The Kenyon-Rome program has been canceled for the upcoming fall 2026 semester, Center for Global Engagement (CGE) director Marne Ausec confirmed in an interview with the Collegian on Monday. This decision marks the first time that the CGE has pulled the program two years in a row, as it also did not run in fall 2025. “We just didn’t get enough people who were interested to be able to make the program viable,” Ausec said. The consecutive two-year cancellation casts some doubt on the long-term future of the program, according to both Ausec and Provost Jeff Bowman.

Along with Kenyon-Exeter, Kenyon-Rome is one of two flagship off-campus study (OCS) programs run by the College. Launched in the 2005-06 academic year, Kenyon-Rome is a semester-long program currently only offered in the fall. Each year, a faculty member from either the art history or studio art department accompanies students, teaching several classes to Kenyon-Rome students centered on their area of expertise. In addition, the faculty member leads the cohort on trips to Venice, Sicily and other cultural centers. Students also take Italian and an elective course or two, both offered by the University of California (UC) Education Abroad Program, alongside students from UC schools. Though the Kenyon program is led in alternating years by professors of art history and studio art, it is open to students of all majors.

Ausec noted that although this is not the first time the program hasn’t run, it is the first time it has been called off two years in a row. The only other time that the program has been pulled due to a lack of sufficient student interest was in the 2015-16 academic year; it was most recently canceled in the fall of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Ausec, the CGE informed the students interested in participating in the program this coming fall that Kenyon-Rome would not run a few days before Jan. 23, the deadline for students to schedule their study abroad advising meetings. Letting students know as soon as possible that the program would not be running was a priority for the CGE. “We also think that it’s better to cancel it earlier rather than later, because the CGE then works with students who are interested in going to Rome specifically, or going to Italy, or a program that is focused on art history,” Bowman said in an interview with the Collegian. 

The CGE does not have an exact number set for how many students they need to participate in the Kenyon-Rome program for it to run. Ausec identified the ideal number of students in a program as at least 15, though she clarified that a program can be run with more or fewer. “I think the goal would be to have 10 students in the program. That was the number that was told to me, but I think there’s some flexibility with that number,” Assistant Professor of Art History Katherine Calvin, who would have led Kenyon-Rome in fall 2026, told the Collegian.

Both last fall and the next, there were nowhere near enough students interested to even consider running the program. According to Ausec, there were just two or three students interested in going for both the 2025 and 2026 fall semesters.

Both Bowman and Ausec stated that despite decreases in the size of the student body in recent years, the percentage of students studying abroad this year and those planning to do so next year are roughly the same as in previous years. Bowman added that the decrease in enrollment “isn’t the thing that would drive the conversation [around Kenyon-Rome] because we’re talking about a difference of maybe 10 or 15% and really if we’re talking about making a program of any sort that’s viable, it shouldn’t be that fragile.” 

Various studio art and art history faculty cited numerous potential reasons why student interest in Kenyon-Rome may be flagging: As students increasingly double major, they have to find study abroad programs that can fulfill multiple different requirements, they may want study abroad experiences away from other Kenyon students, the sheer number of available off-campus programs may make it harder for students to recognize the value of the Kenyon-Rome opportunity or they may simply be more interested in doing shorter programs like new courses with travel components. Ausec added that many larger off-campus programs, including IES Rome, now offer art history tracks with the added benefit of having other appealing course offerings that Kenyon-Rome doesn’t have the capacity to offer. 

Studio art and film major Faedra Hose ’27 was initially interested in doing Kenyon-Rome in the fall of 2025, but ultimately decided against it. Hose explained that she was considering Kenyon-Rome because few study abroad programs offer arts, and, in particular, film classes. “From my conversations with the [Kenyon-Rome] program coordinators, it seemed like a similar studio experience and educational experience to how Kenyon already is, and I wanted to do something new,” she told the Collegian.

Instead, Hose spent the fall semester at a filmmaking program in Prague, Czech Republic. In addition to wanting an experience separate from Kenyon, she also found that the expertise of the professor who was going to lead the program didn’t align with her interests as an artist. “In my year, it would have been a studio art professor but the focus would have been on photography,” she explained. “It kind of felt like it was a focus in something that I didn’t necessarily want to focus on.” Since one year is led by an art history professor and the next by a studio art professor, those years are often referred to colloquially as an “art history year” or “studio art year,” respectively.

For students who choose to do Kenyon-Rome, though, the built-in connection to the College is one of the program’s obvious selling points. Delia Preston ’26, a studio art major, did Kenyon-Rome in the fall of 2024, the last time the program was held. Associate Professor of Art History Brad Hostetler led the program that year. Preston explained in an interview that they chose Kenyon-Rome because it offered the chance to study abroad with other Kenyon students rather than being alone in a foreign country and gave them an immersive way to get the art history credits required for studio art majors. Based on their own experience with the program, Preston isn’t sure why it hasn’t been able to attract enough students the past two years, theorizing that perhaps Italy can be an intimidating destination as people there don’t “default to English.” Bowman shares Preston’s uncertainty about the source of waning student interest, saying, “I don’t know [why there’s a recent lack of interest], because I know that students who go on the program typically have very positive experiences and typically feel like it really does support their academic program here and the work that they do in their departments.”

Reflecting on the experience of doing Kenyon-Rome as a studio art major during an “art history year,” Preston said, “While I was there, I was definitely like, ‘dang, I wish I could be making art right now.’ But I did appreciate… [that] I was able to knock [my art history classes] out of the way. And that was a great way to do it, to go in person to all of these beautiful museums and stuff.”

Preston noted that while their classes were great, the broader social scene left much to be desired. “I think UC students’ approach to academics is different than us, because we’re just kind of used to working all the time where they don’t and so they’re less serious about it, which kind of made it difficult to talk to them, frankly,” they explained. However, they added that the chance to develop bonds with fellow Kenyon students was a highlight of the experience. 

Kenyon art history and studio art faculty members also see the Kenyon-Rome program as a rather singular opportunity which can’t easily be found elsewhere. “While there are other OCS programs in Italy, there are few that offer studio art classes, and the Kenyon program ensures that students will receive an excellent educational experience that is way beyond other programs,” Chair of the Department of Studio Art and Professor of Art Marcella Hackbardt wrote in an email to the Collegian. Hackbardt was supposed to lead the program in the fall of 2025. Speaking from an art history perspective, Hostetler said in an interview that the ability to teach students about art and architecture in situ “really did sort of open up ways of viewing art in a way that we just can’t do in the classroom.” 

Both Bowman and Ausec believe the next step for the Kenyon-Rome Program is identifying the causes of recent disinterest. “We are going to look at, ‘What are the reasons students are not interested? … What is it about the way this is configured? Is there something that we can do about it?’” Ausec explained, adding, “It feels like when you can’t run a program two years in a row, that’s a really good time to say, ‘Okay, what is going on?’” 

Bowman also sees the program cancellation as a sign that a broader examination is needed, suggesting that it might be time to consider whether or not the program should continue to have a place at Kenyon. “I think we’re probably at a place where we have to have a conversation basically about what it might take to make it sustainable, or decide that maybe it isn’t sustainable,” he said.

In light of the program’s recent cancellation, both Calvin and Hostetler emphasized the value of Kenyon-Rome and suggested this moment is an opportunity to make changes to improve the program’s sustainability. “I think the real value of Kenyon study abroad programs is being able to spend an entire semester taking courses with a Kenyon professor in the place where they have expertise in their subject matter,” Calvin said. She proposed expanding the program to include offerings for students in departments such as classics, history and political science to strengthen and complement the existing fine arts programming.

When considering what might be lost if the program were not to be offered anymore, Hostetler reflected that Kenyon-Rome is “something that improves the faculty, too. It’s given me a lot of tools that I didn’t have before. … It [would be] a real shame for faculty to lose that opportunity to really have this training ground … to find different ways of teaching that they can bring back to the Kenyon campus and really enrich the [learning of the] other students who didn’t go to Rome.”