I went in 88. I guess somewhere along the line the program was stopped, I just wondered what happened?
I went in 88. I guess somewhere along the line the program was stopped, I just wondered what happened?
They stopped the program sometime while I was in school (early to mid 90s) but I do not remember the reason. There were still students participating, and Dr. Meade was still the sponsor. I remember that he was pretty upset.
I do not know the specific reason for cancelling the program.
I thought it was cancelled later that that. I remember touring the campus in '99 and thought I remembered them mentioning Tech Rome then.
I should not have said early 90s. That's when I started Tech, but the program was cancelled after that. I thought it was gone by 99, but I don't remember an exact date.
Dr. Meade was great on that trip. You could not ask for a better person to be there with than an expert such as him. I don't think you can really put a price on that type of education. I haven't been able to make it back to Rome but I intend to some day. I hate that the experience is no longer available to Tech students.
The last year was 00-01, my freshmen year, main reasons were liability, cost, etc but then 9/11 happened and that put the last nail in the coffin.
Left with Steve Rodakis.
Darbonne is correct. Rodakis was head of the program and when he left, Dr Meade figured it would be passed to him. Tech decided to cancel the program in 00, which pissed me off because I had planned on attending Summer 2001. When I went to talk to Dr Meade, he had just recently been informed that the program--which was very popular--was canceled and would not be revisited.
Besides, that was about the time of the joining of the WAC and the WAC commissioner needed a nice place to stay while in town, so they needed the Tech Rome building for other purposes.
I took every course that Dr. Meade taught since I was a history major and if I could have afforded to go to Tech Rome I would have done it in a heartbeat. Years later before my wife and I had children, we decided to take a vacation and she let me choose where to go. There wasn't really any decision to be made, we went to Rome for a week with a couple of side trips to Tivoli and around. It was freaking amazing! My wife is not a history geek like myself, but she has made it clear that when our kids are older, we will be going back to Italy with the kids with more than a week to spend.
By the way, I know this has been said in other threads, but Dr. Meade was hands down one of the top three professors along with Dr's Price and Stokely.
I remember something about Tech Rome being offered free to certain honors students, and when they canceled the program, those students were offered a laptop or something lame...
When I asked Dr. Meade why he wasn't given the program, he said they would not give him a good reason. I'm sure this was a Dr Dan call to close the program for "financial reasons"...
It's ashame that we don't have a solid study abroad program. It's not the best university, but a friend of mine did a year for engineering at Czech Tech in Prague...
I don't really think Mexico, London and Paris are selling points as study abroad... We need unique destinations...
Thanks for the responses. It's a shame that it is no longer available. It was an experience well worth more than the cost of the trip.