Imagine walking down the Corso Italia in the Tuscan city of Arezzo. It’s June; the scent of truffles lingers, your shoes click on cobblestones, and the sun shines on stucco buildings. You’re surrounded by everything quintessentially Italian, yet you notice something familiar: young people with Oklahoma and Texas accents, clad in crimson and cream. They’re engaged in walking tours and projects, ducking into 14th-century churches, chatting and joking with the local merchants. They appear at ease, at home yet far away from home.

This has been the summer scene in Arezzo—a city of some 100,000 near Florence—for over a decade. Each May through July, around 400 University of Oklahoma students and faculty travel here for study abroad experiences, and others come for a semester or full academic year. More than 5,000 students have studied with OU in Arezzo (OUA), taking courses with OU faculty and treating Italy as their classroom.

“We wanted to have a place that felt a bit like the OU campus in Norman, but wasn’t,” explains Rebecca Cruise, associate provost for Global Engagement, the office that oversees Education Abroad. “Norman is a sister city to Arezzo, and the community engagement that coalesces around OU is also a Norman-Arezzo connection. Arezzo locals know everyone. Businesses have hosted interns, and they really embrace having the students there.”

OUA strives to mix a supportive academic environment with plenty of cross-cultural programming, including internships, mixers with local students and visits to organizations. The result is an exchange between communities, with OU giving back to Arezzo in turn through efforts like the Big Event day of community service, a cross-cultural conference with local high school students and OU’s President’s Community Scholars, and a now-legendary Halloween haunted house for local kids. 

“We are able to do those things because we have a whole team of people at OUA, many of them local, who are able to pick up the phone and work magic,” Cruise says. “That’s what makes this experience so incredible for our students.”

This October, OUA celebrates its official 10th anniversary. Though the first Arezzo program launched in 2007 under current directors Kirk and Charlotte Duclaux, 2016 marked the opening of its physical headquarters, the Kathleen and Francis Rooney Family Residential Learning Center (RFC). Housed in a renovated 13th-century monastery, the RFC contains classrooms, student residence halls and a variety of amenities including a kitchen, garden and library. But the building is merely a backdrop to the moments of connection and self-discovery that give studying abroad meaning, year after year.

Roughly one in four OU students has an international experience, with many ranging far beyond Italy. There are faculty-led programs in locales from Germany to Morocco to Taiwan; more than 50 partner universities and seven affiliate providers who operate across the globe; and international internship opportunities. OU’s second study center in Puebla, Mexico, is led by Director Armando Garcia and offers a dynamic alternative to OUA. OU in Puebla is geographically accessible and immersive, with short-term programs in health care, Spanish and more—as well as courses at partner Universidad Popular Autonóma del Estado de Puebla.

Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Rhonda Dean Kyncl led this summer’s Anatomy in Puebla program, which offers a pre-health course and an intercultural perspective on health-related fields. 

“I don’t think students expect the cultural experience that Puebla offers,” she explains. “It’s such a unique city with Indigenous, African and American influences. Parts of that city are so modern, yet the center of the city is very traditional. You see Puebla from its beginnings to its 21st-century manifestation, which makes students think about their own growth and their own cultures.”

Over the past decade, Dean Kyncl has also led programs to Arezzo; Taipei, Taiwan; and Clermont-Ferrand, France. Study abroad, she says, has been “transformational.”

“I think one of the gifts of study abroad is the connection to the students,” she notes. “They’re so focused while they’re there and they don’t have any other distractions. They’re doing their coursework while also building a relationship with faculty and each other.”

If one of OU’s tenets is “we change lives,” few opportunities embody that like studying abroad. To speak with those who have experienced it is to hear about dramatic shifts in perspectives, forever friendships, new career paths and increased confidence. Take Emmaus Patterson, an OU master’s student in Adult and Higher Education who earned a bachelor’s in psychology last year. Patterson spent her sophomore year abroad, traveling by boat during the fall with Semester at Sea and attending University College Cork in Ireland last spring—experiences that shaped her both personally and professionally.

“The biggest thing was learning how to be uncomfortable and be alone—really, really good things to learn that you don’t necessarily think of when you’re going into study abroad,” says Patterson, of Tulsa.

“Semester at Sea stretched me in new ways; my ceiling for growth went higher. I realized it’s easier to travel than I thought,” Patterson says. “In Ireland, the culture was very different from what I was used to; that, combined with the rain and being isolated from home. I had to decide for myself, ‘What do I want to do every day? What’s important to me? And how do I make a successful semester?’ ”

Junior biology major Jack McCarty, a native of Nashville, Tenn., is similarly outspoken about study abroad’s benefits. With assistance from scholarships, McCarty has participated in three faculty-led programs: Global Perspectives in Puebla, Organic Chemistry in Arezzo and Withrow Leadership Scholars in France. He’s also hoping to study abroad in 2027.

“Going to Mexico was interesting because it let me compare how we teach Mexican culture versus actually being there,” he says. “It was fascinating to see differences in how cultures think.”

 Education Abroad continues to grow, Cruise says, with a goal of making experiences like Patterson’s and McCarty’s possible for all students. The program is currently expanding faculty-led offerings from OU’s three campuses and designing new opportunities such as semesters at OUA for first-year students. 

While there are always new challenges to navigate, Cruise acknowledges, her staff has learned to stay nimble. “We’re trying to be dynamic in what we’re doing. We have to grow with students, faculty and program leaders, trying to find the next creative and innovative thing.” 

She says the 10th anniversary of OUA is also a moment to reflect on the “why” behind it all—in particular, lives enriched by opportunity. 

“I’ve had the privilege of working in international education now for almost two decades,” Cruise adds, “and it is incredible to know students before they go abroad and then see them when they come back. Even a short-term program, if done intentionally, has an impact.” 

Maura McAndrew is a senior program coordinator in OU’s Education Abroad office, a part-time OU faculty member and a freelance writer and editor.

Helping the Next Sooners Explore Arezzo

OU’s campus in Arezzo, Italy, was built to make studying abroad a core part of an OU degree. Zach Messitte says the intention from the beginning of the Arezzo program—years before the campus opened in 2016—was clear. “An international experience can be part of your four-year undergraduate education, no matter what you're studying,” adds the former dean of International Programs and current chair of its board of visitors.

Today, he notes, Arezzo is a signature OU experience, with students cycling all year through programs as varied as journalism, engineering and leadership.

Arezzo functions as an OU campus. Students stay on track earning credit for their degrees and travel with classmates and faculty while remaining closely connected to Oklahoma—right down to watching Sooner football on Saturdays from Italy. That familiarity helps reassure families and makes the experience less daunting for students. The location also matters, Messitte says. Because Arezzo is a Tuscan community far away from the typical tourist path, students immerse themselves in authentic Italian life while they study, intern and volunteer.

Recently, Messitte and his wife, Julia, established a fund to support the Arezzo program—with an offer to match up to $10,000 in gifts. They encourage young alumni who experienced  Arezzo to “pay it forward” so cost never keeps today’s OU students from this life-changing experience. To give, click here.