OU will spend about $14 million renovating a 500-year-old monastery in Arezzo, Italy for its study-abroad programs, according to university documents.
This means the university will have spent $16.5 million — including the $2.5 million spent to purchase the historic site, according to documents from the university’s architectural and engineering departments.
Uncommitted revenues from the university’s affinity-card agreement and Coca-Cola pouring-rights contract as well as private monies have been earmarked for the project, said Chris Kuwitzky, associate vice president and chief financial officer.
Almost $4 million in private funds has been raised thus far and no state-appropriated funds would be used for the project, OU President David Boren said.
Boren said he was confident sufficient private funds could be raised. However, revenues earned from monetizing the institution’s utilities systems also might be used, Boren said last week.
Boren said he didn’t support the purchase and renovation of the monastery when he was first approached with the idea.
“I literally threw them out the door,” Boren said. “It was one of those days when I was really, really upset about some more budget cuts from the state Capitol, and I said, ‘Get out. Don’t talk to me about that.’”
However, Boren said as he thought about the Arezzo project, he realized the purchase and renovation could provide an additional outlet for students hoping to study abroad.
The facility is expected to open in 2013 with accommodations for 45 to 50 students, three to four resident advisers and graduate assistants, and one faculty-in-residence.
It will include modern plumbing, wireless Internet, study areas and dining facilities, and a resident-life staff providing community programming.
College of International Studies Dean Zachariah Messitte said he felt the Arezzo program is an important part of the university’s educational experience.
“We hope the Arezzo program will help instill a lifelong curiosity and appreciation by OU students of other cultures, languages and the world,” Messitte said.
The precise cost of the project is still uncertain, Messitte said. However, he defended the value of the program.
“Thousands of OU students — including some of who would never have studied abroad because it would have been too expensive, too complicated or too hard to complete their major — will get their first taste of life outside of the U.S. in the years to come because of OU in Arezzo,” Messitte said.
As a former exchange student, Student Affairs Vice President Clarke Stroud said he is an avid advocate of education abroad.
“It fundamentally offers students a different view of the world not found studying on the Norman campus,” Stroud said.
