Anna Taylor
All students at MSU look forward to the last day of Finals Week. This year, however, Finals Week 2007 only marks the beginning of the excitement for Susie D'Mello. At the end of June, she will board a plane and begin a five-week long adventure in Rome, Italy. Sponsored by the Colleges of Arts and Letters, Social Sciences, and the Business College and arranged by the Office of Study Abroad and the RCPD, this could be the experience of a lifetime.
The planning for this trip began last year, when she expressed her interest to Ginger Martz, the Blindness and Visual Impairment Specialist at the RPCD. According to D'Mello, the assistance from Martz was critical in making the decision to go. "She was the one really encouraging me to go, because I was really nervous about how things would work with my accommodations in another country." MSU will be providing accommodations in advance—the books that Susie will need for the academic portion of the journey will be produced by the RCPD.
After last fall's workshop on Disability and Study Abroad, presented by the RCPD and Study Abroad and hosted by the President's Advisory Committee on Disability Issues and the Office for Inclusion and InterCultural Initiatives, it should come as no surprise that Susie D'Mello will be traveling to Rome this summer for an experience that only MSU can provide. Susie is more than ready to take on Italy, and when asked what she's most excited about, she replied, "Wow...everything! Learning some of the language, the food (which I've heard is delicious), the sight-seeing, and meeting new people!"