Highlights from the Spring term 2016

International students, scholarships, cultural activities, and awards...

...on an island of the Venice lagoon, in a spring term…
Since February 15, 2016, 138 students of 19 different nationalities coming from the member universities of VIU have been attending courses taught by 26 distinguished professors.
Besides core courses on Italy, Cultures of the World and Global Challenges, the spring term has focused on Environmental Management And Sustainable Development. This specialization track gives students coming from different backgrounds the opportunity to acquire skills that will be useful in developing careers in, or linked to this field. Additional courses based on common principles of research through parallelisms and complementarities have enriched the range of educational possibilities on interdisciplinary themes such as “The Family”, “The Aesthetics of Privacy”, or “Management of the Industrial and Crafts Heritage”, and non-Italian students have improved their interaction with everyday life in Venice thanks to the Italian as a foreign language course.

Watch the video presentation of Spring 2016 courses!

Open Lectures
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Dr. Andrea Valcalda and Prof. Piero Martin, guest speakers of Spring 2016 Opening Ceremony

Two Honoured Guests inaugurated the season’s academic activities with a lectio magistralis about energy transition and technological opportunities, delivered during the Opening Ceremony: Dr. Andrea Valcalda, Head of Sustainability at Enel SpA discussed about “Leading the energy transition: integrating sustainability into a “progressive” business model” and Professor Piero Martin, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Università degli Studi di Padova, talked about the scientific and technological challenges of “Fusion: Energy for tomorrow, opportunities for today”.
Other guest speakers were invited to debate interesting, topical issues in the VIULECTURES series, an initiative promoted by VIU and open to the public:
Prof. Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi, invited from the University of Lausanne by VIU professor Martina Avanza, brought a comparative analysis on “The Arab Uprisings” which, far from being homogeneous phenomena, contributed to redefine the conditions of the local actions;

Prof. Miles Orvell, from Philadelphia Temple University, discussed with VIU professor Klaus Benesch (LMU) about “Spectacular Ruins” and the historical rule of photography in the understanding and memory of this “archive of material destruction”.

Internships and mobility
VIU promotes international mobility by providing internship opportunities and scholarships to students of the member universities who attend the Globalization Program. During the Spring 2016 term, 14 candidates applied for an internship in one of the agreed host institutions in Italy.
The 5 winners of the scholarship to support their internship experience in Italy have been announced during the Closing Ceremony of the Spring 2016 term:

dsc 4305 Lisa Marie Kriegmair, LMU
Harriette Moore, CF Exchange
Ekaterina Mikhailova-Smolniakova, EUSP
Laura Kirlum, LMU
Lei Zhang, Duke University

2 candidates are competing to carry out research for their final master’s thesis through the international mobility channels offered by VIU: their research proposal and curricula are currently under examination. The winners will be offered a scholarship to partially support travel and housing expenses.

During the Closing Ceremony, the winner of this year's Maria Weber Scholarship was also announced by the VIU Dean, Prof. Carlo Giupponi and the Director of the VIU School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Prof. Luca Pes:

dsc 4321 Agnese Ziliani, Ca’ Foscari University
Research project title: "Gender Issues and Feminist Literature in Modern and Contemporary Taiwan"

The Maria Weber Scholarship is awarded to a student of the Globalization Program of the spring semester with the best dissertation proposal on a theme related to China or Asian studies. Read more...

Former students who have already benefited of this internship and mobility opportunities shared their testimony and suggestions in these video interviews.

Excellence and Internationality
VIU strives to promote excellence and diversity in the Globalization Program and to provide a powerful learning experience in which students develop their capacity for critical thinking and creative problem solving.
During the Closing Ceremony, 9 students were awarded an Excellence decoration for their evolving performance and achievements in the different courses attended:

dsc 4395 Zhen Du, Tsinghua University, Environmental Engineering
Laura Kirlum, LMU, Political Sciences
Ruiqiao Bai, Tsinghua University, Global Environmental Program
Xinming Du, Tsinghua University, Environment
Miriam Jost, LMU, Anthropology
Viktoria Unger, LMU, Science
Leonardo Mariangeli, Padua University, Political Science
Ekaterina Mikhailova-Smolnyakova, EUSP, Art History
Wendy Sun, Duke University, Environmental Sciences & Policy

Co-curricular program
Not just academic duties, but also an opportunity for travel, discoveries and funny moments: the Globalization Program offers a calendar of co-curricular activities, proposed by the professors or by VIU staff: an opportunity to discover and relate to the city of Venice, the lagoon and the Veneto region, taking teaching out of the classroom and into the field, and creating opportunities for students to socialize with their peers. The 34 activities in the program included site visits related to the courses, among which a power plant, the industrial port and the Venice lagoon, tours of cultural sites of interest, a weekly movie series, and a trip to Florence with Professor Annarita Paolieri teaching the Supplementary Art Course: Introduction to Renaissance Painting.
A special thanks to Professor Sara De Vido, to Ca’ Foscari University and to the students of the Venice Diplomatic Society, who actively collaborated in creating the first Venice Universities’ Model United Nations: a selection of 90 students from the over 180 applicants from VIU, Ca’ Foscari and Padova universities took part in a three-day simulation, acting like real UN delegates partaking in work sessions of various United Nations committees with a focus on the current Syrian Crisis.

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