language major. In this instance, a student can then pursue something that is more relevant towards his or her major, such as some business-related fields. BCA Study Abroad is also looking to create entirely new semester-long programs as well as shorter summer programs.
There are other courses in Italy through Etown, but Burwood argues that BCA’s programs allow for students to work with a resident director who make sure that there are plenty of immersion opportunities which ensure that participating students are not just “over there with a bunch of other Americans,” Burwood said. “That’s the kind of model program that we have. It is designed for you to get the best out of your study abroad experience,” Burwood said. Burwood believes that they will have an Italy curriculum available again in the near future for students who are not currently in their senior year and would be interested in studying abroad there.
