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[untenured]

I've been invited to teach a course in Italy to our university students.  The stay is 5-6 weeks.  Travel, apartment, and course salary come with the package.  I am about to meet with bigwigs.

What questions should I ask about teaching the course abroad before I formally sign on?  I'm new to this, and don't even know what I should be concerned about.

Untenured

[pink_]

Will you have an kind of supervisory role for the students?  Or do your responsibilities end with the coursework?  Do students have time to travel independently?  Are there group excursions?  Will you be expected to participate/accompany them if so?  What academic expectations do students have for this experience?  Do most students have access to computers?  Do they bring their own or have access to a lab somewhere?  What is the teaching space like?  If a student gets sick or needs to go home for a family emergency , are there support structures in place to facilitate?

Is there a second space available for your forumite friend?

Sounds like a sweet opportunity

[notaprof]

Pink beat me to it and I say "Ditto!"  to all pink's questions.  Is this a faculty led group where you will have the primary teaching responsibilities for most or all of the credit the students will be receiving or are you one of a slate of faculty each teaching one class or one of team of faculty teaching a sequential piece of one course?  If the former, then you may want to have some say in the selection process and a faculty led program does usually come with much more of the outside responsibilies. 

If you are planning to do research in the area while also teaching, you should clarify what time will be your own.  In a five week course, the classroom time may be triple that of what it would be in a full semester.

In addition to salary, housing and flights, what other costs will you be responsible for - health insurance that covers you abroad or does the school have a policy that covers you already?  Will you need a visa?  Who pays for that?

Most importantly, will you the school cover your expenses at the local prosciutto, parmesan and wine shops?  That should come standard with any teaching assignment in Italy.

[dellaroux]

When?

It's never too early to plan a meet-up...

[qrypt]

What will your responsibilities be if one of your students is charged with murdering another foreign student in the course of some twisted sex game?

[untenured]

Thanks, yes it does seem like a sweet opportunity.  Initially I was kvetching about the five to six weeks I'd be away from home, but my spouse brought some sense.

 I am grateful for your questions to ask.  One never knows some sex-and-murder game will crop up with your students.  I mean, geez, that could *never* happen with a US student in Italy.

The one question that brought me upright was the one about health insurance.  What kind of coverage will me and my family have?  What if I get sick?  I didn't think of that one.

Also, I'll be repairing a relationship gone sour between my U and the study abroad people.  Apparently I was asked because I possess some interpersonal skills.

I also don't speak Italian.  How worried should I be about that?  I want to be respectful to the folks I meet in Italy.

Untenured

[higherandhigher]

The one question that brought me upright was the one about health insurance.  What kind of coverage will me and my family have?  What if I get sick?  I didn't think of that one.

This is certainly something to ask your study abroad/international programs staff about as well as HR staff. Most US group health insurance plans provide world-wide coverage for at least emergency care. Many universities also take out blanket travel insurance policies that provide things like medical evacuation/referral assistance for university employees traveling internationally on business.

You could also purchase your own travel insurance policy (and perhaps ask for reimbursement) if the coverage provided by your university is insufficient. Squaremouth.com and insuremytrip.com are brokers offering plans/comparisons from multiples insurers.

[offthemarket]

Time commitment outside class hours, if any, and any responsibility for non-academic student concerns.  You would think there will be a person whose job it is to be student wrangler and manage housing and all their personal stuff.  You just want to be sure that it's totally cool that all of your out-of-class time can be spent with your family without any responsibility for the students.

[peppergal]

Time commitment outside class hours, if any, and any responsibility for non-academic student concerns.  You would think there will be a person whose job it is to be student wrangler and manage housing and all their personal stuff.  You just want to be sure that it's totally cool that all of your out-of-class time can be spent with your family without any responsibility for the students.

Chime on this.  Undergraduates will get up to the darndest things when in a foreign country...  Even the responsible ones.  It's like some switch gets thrown as soon as they cross the border, and their common sense flies out the window.

When I was a grad student, I was offered a TAship for a course like this.  I had to decline it, because I got a research fellowship.  However, when I was considering it, the prof was really upfront about the fact that more than half my job while in Foreign Country would be wrangling students, since he just couldn't do it by himself and still teach the class.

[dellaroux]

1) I would definitely start an intensive Italian course of some kind, either in person with someone in your area or online, or if there's a school with weekend or other offerings, go there and do the work at home after each class. Have the program set it up for you and pay for it/reimburse you.

If there's a Dante club near you, get referrals or see if they have classes, or ask your local faculty for recommendations (but I wouldn't do your "tooling up" on your home university site).

2) If this isn't already in place, I'd also ask your school to provide you with a native Italian-speaking staff assistant from the town where the program is located (that may also help mend some of the breaches, I would think.)

And I would start trying to have frequent phone conversations with this person, maybe even fly them over to your side of the puddle, so they'd see what offices and which individuals they'd be interacting with when they called, etc.--visualization and connection-building help assistants a lot in being able to imagine how to sort things out where the language and ways of doing things are different.

3) It's very true that people are willing to speak English in many places, but the fact is that if you'll be dealing with work-related issues, you'll be working with people in all kinds of settings (ordering food for a meeting, etc.) who may or may not have strong English skills, even though their English is likely to be better than whatever Italian you can cobble together. *

And it's (in my mind) highly disrespectful not to have at least some level of the language in any place you plan to stay in for more than two days.

4) Get familiar with the trains, the driving regulations, and see if you might need or want a driver on-call. That can also be useful since, if errands need to be run, and the issues are going to get worked out in Italian, you can have backup translation on hand at the point where you need it. And it's another local you'll be giving a job to, which is again good for your program's reputation.

To say nothing of keeping your heart out of your throat in the midst of traffic you're not used to...

5) Be very specific from the outset about the job requirements, hours, no substitute drivers/assistants, whatever (for which sometimes you get invoiced extra, read all invoices carefully). Keep an eye on gas mileage and the odometer, and have safe locked garagement on-site, of the official vehicle only you and the authorized driver use. Keep stationery supplies near your area of work, open during the day but locked at night, especially letterhead.

But do have local workers, bring in a fruit tart or something every week or two for the office to share, and be very sure to thank everyone in a group if any one person does something for you.

There's a lot more bonding that happens sooner, and better, than in groups in the States, and it happens around food and talk. You have to keep the agenda moving forward and not let things lag too much, but you also have to have "soft contact" points where you and your workers can be humans together, not hierarchically separate all the time.

Observe what works in the place where you are and figure out ways to adapt and adopt those things to other things that may not work so well. Problems that money seems to solve, or looks like it might solve, aren't the right problems, or the real problems, or the only problems--look deeper.

6) Read Fry's "Getting to YES" and take a course of some kind on negotiation. (If you're taking private Italian, get some help with putting some basic phrases into Italian from that book, in fact...."what does this mean for you? "how would you like to see us accomplish this?" etc.)

Huge differences exist in the way offices work for getting things done, and patience and imaginative work have a lot to do with finding common ground and moving out from there. A sense of humor in those settings is essential, and it's too easy to lose the whole thing by blowing up over something small.

7) Start now to have all your paperwork in order, with three files: One at home, one in your office that you'll take with you, and one that you and a staff assistant set up onsite at your university office, and from which you will work together...this will be your anchor office/anchor person. 

If things get difficult (student about to be sent back out of the country over paperwork issues, etc.) you want someone who can find the copy of their visa application and fax it back in minutes, not someone who has to ferret through your whole office looking for something they've never seen before.



Some of this is probably self-evident and not intended as an insult at all, but you asked, these are my observations after several years of working between countries, people, and organizations in several different settings.
___
* OK, (mini-rant/This is something we really need to consider as a country; probably you have other language skills, so this isn't going to apply to you, but I'm horrified by the level of languages I hear at professional facilities like libraries, etc.,

My own language coverage isn't perfect, but one hears people who have clearly never even tried to pronounce things correctly, or know even basic phrases and responses, and we've had quite a few decades now (say, since Sputnik, anyone?) in which to gear up on this stuff.../rant)

[renji]

If you want to know the real scoop, ask the person that taught the class last summer.

[notaprof]

Back to the insurance question, your university may have a policy that covers you as higherandhigher mentioned so you should check.  However, it will not likely cover your family members.  Italy has insurance that is available to visitors and you may be able to purchase this for your family members.  The Italian consulate can provide you with more information about that.  There are two levels of coverage, one that is just for emergency and accidents for around Euro 50,00 (or roughly US$62) to obtain four months of local insurance coverage. This insurance will cover only emergency care, including hospitalization, surgery, etc. It does not include a primary care physician. If you want to use the services of a physician for anything other than emergency care, you will have to pay for the visit, lab tests, and medications yourself.

As an alternative, you may purchase an insurance plan in Italy that will provide you with a primary care physician. This plan, which costs roughly US$200, will allow you to visit a regular doctor whenever you wish and will entitle you to discounts on some medication and laboratory tests. With this plan you will have a physician for whom you will have to make an appointment in advance. You will be expected to pay for some medications and laboratory testing.  Neither of these Italian insurances would cover evacuation expenses.

Also, the Italian insurance plan will not cover you and or your family members when you travel to other countries.  There is something called an International Student Identity Card (ISIC) or International Teacher Identity Card (ITIC) which can be purchased for $22 and which provides a basic level of insurance, including evacuation and is good for one year. There is supplemental policy you can purchase for an additional $50 that provides a higher level of coverage.  A similar option is called the INext card that functions in a similar manner.  If your children are over 12 and in school, they will qualify for one of these.  Unless your spouse is also a professor or other university employee, they would not be eligible for this insurance.  There are many insurance companies that specialize in overseas insurance for educational purposes and you can often purchase one of these policies for non-university related adults.  I don't know what children under 12 do but these companies might know.  The prices range from $40 to $50 per month of coverage.

It would be best if you can get your institution to pay for insurance since it sounds like you are doing this as a favor (to restore a damaged relationship) for the institution.   Buono viaggio!