Mentorship and Multicultural Learning in Italy

When students study abroad through the Pitzer in Italy program, they experience more than the country’s artistic and cultural legacies built over millennia. Program Directors Franca Mora and Elena Feboli help students live as the Italians do.

Mora and Feboli have run the Pitzer in Italy program for several decades. Located in the city of Parma, the program offers a personalized immersion into Italian language and society. Students live with local families in the city of Parma (home of the renowned parmesan cheese). They see performances at the 1800s opera house Teatro Regio. They roam through medieval castles and admire Renaissance art. They delve into history, sustainability, and regional identity on the island of Sardinia.

Students also partner with local organizations and institutions for independent projects integrating coursework with community engagement. Projects have ranged from migration and refugee centers to media arts initiatives and university research settings.

Throughout the semester, Mora and Feboli mentor students academically and personally, supporting their language development, independent projects, and intercultural learning alongside day-to-day adjustment.

“I feel very happy to welcome students in my town,” said Mora. “And to help them to learn about Italian culture and to participate in their growth.” 

Mora and Feboli meet weekly with their student cohort. Feboli said they are always available for one-on-one conversations with students. This could mean discussing independent projects and coursework or offering support to students during moments of cultural adjustment, such as feeling lonely or homesick.

Kevin Kish participated in the Pitzer in Italy program in 1996 as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College (Pitzer’s programs are also open to non-Pitzer undergraduates). Over thirty years later, he works as the director of the California Civil Rights Department. He remembers the program’s impact to this day.

“[Pitzer in Italy] created many opportunities for the students—involving music, food, travel, history, entertainment—but gave us space to explore, to challenge ourselves, to be actors in a different world than what we knew,” said Kish.

Designed to encourage both independence and guided reflection, the program emphasizes critical engagement with Italian social, cultural, and intellectual traditions.

About the Program Directors

This long-standing mentorship model is central to how the Pitzer in Italy program integrates coursework, independent projects, and community-based learning in Parma.

• Mora and Feboli are a mother-daughter duo 
• Mora has directed Pitzer in Italy since its founding in 1992 
• Feboli joined Mora in running the program in 2002 
• Mora and Feboli teach English, art history, and Italian culture

Mora first visited Pitzer in the 1980s when she brought Italian students to learn English. Later, the study abroad office asked for Mora’s help to establish a Pitzer-run program in her hometown of Parma.  

Thirty-four years later, Mora has seen generations of Pitzer students fall in love with Parma’s close-knit atmosphere and engage in multicultural learning. Mora has a B.A. and M.A. in Art History from the Università degli Studi di Bologna. She brings diverse expertise as a teacher, cultural mediator, and administrator to her role with Pitzer in Italy. Her languages include Italian, English, French, and Spanish.

Feboli is the president of the cultural association Discover Parma. She holds a B.A. in Art History and Preservation of Cultural Heritage from the Università di Pisa and a Master of History of Art from Warwick University. She also spent a semester at Pitzer as an international undergraduate student. Her languages include Italian, English, French, and Classics (Latin and Greek). She is also a certified Italian State Tour Guide.

Feboli appreciates how Pitzer in Italy’s multicultural programming helps students gain a “more global understanding of the world, not just the American way of seeing things.”

When Kish studied abroad in Parma, Feboli was a high school classmate of Kish’s host brother and Mora was the program’s sole director. Kish described Mora as “a warm and steady presence, ready to listen or lend a hand.”

“She also encouraged our freedom,” said Kish. “The experience made me a more critical thinker because I was exposed to intellectual, political, and cultural traditions that made clear a crucial fact about the world: there is not one single or inevitable way to structure social, political, and family life.”

Learn more about the Pitzer in Italy program.