TXST students learn Italian while giving back with service-learning projects in Italy

The program includes volunteer opportunities such as playing dominos with senior citizens, assisting in a pizza fundraising event benefitting families of persons with disabilities, and spearheading the Sant’Anna Institute’s Pride Month event.

Faculty-led programs are led by TXST professors where students participate in lectures, excursions, and cultural activities. Most programs are offered during the summer for two to four weeks. Students usually take two courses while abroad, which are taught in English unless it’s a foreign language program, and receive TXST credits.

Moira DiMauro-Jackson, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the Department of World Languages and Literatures and academic program director, leads the study abroad program.

DiMauro-Jackson arrived in San Marcos from Rome on Aug. 10, 1982, as one of seven international students to attend the university that year and one of the first few from Europe. She would later earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at TXST.

She began teaching French, one of five languages she fluently speaks, at TXST in 1987 and Italian in 2005, which is the same year she started her first study abroad program.

This was before Service-Learning Excellence existed, which is an experiential learning approach in which students apply materials relevant to their course work and degree program in service-based projects.

Justin Friedman participated in the summer 2019 trip and said service learning was hard work but well worth the effort over the duration of the program.

“You have to pour the right amount of ingredients: a cup of patience, an open mind, three teaspoons of kindness, and a lot of love,” Friedman wrote in his evaluation. “You mix those all together and you get what is essentially the cake mix for service learning. The rest is just being present and letting the cake mix sit in the oven. It was a great opportunity for me to feel like I had given back to the communities that we've been living in these past few weeks.”

The TXST students’ service captured the attention of Surrentum, a magazine based in Sorrento, Italy, which wrote about TXST students several times, most recently in August 2023.

DiMauro-Jackson found ways to create the volunteer projects in collaboration with the organizations and communities who would benefit most from a group of university students lending helping hands.

“The magic of the program is adding the content in the context,” she said. “I am mapping their learning in a way that makes sense, and it's so much fun for me to be their teacher mama and guide them through this journey.

“Absorption and retention of the material is going to stick because of the mnemonic journeys they’re taking. They come back to their society better in so many ways because they learn to respect, adapt, honor, and adore the way it’s done here versus another country and vice versa.”