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Student Life
While we take studying abroad seriously and have high academic standards, it’s not all study, study, study! There are a lot of other things that students do while they're with us in Rome.
- Program-sponsored events often include soccer games, gelato outings, night tours of Rome, bowling, movie nights, and other events that seek to bring students into our community and connect them to their fellow program participants.
- Students travel to exciting places, both as part of the curriculum (on field trips) and independently. Whether as a class to Pompeii, Florence, and Venice or on their own to Milan, Athens, Paris, Budapest, London, or Barcelona, students travel often in small groups. Rome is well-connected by train and air to all of Europe and students take advantage of the city’s centrality to Europe and the Mediterranean in making the most of their time in Italy and the long weekends provided by the class schedule.
- Students volunteer, giving back to their temporary community through exciting opportunities to engage people from across the globe. Visit our Community Involvement page for more.
- Our campus is located in a neighborhood in the heart of Rome that students come to know well. It boasts restaurants, fresh fruit and vegetable (and cheese and bread) markets, grocery stores, and, best of all, gelato and coffee shops (“bars”). In fact, students become regulars at the bar on the same block as our campus. It is here that many have their first Italian cappuccino! The neighborhood is not touristy, so Semester in Rome participants begin to feel like locals pretty quickly.
- Community dinners are an important part of our living-learning community at the Semester in Rome. Twice each week small groups prepare meals for the community using recipes they bring from home or favorites left by previous groups. Students are responsible for planning, shopping, and cooking. For many, this is one of the highlights of their time in Rome.
- Rome has many churches, and a small number offer services in English. Whatever their denominational affiliation is, students usually find a church home in Rome. Many students become involved in the lives of the congregation and some past participants have even gotten to know families who have become their families away from home.
While students participate in the Semester in Rome, they are part of a community, not just living in a foreign country. Life in our learning-living community enriches students' experiences in many ways!