With Tom Petty providing their soundtrack, about 110 University of Florida students explored the intersection of engineering and art in Europe this summer.
Amid the masterpieces, class work and cuisine, students in two engineering and arts study-abroad programs — UF in Lille and UF in Brno — relied on a beloved Gainesville tradition.
“We would come together to sing ‘I Won’t Back Down’ by Tom Petty whenever we got the chance,” said Franco Chaluja, an industrial engineering sophomore who traveled with the first Brno program, a spin-off of the popular UF in Lille, France.
Recorded by Gainesville-bred Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the song is a beloved football tradition in The Swamp on gamedays.
Those Gator-soaked singalongs were among many highlights from the eight-week study-abroad program based in Lille, France, and its new Brno program in the Czech Republic. The programs bring Gator engineers into museums and other cultural corners in Europe, bridging both sides of the brain and encouraging them to think visually.
The program started in 2021 at the University of Pavia in Italy with 10 students.
“But we needed a larger campus, so we partnered with the European summer program that goes on at the Université Catholique de Lille and were able to bring 27 students the next year. Then it went to 54, then 80, and then this year, 87 (in Lille),” said program leader Joel Parker, associate director of experiential learning at UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
The program was so popular it expanded into the Czech Republic this year with about 20 students. In Brno, UF students took a physics class taught by a Masaryk University instructor and an art class taught by Dan Dickrell, Ph.D., of UF’s Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering.
“Taking Physics 2 abroad allowed me to learn in a focused and hands-on way,” Chaluja said.
UF in Lille also inspired an exchange-student program in Gainesville for students from Université Catholique de Lille and their engineering school, Junia. The first students from France started this semester.
In Lille, students take physics or a material sciences course as their anchor engineering course, Parker said. This year, UF Ph.D. student Joshua Covey served as a teaching assistant to Junia faculty for the physics class.
New this year, organizers incorporated an art honors class in Lille and arranged collaborations with local artists, including Lille resident Hideyuki Ishibashi.
“My engineers got to interact with him, learn about how the process is just as important for an artist. Maybe that’s where things diverge a little bit from engineering. You learn so much from the process, and it doesn’t always have to be a final product,” Parker said.
MFA art teaching assistants helped with drawing courses led by Parker and UF professor Rose Briccetti.
“Joel’s class was one of the most unique courses I’ve taken. We spent time sketching in museums and around the city, and he encouraged us to connect it back to our own interests. These creative excursions complemented the technical work of physics very well,” said Nicholas Borden, a computer science junior.
Also in Lille, Phil Jackson, Ph.D., from UF’s Department of Engineering Education, taught a digital arts course, and UF professor Michael O’Malley taught the honors art course that works with French artist Elisa Moris Vai.
Working with Vai, UF students created art chronicling the living conditions of Lille’s working poor. Their work was showcased in an exhibition at the Université Catholique de Lille.
“The Lille program was the best summer of my life. What makes Lille so special is the mix of structure and freedom,” Borden said. “The program includes trips and events that are genuinely fun, but you are also given a lot of independence to shape the summer yourself.”
And this summer, some of the UF students lucked into catching the start of the Tour de France Grand Depart and the race’s Stage 1 finish, which took place on the street outside The Université Catholique de Lille.
“These UF students celebrated the Fourth of July with a picnic in the park right across from the finish line,” Parker said.
The success of the Lille and Brno programs is in line with the growth of other study-abroad programs in the College of Engineering. There are more than 470 UF engineering students participating in the college’s International Engineering Programs (IEP), a 20 percent increase from the previous year, according to a report prepared by Pingchien Neo, Ph.D., IEP’s director.
Be it in Lille or Brno, many lessons evolved outside of the classroom this summer.
“One thing I learned on the trip was the different pace of life abroad,” said UF materials science sophomore and UF in Brno student Ilse Griffey. “This was something I had to adapt to throughout the summer. Learning to be OK with not needing to be busy at all times was a big aspect of my experience abroad.”