Welcome to the blog of Stockton University’s Faculty Led Program to Italy.
This class was developed by Hospitality & Tourism faculty member, Donna Albano.
This course was conceived two years ago at a hospitality educator’s conference in St. Louis, Missouri. A colleague and representative of a company called Study Tour Italy (SAI) nonchalantly inquired about the possibility of Stockton’s Hospitality & Tourism Management Studies (HTMS) program offering a Faculty Led Program to Italy. My immediate reaction was one of excitement and inquiry.
Our program had just completed our first 5 year program review and one of our areas needing strength was a program component that would expose students to more global and international elements as well as the need to align better with our diversity & global issues goals set forth by our program.
At the same time the university was immersed in a wide ranging effort to articulate Essential Learning Outcomes (ELO’s) that all students should achieve during their college experience at Stockton. Global Awareness is one of our 10 ELO’s.
The Faculty Led Program was designed so that it could be included in the HTMS Program as an elective within the program but serve as an At Some Distance Course for non-majors and would fill that void in our program and meet the larger college wide alignment to the Global Awareness ELO.
Fast forward past the planning, research, meetings, costing, itinerary building, coordination and paperwork to create the course. By fall of 2014 the course was “on the books” as an HTMS Study Tour Elective. Marketing began September, 2014 with a flyer outlining the course itinerary, estimating the costs and detailing the requirements. This was distributed at our International Fair, online and via email.
During spring 2015 registration students began to register and financially commit. The Dean of the School of Business requested that minimally 10 students register in order to run the class.
Thank goodness – 13 fabulous, bright, eager, fun, motivated young ladies (yes, all ladies) decided to take this journey to Italy on the first Faculty Led Program for the HTMS Program at Stockton University.
