From Olympic Spotlight to Academic Insight: Students Explore Italy

Every two years while she was growing up, Katie Gruwell would sit on the couch next to her grandma and watch the Olympics. Their favorite sport was figure skating in the winter games, witnessing athletes glide and leap effortlessly on the ice. Fast forward to this past March, Gruwell’s Olympic experience was no longer a memory shared on a couch. Alongside 14 other UNC students, she met with organizers of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Games in Italy.

“It didn’t feel real,” Gruwell said, a junior/senior majoring in Business.

As part of the curriculum in the course “Olympics and Society” (Honors 395), Gruwell and her classmates had the opportunity to visit Rome and Milan over spring break right after the Olympic Games flame faded.

“I went from watching the opening ceremony and seeing the Duomo (a 13th-century Gothic cathedral), to my group and I doing a walking tour to it, and I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m actually seeing that because you see it on TV,’” Gruwell said.

The trip was seven days long, starting in Rome for two days and one night, and ending in Milan.

“I wanted them to experience a different culture, to understand what it’s like to go to a different country and experience what we have been studying about in Milan,” said Communication and Journalism Professor Eli Klyde, Ph.D., who teaches the course and took the students on the trip.

Before the international flight, Klyde educated the students about the history of the Olympics, both ancient and modern, the 1972 terrorist attack at the Olympic village in Munich and the history of Milan and northern Italy. Then, Klyde brought them to the sites they studied, like Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, the Trevi Fountain, the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum of Rome and the modern Olympic stadiums.

“Being able to see The Last Supper was really amazing,” said Wyatt Lindell, a junior English major who went on the trip. “That’s something I had a lot of appreciation for after I learned that it takes maybe a year in prep of signing up to even get a chance to see it.”

“We had to walk through different phases of temperature regulation, and then we got 15 minutes in front of the painting, and the lighting was a particular way to protect the painting because there was a window in the room, so it really stood out,” added Gruwell. “It is such a big painting and so detailed that it looks like a photograph.”

Along with sightseeing and taking an Italian cooking class, the UNC students visited Polytechnic University in Milan, where they heard presentations from people who worked on the Olympics, both on the planning and construction side.

“There is a lot that goes into it that I didn’t even think about,” Lindell said. “When building a stadium, the builders need to make sure it will serve the community and be sustainable for the future.”

As a Marketing Management major, Gruwell enjoyed learning about the surveys and data that were collected over the course of a year in Italy to find out about the social impact of hosting an Olympics.

“It motivated me when I saw all the different ways they were gathering data, like through social media, but then they were going in person, and they were sending emails through different universities, so I thought that was really interesting,” Gruwell said.

UNC students participating in a cooking class in Italy

Lydia Ericson (left) and Eden Trujillo (right) showing off their pasta

The trip was the first time Gruwell and Lindell had been outside the country, and they both said they wouldn’t have been able to do it without the opportunity at UNC.

“I live with my grandparents – I’m a full-time caretaker, and I’m the sole income for my family, so going international for a course was never something I thought I could do,” Gruwell said.

“Realistically, I don’t know if I could have done it,” echoed Lindell. “My dream has always been to study abroad, but I’m not from a wealthy background, so any support means the world.”

The trip was funded in large part thanks to Paul, ’63, and Margaret Heidger, who supported the 15 students in memory of Barbara Hyslop Heidger, ’63. Paul and Barbara met at UNC in the university’s first Honors Program cohort.

“I’m so grateful for this opportunity,” Gruwell said. “All of the tours and experiences we had were included, which is something not many people get to say.”

As was the hope from their professor, Gruwell and Lindell said the experience went beyond seeing architecture that they learned about in class – they discovered insight into a culture they previously knew nothing about.

“It taught me how important it is to slow down,” Gruwell said. “The Italian culture is centered around talking, so dinners there last two to three hours, and I really appreciated it. Every night, my roommate and I would go and get gelato at 10 p.m. and sit in front of the Duomo for 30 minutes to an hour just enjoying what we were seeing.”

For Lindell, he realized that people who live in countries apart aren’t so different after all.

“It really isn’t that big of a difference from person to person overall,” Lindell said. “And sure, some cultures and touchstones are different, but we’re all still people and are still trying to get through.”

To capture these lessons, Klyde assigned the class to create a photo essay describing their time in Italy. Though the final assignment she submitted was far more detailed, it took Gruwell only six words to sum up her overall experience:

“I didn’t want to come back.”