Course Details
Program dates
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Travel dates
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Course credits
ENVS 437K or UEPP 437
Total credits: 8
Prerequisites
This multicultural, excursion-rich, and food business/planning focused program offers intensive study and numerous field trips in a major European business and cultural center: Florence, Italy and surrounding countrysides. Study is in ecogastronomy, economic, and social movements, as well as in sensory taste sciences. Students study food cultures and gastronomy entrepreneurship – and experience a unique food economy at Camporbiano in the Tuscan countryside. Experience language and culture at the Istituto Galileo Galilei, authentic regional cuisine and cooking in Florence. Includes excursion with cycling to the Maremma wilderness and national park.
Program Highlights
- Experience Italian farm and home cooking with Italian families and in hands-on culinary intensives in Italy, the home of the “Slow Food” movement
- Visit Fiesole (Florence) and Sovana (southern Tuscany) for their Etruscan sites and ruins
- Visit Novoli, a "zero-kilometer" supermarket
- Visit San Gimignano in the Tuscan countryside
- Picnic at Pratolino, the Renaissance Medici park
- Complete a course in Italian cooking (two separate days)
- Enjoy guided tours and museum visits, e.g., Palazzo Vecchio and the Boboli gardens
- Visit Mukki, integrated plant-animal sustainable farm
- Practice sensory taste science
- Study natural animal breeding and biodynamic farming
- Visit Senza Spreco, sustainable supply chain/waste management
- Complete a program in language and culture at the Istituto Galileo
- Enjoy a sketching tour of markets in Florence
- Enjoy the “Camporbiano” experience in integrated farm and food economies
- Visit the Mercato Centrale, and artisan food retailers
- Enjoy three days in the Maremma Regional Park (agritourism, cycling, boating, swimming on the coast)
- Consider excursions to performances of dance, opera, and music in the palaces and courtyards and centuries-old amphitheaters (optional)
- Participate in carbon offsetting at “Inspiration Farm” in Whatcom County (optional)
Expectations of Participants
With or without reasonable accommodations, must be able to walk and or sit for one-two hours/day in museums and cultural sites, optional hiking. Weather is warm. In the Maremma National Park, several hours of cycling/day.
Refrigeration is available for the duration of the program.
Students must work with the WWU Disability Access Center, Wilson Library 170, (360) 650-3083, drs@wwu.edu. For service eligibility, a complete diagnostic description from a qualified professional is required. Specific accommodations or services are determined on an individual basis and are modified to meet the unique needs of the student and their academic experience. Accommodation policies and procedures are highly individualized and centered on self-advocacy, realistic self-appraisal, and student growth. Each quarter, students need to activate their approved accommodations for each class. Students choose which of their approved accommodations they want to activate for each class.
We strongly recommend that all students traveling on this Global Learning Program are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to maximize the safety of the student cohort. Participants must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to departure, or provide a proof of an official COVID-19 vaccination waiver granted by WWU.
Participants are expected to abide by all attendance policies of the program, including those for classes and excursions, and to adhere to the program schedule. Since the programs are academic in nature, parents, friends, partners, and families are not permitted on any part of the Global Learning Program. Personal travel must be outside of the course dates and not conflict with coursework or excursion schedules. Travel plans should be vetted by faculty beforehand to ensure personal plans do not interfere with meeting the learning objectives of the course.
