Geneseo has built transformative academic and personal relationships with a neighborhood in Italy.
By Kris Dreessen
The 12th-century city of Siena, Italy, comprises 17 contrade, or neighborhoods, each with its own church, museum, horse-racing team, and loyal community members who consider themselves family.
One of those contrade, Capitana dell’Onda (Onda), has been home to Geneseo’s study abroad programs in Siena for more than 40 years. During that time, the College has built such strong academic and personal relationships with the neighborhood that Geneseo is about to be written into its official history.
“As the contrada of Onda celebrates the 500th anniversary of the tradition of its written history, the Book of Memoirs and Deliberations, they have welcomed the Onda-Geneseo friendship into their official collective history,” says Wes Kennison ’79, adjunct lecturer of English and global languages and cultures at Geneseo. “The Geneseo contradaioli have been active in Onda for almost a tenth of Onda’s memory and a third of our college’s history. The durability of this joyful collaboration is a mark of pride for both communities, and it retains a promising future.”
The Geneseo-Onda partnership began in 1978, before there was even an established study abroad program at the College, when Bill Cook, distinguished teaching professor emeritus of history, conducted research in Siena with Kennison as his student assistant. Cook and Ron Herzman, distinguished teaching professor emeritus of English, soon led students in a study abroad program to Siena to learn about The Age of Dante Alighieri.
Since then, faculty have consistently led study abroad, humanities, honors, and other student programs to Siena and Onda. Some 1,000 Geneseo students, faculty, staff, and alumni have been to Siena. Over the years, they have helped grow the college-contrada connections and added to the neighborhood’s collective history.
The Onda contrada has affected the history of Geneseo in return, inspiring study-abroad students to discover their life’s work. For example, Bradley Franco ’02 is now a professor of ancient and medieval history at the University of Portland and has led his own student study abroad programs to Siena. Andrea Wenz ’06 is an assistant professor at Oakland University in Rochester, MI, specializing in early modern Italy, the Protestant Reformation, and the life of Bernardino Ochino, a Catholic priest from Siena who turned Protestant. Both Franco and Wenz chose longer study programs in Siena after graduation and frequently return to Siena and Onda for research. Wenz also hopes to bring her first group of study abroad students to Siena this summer.
“Whatever the length of time you are there as a student, you really do get a sense ‘that life is different here,’ and that you can belong there,” says Franco. “SUNY Geneseo has done a phenomenal job of opening the door to Siena.”
Kennison has been keeping a record of all the Siena-Geneseo connections. Here are just a few examples:
- Geneseo faculty have led dozens of academic courses in a variety of disciplines for students. Kennison himself fell in love with the contrada of Onda when, as a student, he assisted Cook with research in Siena.
- Onda residents have baptized Cook, Herzman, Kennison, and other faculty members as one of their own.
- More than 30 alumni (including Wenz)—plus their traveling companions and friends of the College—have explored Siena on three alumni travel trips.
- The Geneseo Chamber Singers performed in Siena in 2016 and 2023.
- In 2017, Campus Auxiliary Services chefs toured the farms near Siena to explore food production, delivery, and culture, in order to incorporate their new knowledge into campus dining options. |
- In Spring 2024, Geneseo launched Kennison’s From Tourist to Scholar in Tuscany, an honors course in which students learn skills integral to conducting research in international settings and complete their own research in Siena over several weeks.
“Whatever the length of time you are there as a student, you really do get a sense ‘that life is different here,’ and that you can belong there,” says Franco. “SUNY Geneseo has done a phenomenal job of opening the door to Siena.’”
Fabrizio Bindi has been there for all of it. He met Cook and Kennison on that first trip in the 1970s and has served as a translator, guide, connector, supporter, and friend to Geneseo visitors since. Geneseo may be an ocean away, but its residents are at home in his Onda.
“There are some people who live in the countryside outside of the city walls and gate, who come to join the Onda contrada,” says Bindi. “They are called ‘contrada outside the walls.’ Geneseo is our contrada, just like them, outside of the walls.”
The strength of the Onda-Geneseo connection is extraordinary, says Wenz.
“What made SUNY Geneseo so special were the relationships that professors cultivated with students—how they cared for our intellectual success and growth as people,” says Wenz. “They made us feel like an academic family, and that care and feeling jumped the ocean. The people of Siena welcome us with open arms. There is so much caring on each side. It is like lightning in a bottle.”
Do you want to share your travel and study abroad experiences with Geneseo and Onda? Email Wes Kennison ’79 at kennison@geneseo.edu.
Read about the history of study abroad at Geneseo and the impact international experiences have had on Geneseo students in a past issue of the Geneseo Scene.