For artists and designers, having great visual material to work with is crucial. The most important visual resource any designer has is not the ability to look up imagery in a library or even on-line, but rather it is the imagery that they have in their minds' eyes. That's the kind of imagery that sparks new ideas.
UW-Stevens Point's art, architecture, and interior design study tour to Northern Italy this past summer provided students an unparalleled learning experience.
"Our students get a different cultural point of view, especially as they travel," says Associate Dean and Interior Architect Division Head Nisha Fernando. "They see different kinds of architecture and interior architecture and the use of different materials. They really get a range of design experiences."
"I could show my students a photo of the Torre dei Lamberti in Verona, for instance, but it would be an image a few feet high, projected on a screen 10-20 feet away, in a climate-controlled classroom," Art History Professor Larry Ball observes.
"By contrast, the students in this picture had just climbed up all 100 yards of the tower, certainly a more vivid memory than anything I could tell them in class. So too was the view, including a well-preserved Roman amphitheatre almost as big as the Colosseum in Rome, Roman and medieval bridges over the rushing Adige river, just after it leaves the Alps, the huge and famous Romanesque basilica of S. Zeno Maggiore, a Disney-like medieval palace, Piazza delle Erbe, still functioning as the open market, as it always has since the middle ages-and tons else. That's just one view from one tower in one city," Ball added.
It's also just one account from the thousands of stories our students and professors have to share as members of the university community that is a national leader in study abroad, a university preparing students to be global citizens as we are Connecting to the Future.