Talk to Wooster
Fall 2007
Wooster in Tuscany
A unique living and learning experience created just for Wooster students
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Story
Imagine for a moment that you are a citizen in Siena, Italy. The year is 1348 and life is good. The economy is flourishing, and the population, now at 55,000, is expected to continue growing. Construction has begun on a new cathedral that will outshine one in neighboring Florence.
And then darkness falls. In a matter of months, the Black Death kills half of Siena’s residents. By the time the plague has spent its fury, the majority of your friends and neighbors have perished.
The walls of the doomed cathedral still remain, and it is here, during a research trip to the Tuscany region in 2005, that things clicked for Madonna Hettinger, professor of history. If Wooster students were to truly understand the plague as a physical experience, using their senses as well as their intellect, they must come to the walled city of Siena. They must come not as tourists, but as community participants.
Her proposal that the College develop a summer living and learning program was enthusiastically embraced by the administration. Enrollment in the College’s on-campus summer courses has plummeted, and the College is actively developing opportunities to study abroad in the summer, said Shila Garg, dean of the faculty and chair of the International Education Committee. The summer courses are especially useful for science majors, whose classes often prevent them from studying off-campus during the school year. Hettinger’s Wooster in Tuscany program now has two sets of alumni, from the summers of 2006 and 2007.
