By Becca Falivene Grillot, BA ’10
The summer Rome program makes the cornerstone UDallas Rome experience accessible to students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience it – athletes, seminarians, transfer students, Bachelor of Science majors and even students from other universities.
Dean and Director of the Rome Program Dr. Ron Rombs dreamed up the summer semester over a decade ago and grew it to its current form before handing over the reins to Summer Rome Program Director Dr. Andrew Moran. Summer students have the option of enrolling in one or both of the summer sessions, which are bridged by the traditional Greece trip attended by students from both sessions together.
Each session offers two of the regular Rome Core classes. This past summer, students took Western Civilization I with Dr. Susan Hanssen, Western Theological Tradition with Dr. Irene Alexander, Literary Traditions III with Fr. Stephen Gregg, and even had the privilege of taking Philosophy of the Human Person from President Jonathan J. Sanford. Teaching the course over an intensive three-week period, Dr. Sanford delivered onsite lectures atop the Aventine Hill in Rome as well as multiple locations in Athens, and he even presided over the traditional Greek Olympic games in which students participate each semester.
“A veritable treasure trove of reminders of why we do what we do at the University of Dallas was bequeathed to me” through the opportunity to teach on the Rome campus, Sanford said in his Faculty Day Address this fall. “None of it makes sense if we lose sight of our raison d’être as the Catholic liberal arts university seeking to orient our students to wisdom, truth, and virtue. So, let’s not lose sight of that.”
Due to the shortened format of the summer Rome program, “students take advantage of their time here with a greater intensity,” Moran said. “The mix of students, with so many of the students meeting each other for the first time at Due Santi, means an even greater openness to new friendships. Surprisingly and delightfully, though they are such a mix, the summer Romers tend to become even tighter as a group than do the fall or spring ones.”
University of Notre Dame student Vincent Micheli ’27, a Cistercian alumnus, joined the cohort this year out of a desire for the intellectually immersive experience he knew he wouldn’t find anywhere else.
“UDallas has clearly specialized in the Rome program and classical education,” he said. “If you’re going to study in a place so significant to the ancient world, you’d want a program led by a university that’s willing to lean into that aspect of their heritage.”
“What our students learn as cultural pilgrims is not a mere collection of important facts about what they experience on their visits,” Sanford explained. “We provide them with the narrative structure by means of which Western Civilization and the Catholic tradition are living and real. They grasp the ‘big story’ through this program, and see themselves in it.”
Summer Romers hit all the highlights of the full Rome semester, including a northern Italy trip. Summer I students travel to Florence and Assisi, with stops in Siena and Subiaco, and Summer II students explore Padua and Venice. Summer II students even enjoy “10-day,” an independent travel break that serves as a highlight for Romers of all semesters.
Moran explained that this summer Greece trip may have been the first Rome cohort to venture to Lepanto, “where we had lunch on the gorgeous beach and where Dr. Sue Hanssen rhapsodically explained how Don John of Austria saved Catholic Europe from the Turks with the very site of the great naval battle, the Gulf of Corinth, right behind her.”
From there, Romers, professors and their families traveled to Delphi, Athens, Nafplion (complete with excursions to Mycenae, Epidaurus and the islands of Hydra and Spetses) and Olympia before ferrying back to Italy.
“We were adventuring and experiencing things with the professors,” Micheli said. “There was a moment where I found myself on this patch of rock, and then I looked over and the Acropolis was right there, and I realized that I was on the Areopagus. That was a really cool feeling to be in a place that I don’t think I had ever planned on going in my life but I had learned so much about in books.”
UDallas student Bailey Haas ’27, a basketball student-athlete, said the Rome experience “made the classroom come to life” and that President Sanford’s class challenged students to come to their own informed conclusions.
“Dr. Sanford did a great job of explaining that it actually does matter how I view the human person because how you view the human person is how you treat the human person,” Haas said.
Sanford’s insightful personal touch allowed students to engage with both ancient and contemporary philosophers, as well as philosophical questions surrounding modern issues such as artificial intelligence.
The class, compressed into only three weeks of the six-week session due to President Sanford’s responsibilities on the Irving campus, included a night class as well as a morning class. Micheli explained that in the evening class, students screened and discussed the movie The Matrix as a springboard for confronting modern philosophical questions.
“It especially helped me to think of other popular media and how it might have materialist elements,” Micheli said.
