From Olympic Spotlight to Academic Insight: Students Explore Italy

Right as the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games flame faded, 15 University of Northern Colorado Honors students embarked on a week-long trip to Italy, stopping in Milan and Rome, to learn about the history of the Olympics and how a city’s economy, politics and media can be affected by hosting the games.

“The trip was amazing,” said Marketing and Management major Katie Gruwell. “We walked like 30,000 steps a day. We got to see so much. It was such an incredible experience.”

For Gruwell, and about half of her classmates taking the course “Olympics and Society” (Honors 395), it was the first time she traveled internationally and was only able to do so thanks to a generous donation from Paul, ’63, and Margaret Heidger.

“I live with my grandparents — I’m a full-time caretaker, so going international for a course was never something I thought I could do,” Gruwell said. “The cultural experience is a once-ina-lifetime experience that would not have been possible without their contribution.”

Paul Heidger has a legacy of supporting Honors students interested in international relations. Last year, he and his wife helped UNC students travel to Athens, Greece, to learn about business development strategies and the Greek economy. His desire to do this is to honor his late wife, Barbara Hyslop Heidger, ’63, whom he met during their first day of class at UNC while participating in the first Honors program cohort. Barbara was known to be passionate about foreign affairs.

Many of the students who traveled to Italy this March walked away with similar enthusiasm. During the trip, the students visited sites they studied in the classroom, including 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.”

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.

“The builders talked about how they have to plan for deconstruction,” Lindell said. “Since the stadiums are built in small towns, they won’t be able to have them last for a long time, and even so, it’s very expensive. I thought that was really cool to learn because we didn’t learn about that in class.”

Junior student Hannah Rideout expressed similar takeaways.

“I never thought about what really goes into building these massive arenas and stadiums. However, after my time in Italy, I have found myself looking more at the general structures around the games rather than just the sports themselves,” Rideout said. “It was also intriguing to learn how they reuse the same temporary structures throughout multiple Olympics, as well as the time and care they put into choosing the locations of the Olympics.”

Overall, the students said the experience went beyond admiring the architecture they learned about in class — they gained 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.”

Some, like Rideout, even left with a new desire to pursue her graduate degree overseas. She’s realized the importance of traveling and gaining diverse experiences – an awareness made possible through philanthropy.

“Thank you so much to the donors for making this trip possible,” Rideout said. “It has fulfilled my dreams of traveling outside the country, and I cannot think of more ways to express my appreciation and gratitude. I will cherish these memories forever.”