Still Time to Sign Up to Study Abroad in Ambialet in Spring 2020

Still+Time+to+Sign+Up+to+Study+Abroad+in+Ambialet+in+Spring+2020

If you are thinking about studying abroad next semester at SFU’s campus in Ambialet, France, Steve LoRusso, a professor of Exercise Physiology who taught there last semester, encourages you to just do it.

LoRusso and the other members of last semester’s Ambialet group visited many different French cities, including Toulouse, Albi and Paris.

Outside of France, the spring 2019 Ambialet cohort visited Barcelona, Spain.

LoRusso believes that it was during these expeditions that he was able to grow closer with his students, and the students with one another.

“It was a family-like atmosphere,” said LoRusso. “It was on those excursions that we really got to know one another.”

LoRusso taught a senior capstone course in Ambialet last spring. His class read the novel, The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

The novel explores the history of cancer. Each week, LoRusso’s students read a section of the book and then participated in discussion about what they learned from the readings.

“We had a lot of good in-class discussions about the disease,” LoRusso said.

“There is a lot more to the history of cancer than we originally thought and I wanted to help my students understand that.”

To find out more about the Ambialet Program, contact Julie Horvath, the director of the Office for Study Abroad, at 814-472-3245 or jhorvath@francis.edu.

To hear more from Steve LoRusso about last spring’s Ambialet experience, listen to the second half of the podcast below: