Energy and Sustainability Policy
Program Office

Study abroad in Italy with ESP's Dan Kasper!

 View the trip brochure here.

Application can be found here.

A note from Dan:

Hello ESP students!  I wanted to make you all aware of an outstanding opportunity to fulfill your foreign studies/internship program requirement by taking an online Sustainability course and traveling to Italy to learn about and experience sustainability and Italian culture.  I will be taking students there from May 19th – 30th of 2018.

 

I teach two required courses in the ESP Program (EME 444 and EM SC 240) and also teach at Delaware Technical Community College in Delaware, where I am also the International Education Coordinator. I have developed an online Sustainability and Society course at Delaware Tech, which after completed is followed up with a 9+ day trip to Italy.  I have taken students - including a few Penn State students - on a similar experience to Switzerland the past three years.

 

The course itself is similar to EM SC 240, but with a bit more of a political economy focus, and a lighter workload (the travel experience is part of the course, so the pre-departure content is much lighter). It consists of a 12 week online course, and will take place from February 5thMay 4th. It is a survey course that covers a number of sustainability-related topics, including the Market Society, “Sustainable Growth,” Social and Environmental Justice, Quality of Life, Consumption and Materialism, Natural Resources, Climate Change, Sustainable Buildings, Food, and Permaculture and Transition Towns. You will also explore some elements of Italian culture, history, and sustainability prior to departure.

 

After you complete the course in the spring, the whole class (usually between 10 and 14 people), along with me and another instructor, will spend 9 full days in Italy. The focus of the travel portion is experiential learning – tours, hands-on training, and discussions with local stakeholders. For the first part, we will be in Rome, where we will experience a mixture of culture, history, and sustainability. I have not yet been able to solidify the sustainability content, but we will explore local sustainability issues such as water, food, transition towns, and/or social justice. I am also working on a service learning component, which may involve working with the homeless population, urban gardens, or possibly refugees. You will have evenings off to explore, as well as a full free day. I will provide options for excursions during free time (e.g. locations in Rome, Florence, etc.). We will stay in a hostel (it’s really more like a hotel) that is a 20 minute walk from the Colosseum, and a 15 minute metro ride to Central Rome. Our hostel is a short walk to the metro, and is a few minute walk from the main train station.

 

The second part of the experience will focus on sustainable agriculture in Central/Southern Italy, and the culture surrounding it. For this portion, we will stay in guest houses on a sustainable farm (website – use Google translate) in Calvanico, Italy. Calvanico is near the famous (and gorgeous) Amalfi Coast. While there, we will experience and learn about life on the farm and how they integrate things like circular resource use, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, and soil management into their farm practices. We will also learn to gather wild edible herbs, make traditional bread and pizza, and tour a lemon farm (that area is known for its lemon production), and another to-be-determined sustainability experience such as sustainable building techniques. We will also have a group dinner and discuss rural sustainability issues with local stakeholders. We will have all of our meals on the farm, as much as possible eating food grown there.

 

We will then spend a little over a day in and around Salerno, which is a small city on the Mediterranean coast. Salerno is less than an hour from Pompeii, and I’ll arrange optional excursions to Pompeii, Capri, the Amalfi Coast, and (this is 100% where I’m going!) a world famous hiking trail called the Path of the Gods. We will then head back to Rome for one last day/goodbye, a celebration dinner, then leave the next morning.

 

In terms of cost, the travel cost is $3600, which includes airfare from the East Coast, all in-country transportation, lodging, tours, all breakfasts and multiple other meals, and emergency student health insurance. In addition to this, you will register and pay for a 3-credit course at Delaware Tech. The registration process is very easy.  It can be done online.  Out-of-state tuition at Delaware Tech is $362/credit, significantly lower than Penn State's, which is a nice fringe benefit since the credits transfer.  You will of course have to have a valid passport, and it cannot expire prior to 6 months after the arrival date in Italy.

 

I have attached the brochure and application. The application process is pretty well-described here, but I can provide any additional details that you would like.  

 

Okay, so if you are interested - even remotely so - please contact me!  I am happy to go over any course and travel details.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. I hope to hear from you soon!

 

Best Regards,

Dan Kasper

djk167@psu.edu