From Curva Fiesole to Viola Park: Alessandro Pugliese’s Florence Story Never Really Ended
Some students study abroad for a semester and go home with good memories. Alessandro Pugliese studied abroad for a semester — then came back twice more, landed an internship with ACF Fiorentina, and eventually went to work for the club’s owner, Rocco Commisso, back in the United States. Today he’s Manager of Public Relations for…
Professor Francesca Parotti Presents on Space Terraforming Materials at Conference in China
Francesca Parotti presented her paper, “ARCUAS: A 3D Printing of Regolith and Bio-based Material for Terraforming,” at NEFES 2026, the 11th International Conference on New Energy and Future Energy Systems, held July 7–10 in Macao, China. The conference brought together 40 delegates from 16 countries and regions to foster communication across fields connected to new…
Alumni Stories: Bruce Siska, Matt Lysne, and Ed Muehlberg, Fall ’95 and Spring ’96
When Bruce Siska, Jason Halter, Matt Lysne, Ed Muehlberg, and Ernesto Teran arrived in Florence for the one-year Master of Architecture program in the fall of 1994, they were five strangers among a class of eleven. By the time they left the following spring, they were something closer to brothers. Thirty years later, that bond…
Alumni Stories: Griffin Conner and Will Hewitt, Fall 2019
Griffin and Will met by accident — a last-minute plane seat, a roommate’s invitation, an apartment near Villa Rossa with room for one more — and turned it into something that’s lasted years past the semester that started it. What began over shared taste in music and art became weekend trips across Italy, late nights…
Alumni Story: Duane Blue Spruce, Fall 1982
In Fall 1982, Duane Blue Spruce left Slocum Hall for a semester with Syracuse Florence as a fourth-year architecture student, living with a nonna on Via del Pallone and forging an unlikely friendship with an Italian teenager that led to a Thanksgiving dinner and a World Cup-era soccer match. Over 40 years later, he returned…
Learning Through Discovery: Local High School Students Intern at Syracuse Florence
We recently welcomed Greta and Ettore, two students from Duca d’Aosta Salvemini high school in Florence, for a three-week internship with the Academic Department. The experience formed part of the hands-on learning component of their curriculum and allowed them to explore the daily life of an international academic institution from within. For Greta and Ettore,…
Back to Florence: One Student’s Mission to Save a Dying Art
Inspired by a Syracuse Florence course, graduating senior James Kuhns is building a platform to connect American tourists with the city’s hidden artisans. James Kuhns came to Florence two years ago as a study abroad student and after returning to the U.S. he couldn’t stop thinking about a leather jacket—one he’d watched craftspeople build from…
