This Year’s International Symposium is All About Building Community
Sophia Mena ’24 became one of Chatham University’s Study Abroad Ambassadors after spending a semester in Italy. (Courtesy Sophia Mena)
Sophia Mena ’24 was on a bus in Perugia, Italy, when a police officer asked for her ticket. Mena, a food studies student at Chatham University, didn’t have a ticket; she had to explain to the officers that she wasn’t trying to dodge the fare, but she had misunderstood how to obtain a bus pass. And she had to explain this misunderstanding in Italian.
Thankfully, she’d taken an Italian language class at Chatham before she left for her semester abroad.
“I’m a very shy person when it comes to speaking a language that is not my mother tongue,” Mena said. A language class in Italy, where the professor took Mena and other students into the city to shop and interact with locals, was also a huge help in navigating the Mediterranean country.
Mena, now back stateside, drew from her experiences navigating Perugia for her presentation Thursday at Chatham’s International Symposium. Her project covers how learning Italian helped her navigate cafes, grocery stores, restaurants, and public transit in the capital city of the Umbria region.
The International Symposium, held from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Mellon Board Room, is hosted by Chatham’s Office of International Affairs. Kate Emory, the coordinator of international student and scholar services, said the symposium is part of International Education Week, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of State.
“Our theme this year is building community through an international lens,” Emory said during an interview in her office in early November. “One of our goals is building community, so we want to see what that looks like through the students.”
Other appearances at the symposium include alumna Annia Aleman ’13, the keynote speaker. Current students who have recently returned from semesters abroad will also be there to talk about their experiences and how it affected their lives once they returned home, Emory said.
For Mena, the only way she could sum up her time in Italy was “amazing.” That adjective covered the food she ate, the classes she took, and the streets she walked in Perugia, a smaller city in central Italy. Mena knew before she came to Chatham that she wanted to study in the European country because of her interest in its history of gastronomy, food production, and global culinary influence.
“People always think, well, pizza is from Italy and pasta is from Italy, when in reality, it’s not,” she said. “It comes from a big history of immigrants and food traveling from country to country over time.”
Mena remembered brioche con panna, a treat made with Nutella and freshly whipped cream, more fondly than anything else she ate in Italy. (Courtesy Sophia Mena)
Even with her travel preparation, she was surprised by what she learned overseas: espresso shouldn’t be consumed after midday. Pizza was prepared in unexpected ways. And then there was carbonara—in the United States, the pasta is often cooked with bacon, lots of cheese, eggs, and cream. But what Mena saw in Italy was much simpler.
“Over there, all it really is is a little bit of eggs and a little bit of cheese,” she said.
But Mena most fondly remembered a sweet treat: a brioche bun filled with Nutella spread and panna, a sweet cream. “The owner of the cafe, he must have been in his 80s, and he would whip the cream every day, so it was really fresh stuff.”
More than anything, she said the best part of her trip was the people she met and the community she built. “Being able to travel with them and experience different parts of Perugia, whether that be eating or going to a new city— it was definitely a highlight of the trip, meeting my new friends.”
Mick Stinelli is a writer and digital content strategist at Chatham University. His work has previously appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 90.5 WESA, and WYEP.org.