OEDK iSEED Blog | iSEED Bologna: Final Reflections + Guide

Hello! It’s been well over a month since iSEED in Italy ended, and since then I’ve gone backpacking all over Europe. It’s been an amazing experience so far, but I wanted to take some time to reflect over our month in Bologna and provide some feedback as this was the first year for this specific program. Hopefully this will provide some idea for people interested in the program in the coming years too.

Was it worth going? Yes, absolutely. It was my first time in Europe and a ton of fun.

I will split this into 3 parts: 1. Academics, 2. Costs, and 3. Exploring Italy

1. Academics

The two courses offered for iSEED Bologna were MECH 203/403 and ENGI 301, both 3 credit hrs. (For context, I am a rising senior CS major who’s taken ENGI 120 & 210). We took MECH203 for 2 weeks first, then ENGI301 for the last 2 weeks. Each day(M-F) classes went from 8:30-noonish, with a break in the middle. Some days we would go on class trips that could take anywhere from the late afternoon to the whole day, nothing overnight tho. Most of the class trips took place in the first 2 weeks.

MECH203: Dr. Trevas taught this course. We basically learned how to CAD in SolidWorks from scratch to more advanced concepts. There are 2 graded assignments which each took basically the entire afternoon + night each for a beginner like me to complete, but they were at a reasonable difficulty. Overall it’s a decent course and it’s clear that Dr. Trevas knows what he’s doing, but here’s my feedback: There’s a lot of information, and once you get lost, it’s kinda over. This class is taught in a mainly Youtube-tutorial style, where Dr. Trevas lectures off his slides, then demonstrates some concept or tool in Solidworks and we follow along on our laptops.

The issue with this is that it’s hard to follow along when you can’t really see what he’s doing with the tiny Solidworks text and his Solidworks setup is different and there’s no recording to review. Also, there’s just a lot of information and not enough exercise or examples to solidify those skills. Though I will say that it was not an easy environment to teach in with just a TV screen and with class sometimes being held in different places. Here’s my suggestion: use Zoom to share screen so that the students can see more clearly, and record! The slides + trying to find outdated youtube tutorials weren’t enough when actually doing the assignments. Also, it would be helpful to condense the curriculum a bit. Yes, exposure to advanced features firehose-style can be good, but it’s not helpful when we haven’t become proficient in the basics. Have short exercises embedded in the lessons(with harder ver. for the MECH403 students) after every few tools shown that we can try during class and have a TA or maybe Dr. Dugnani help people with them.

ENGI301: Dr. Dugnani taught this course. We learned how to use and code with Arduino plus various modules, with some basic electrical engineering theory & learning how to read datasheets knowledge thrown in. There are short regular homeworks (questions from videos, or in-class exercise code) and one final project which you can choose from or come up with. Overall, I really liked this course but I am biased because I have a decent amount of exp with Arduino&RPi already.

Mainly for this there are small things, like the code in the slides could be cleaner, it’s hard to work on the project and do the in-class exercises since only 1 breadboard, and the bluetooth module was not great to work with. But otherwise no complaints!

Class trip to Forli

Class Trips: We went on a bunch of class trips, some in Bologna and some in other cities in Italy. See the bottom for the full list but overall they were alright. You will end up learning a decent bit about the history of Bologna and current aerospace/automotive

Me at Pisaindustries in the Emilia-Romagna Region. Definitely geared more toward mechanical engineers and space/car/motorcycle enthusiasts. As the only CS major in the group, I found most of them mildly interesting, but there were definitely a few cool ones in there.

Why Italy? & Cultural Immersion: This was kind of the question I had before coming to this specific iSEED and was never really answered. Why these specific classes in Bologna? Whereas in the other iSEED program the classes were directly involved with the location like solving a problem there, it seemed like for Bologna we were just learning separately in our Rice classroom bubble. The stuff we were learning were only somewhat related to Italy or Bologna, and we never really got to apply our skills to our immediate surroundings. Even though we were living there, there was not as much cultural immersion as I was expecting. One time we went to an Italian university when Dr. Trevas was giving a lecture, and we barely interacted with the Italian students there because we left right after. I think it’s difficult to make local friends unless you’re like Jonathan and put yourself out there by talking to strangers on the train lol. Of course, this is just an observation and not necessarily a con. You still will interact with locals when you order coffee, or have to submit a report at the police station because you got pickpocketed. But just as an afterthought, being able to solve a local problem or having some project more related to Bologna or working together with Italian students might have made this experience more meaningful. If you’re looking for an excuse to tour Italy though, it’s great.

2. Costs

Just upfront, studying abroad, especially in Europe, is not cheap. For full disclosure, I received Rice summer financial aid (I currently receive full tuition aid but not room&board @ Rice) which covered half of the tuition for this program ($3600). In addition, I received an additional $1200 stipend from the OEDK to cover some transportation/mobile phone costs.

With that being said, all of these costs can change in the future(check your eur-usd conversion rates), but here were my expenses at around $1.08=€1 conversion.

Category	SUM of Cost (USD)
Tuition (incl. paypath fees)	3783.42
Activities (Guided tours, museums, etc)	288.63
Food/Drink/Snacks	606.97
Hostels/Hotels	363.94
Shopping/Souvenirs	541.42
Transport	922.78
Grand Total	6507.16

I also spent around $100 in cash for various misc purchases. So excluding tuition, I spent around $2800. This table also does not include plane ticket costs, since I used mileage points for those, which would add to the cost, around 1-2k.

You can spend way less than I did. I ate out for a meal almost everyday, and you can save a lot by not going on overnight weekend trips. For me personally, I really value exploration and new experiences, and am fortunate enough to be in a position to not have to pinch every penny. So I would say that it was worth it.

One thing that was surprising though were the train ticket costs. They can really add up over time. To give you an idea, going to Florence and back on a high speed train costs $50-85. If you want to go to further to Rome, it’s double that. A ticket to Turin for a class trip costed up to $80 and the most I paid for a single trip was $100 to Naples. Regional trains cost much less from $3-20 a ticket. Looking back I think I definitely should have taken buses like Flixbus which some of my classmates did and saved some money. I also would NOT have used Omio(travel-ticketing app) and purchased tickets directly from Trenitalia/Italo/machines at the station to save on fees.

All the places I was able to explore in Italy (ignore Switzerland and France)

3. Exploring Italy

You only have 4 weekends, make the most of it! Time flies by incredibly fast.

Me at Pisa

Some weekend ideas: Rome, Ortesei/Dolomites, Naples/Pompeii, Sorrento/Amalfi, Milan->south Switzerland, Cinque Terre, Pisa/Siena/San Gimigiano(did a GetYourGuide tour for this), Venice&Verona

Some day trip ideas (doable in an afternoon+evening, ofc you won’t see everything tho): Venice, Florence, Rimini beach, San Marino, Milan

For weekend trips, stay in hostels to stay money. You can leave early friday to get 2 full days. Overnight trains are expensive & uncomfortable tho.

Personally, I found that flying to different countries in Europe during the weekend was too difficult and not worth it given the amount of time.

Rome is worth it, but I would recommend to plan weeks or months in advance, esp if you want to do Sistine Chapel or Colosseum.

Hiking in Ortesei in the Dolomites is also amazing, but would recommend going later coz weather.

After the first day of class in Bologna center

Class Trips

5/6 – After class we went and explored Bologna a bit

5/7 – We went to some office? in Bologna and listened to some presentation from ART-ER about the Emilia-Romagna region and what they’re doing to make Italy more attractive to international students.