The trip to Abruzzo is enlightening for students, but it’s also part and parcel of the values and educational aims of Loyola’s Rome Center—travel with a purpose. “The Rome Center has always placed travel as one of the most important pillars of the education students get when they come to Rome,” says Elizabeth Simari, a Rome Center adjunct professor of Italian culture and food. Along with adjunct photography professor Tom Denlinger, Simari leads a fusion program in the Abruzzo region of Italy where students learn about a rural, agricultural lifestyle. The time in Abruzzo can shift a student’s understanding of some foundational ideas about farming, food, and how nature and culture unite.

“At the beginning, we’re learning a lot about the reality at the farm,” says Simari. “But as we move throughout the program, we start to examine this larger food system, the larger circular economy of the area.” Students visit an olive oil press and a winery. They follow shepherds and their sheep up a mountain and later make cheese from the sheep’s milk. They complete assignments that ask them to put all these pieces together, and they see how each decision regarding what and how they eat affects the natural world and the lives of others. 

As part of the pasta-making class, Viola Marcelli, La Porta dei Parchi’s instructor and food designer, showed the students how to make flour. She took a bag of farro grown on the farm, poured it into a mill, and ground it to make flour for the pasta. In Abruzzo, students witness this cycle firsthand. “They start to really think about where their food comes from,” she says. The opportunities Loyola offers students in experiential education, like the work at La Porta dei Parchi, catalyze connections that give deeper context to classroom discussions of methodologies, case studies and theory.

"At the beginning, we’re learning a lot about the reality at the farm, but as we move throughout the program, we start to examine this larger food system, the larger circular economy of the area."

Elizabeth Simari, Rome Center Adjunct Professor

Julian Lomeli grew up in Chicago, but his grandparents live on a ranch in Mexico, and he says the experiential learning experience in Italy gave him a chance to reflect on his own upbringing, and provided a deeper context for his studies. “I think I’ll appreciate it a lot more. When I was used to just that, I thought, ‘Oh, it’s just another farm,’” he says of his family’s ranch. But then he sees the effort that his class took to come to this farm in Italy. “It’s giving me a new lens to look at it through and appreciate it.” 

Lucia Eldridge, a double-major in political science and women and gender studies, says she has seen her coursework come to life in Italy in her experiences on the farm and in trips to the local open air market as part of the curriculum, to observe the vendors, goods, and how the market  becomes an integral part of the town. “It’s interesting to see that the way we eat food literally shapes how the city operates and how people govern it.”

Experiential learning opportunities like these are also available to students back at the Rome campus. There, classes meet to study in the Rome Center’s own olive grove, citrus grove, and beehives. They learn about how these farming practices make up major cultural building blocks in Italy. Elisa Ascione, associate dean of academic affairs and professor at the Rome Center, facilitates some of these programs. “We involve the environmental studies class, the food class, and the Italian classes,” she says. “Even the theology class would come and talk about olives in symbolic terms.” For each farming practice (olives, citrus, and beekeeping), the center hosts a day of learning and harvest. “It’s a moment of communal work, but also sharing and being together,” she says. And, at the end, students get to sample the olive oil, marmalade, and honey—the fruits of their labor.