Pending student interest, the Committee on Off Campus Programs and College deans will decide this term whether or not the Italian Studies Program will take place next year.
The 11-week program in Rome, Italy, ran for the first time last year and is approved for the fall of 1995. But the Italian department is hoping to garner enough student interest to hold the program in 1994.
Last year six students participated in the program, French and Italian Professor Walter Stephens said. Eight students have shown interest in attending next year, but the College requires a minimum of 10 students to justify funding an off campus program, he said.
The deadline for applications is Mar. 31.
"It's a dicey situation [because] there has been a bureaucratic glitch," Stephens said. "We thought we had approval to send it every year, but COCA approved it for every other year, so if we get enough people [for this coming fall], we'll have to petition to send it."
The program, which lets students from all majors study in Rome, replaced a Foreign Studies Program in Padova that catered to Italian and Romance Language majors. Stephens said deans canceled the Italian FSP several years due to a the lack of interest from Italian majors.
The department has three or four Italian majors a year and an average of five or six people applied for the program each year, Stephens said.
"The program came about because the original FSP we had a while back was for Italian majors and only ran every couple of years," said Stephens, "Three times we tried to send it and it only went once."
The revised program is designed to let students majoring in such departments as history, art history, religion, anthropology, government and psychology combine their concentration with the cultural importance of Rome, Stephens said.
The program is funded by the same money that was used for the Padova FSP, according to Assistant Dean of Faculty and Exchange Coordinator, Peter Armstrong. He said it costs about $25,00 to $30,000, in addition to professors' salaries, to fund an off campus program.
"It is very difficult to get money at this point," said Armstrong, "since this FSP replaced the program is Padova, which was canceled three or four years ago, the budget was already there."
Stephens said the Italian department would like to gain momentum for the program by having it run every year because he thinks Italian language and culture is important to the study of humanities.
"There is a saying, 'Roma Caput Mundi," said Stephens, "Rome, Head of the World."
According to Stephens, about 205 students take Italian language classes here each year. Two Language Study Abroad programs are offered every fall and spring in Siena, each which take 20 students, he said.
Stephens attributed the lack of interest in FSPs partly to the increase of double majors, which does not allow students as much flexibility in taking non-major classes or going on an off campus program.
If the required number of students apply for next year's program, Stephens said he will try to find a way to send the trip.
"I would hope to get to the cut off of 10 and if we do to work it out with the administration to share the cost in some unconventional ways," he said.
Biology Professor Richard Holmes, who chairs COCA, said the most important factor in determining whether a new off campus program is feasible is faculty interest.
"Faculty are the people who can really push [a program] through since it takes them off campus and departments have to find professors who are willing to go aboard for a term," Holmes said.
