On our way to the Pantheon on one of the many 100 degree days in Rome, Italy

You can hear the ubiquitous coughing. The sort of cough that has a raspy, almost wet sound to it. You can see it on people’s foreheads as beads of sweat gather into drips and on the damp backs of shirts. You can smell it in the air. It smells like a wood burning stove, but the smoke is mixed with plastics and metal. The tar that covers some of the sidewalks melts as you step on it, leaving an impression of your shoe. All these details sound like the setting of an end of the world story. But now imagine you are actually there guiding twenty students on an immersive, study abroad experience throughout all these events. What can you do to encourage active learning while facing these increasingly existential threats?

I spent June 2022 teaching a university study abroad course in Rome, Italy as well as other parts of the country. The day my students and I arrived in Rome was the day Italy removed the mask mandate for public transportation and coincided with the beginning of a record heatwave that spread from Italy to most of Europe. The pandemic and heat concerns were compounded by wildfires that burned uncontrollably during the month which caused ash to occasionally fall from the sky like warm snow.

We spent the month doing experimental video production and journalism using site-specific, locative storytelling. (Link from 2019’s course.) For the theory portion of the course, I frame our discussions around Timothy Morton’s concept of the hyperobject. A hyperobject refers “things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans.” While the course delves into the vastness of human history and geological deep time, we are also confronted by the everyday reality of climate change, geopolitical chaos, a raging pandemic, and infrastructure collapse — all things bigger than we can comprehend at once. You can feel the hyperobject everywhere. “Hyperobjects are here, right here in my social and experiential space. Like faces pressed against a window, they leer at me menacingly: their very nearness is what menaces,” Morton writes.

One of my students interviewing local artist and photographer Flavia about her art and politics

Since 2014, I’ve taught this international education course in both Rome and Ireland, and over the last decade, I’ve been fortunate to teach over a dozen study abroad courses. Each global education trip is unique, but I’ve been keenly aware of a trend toward more discomfort and unpredictability in the environment — even before the pandemic paused the pursuit of study abroad.

This trip, the first since parents felt it was “safe enough” to send their children overseas, showed me that travel education is under threat of climate change, sickness, air quality issues, and accessibility. (Not to mention issues of exclusivity, class, and vulnerability.)

I love teaching global education. It’s difficult but rewarding. Transformative education and experimental design are part of my teaching philosophy and I believe that learning on location has valuable benefits. Besides getting students out of their comfort zones, active learning encourages deeper memory as education is tied to locations of exploration, merging learning with new sites, smells, and feelings. However, this June has prepared me for a future of uncertainty with this type of educational experience.

How do I best prepare students for a shifting world while also keeping them safe in the process? Traditionally, study abroad experiences are very structured. We know where we’re going and we can plan days ahead. The attempt is to build an experience that benefits the students educationally and keeps them safe while doing so. But this time, the lifting of the mask mandates shocked us into not knowing how to protect the students health when we’d originally planned on it.

Predictably, Covid cases spiked in June once again, though health officials do not plan on reenacting restrictions. The students masked as much as possible, but when you spend a month in a foreign country, you’re bound to encounter health related issues.

The pandemic issues were compounded by the sheer heat during our walking tours and outdoor education. This June, Italy experienced a heatwave that increased June temperatures 15 to 35 (!) degrees above average. The heatwave extended from Italy to the rest of Europe and North Africa.

We used to plan this trip in July, but the temperatures have become unbearable. We walk a lot on study abroad (my Apple watch clocked over 150 miles for the month) and the heat isn’t just detrimental, but damaging to students health — to say nothing of their instructors.

On the last week of our trip, temperatures were well above 100 degrees every day. Though a dry heat, the sun bakes the black cobblestones and emits heat from the ground and the sky. And while there is a considerable breeze, the air is warm and unpleasant. It rarely cooled off until well after 9pm.

Another threat was present as well: air quality and sporadic wildfires. Wildfires have increased globally due to climate change, from massive fires on the west coast of the United States to fires in the Arctic. Climate change destabilizes and destroys. In the outskirts of Rome, wildfires burned uncontrollably while we were there. The wind caused the smoke to fill the streets, lowering the air quality to nearly unbreathable levels. For two days, ashes rained from the sky in one of the most dystopian images of my memory.

Smoke seen drifting heavily near the Vatican. Photo taken facing West on Cola di Rienzo, Prati, Rome on 27 June

The students were resilient throughout all this and grateful for their experience. Whether this because they are just happy to be studying abroad after years of being educated from their Zoom screens, or because Gen Z is more tolerant of these existential horrors, they rarely complained. But they also don’t have anything to compare it to. The sun feels hotter and I know climate change is getting worse.

The pandemic has ravaged cities all over the planet. There is now a lack of service employees in many sectors and cities like Rome are overwhelmed by garbage. The heat is exhausting and no matter how many times you tell students to drink enough water, they still manage to dehydrate. (The benefit in Rome is that there are public fountains everywhere.) On a crowded bus, heat and disease occupy the space.

I won’t give up on global education. The students can only experience a course like this on location and I’m grateful to have returned for the first time since 2019. Perhaps it was a year too early to go back, but each year forward will only get warmer. As the Simpsons altered dialog meme goes: Bart says, “This is the hottest summer of my life,” to which Homer replies, “This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life.”

The trip still contains an immense amount of beauty and unforgettable (and Instagrammable) sites and experiences. It’s worth focusing on the wonder of it all as well as being aware of what environmental pressures we encounter. I’m happy to have had the opportunity to discuss these issues with the students. Not just our course topics that empowered them to interview local Italians about media, culture, class, access, and equity, but also to inspire conversation about what comes next.

I did not place the burden of negotiating a life in turmoil left for them by previous generations on my Gen Z students because we live on this planet together. But I did make them aware that their 2022 trip was far different than previous study abroad experiences. We’ll do our best to take action and inspire change and we’ll have to do it collectively. The more we see the changing Earth with our own eyes, the more tangible the stakes, the more responsibility to take action. The trip ended and we returned to the States, but the work never ends.