Grace Joh

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Grace Joh is the J School academic coordinator and Communications/Publishing staff member at FUA. She is a native Californian and has studied literature at UC Berkeley and multimedia communication at Università degli Studi di Firenze. Grace is based in Florence, Italy at FUA’s main campus in the Santa Croce area.

What does the future hold for FUA - any exciting new programs to share?

One of my absolute favorite programs is Tutto Toscana, held in the fall. Students learn all aspects of event production, from food prep to art direction, during a 3-week session in Florence and continue on to NYC where we hold events at the James Beard Foundation. We are also offering 4-year degree programs in three distinct disciplinary areas.

Why is language learning and cultural immersion important to you?

There is a big difference between language learning and cultural competence. One can easily memorize words but a true grasp of culture means applying those words to both cultural contexts and everyday life.

I’ve seen students in beginning language classes who were completely integrated in the space of the semester thanks to volunteer extracurriculars or service learning components of their classes. I don’t mean “language fluent” when I say “completely integrated,” but connected to life in Italy, to living like a Florentine, to caring about your new albeit temporary community.

I was a traditional language learner myself back in college and I would’ve loved to take a break from conjugating verbs to experience what we offer today at FUA, whether it’s learning Italian through community garden activities or interacting with elementary-level kids at local public schools in Florence.

And finally, cultural immersion has another positive side effect - it enriches your own national and personal identity thanks to widened perspectives.

How have you changed/grown since working for your current company?

I’ve realized that simply living in a different country or learning words in a foreign language does not make you a world citizen. It’s about how the experiences you accumulate make you stop and reflect upon how they impact your attitude and mentality towards the concepts of place and identity.

Working at FUA and in both the English and Italian languages have expanded my personal confines and allowed me to acquire new ways of thinking, expressing myself, problem solving, and much more.

Also, thanks to the stimulating projects that I am assigned to, I continuously discover that my work ethic has something to learn every single day. That goes to say that boredom is definitely not an issue in my daily life!

What unique qualities does your company possess?

The quality of our academics, first and foremost, and consequently our efforts towards programming courses and tuning our faculty and staff members into the learning needs of an international student body. Another important quality is our implementation of experiential learning.

We started to see a long time ago that internships are not the only answer to professionalizing a student’s experience. Experiential learning requires a clear vision, specific criteria, well-measured parameters, and a deeper understanding of how not all students fit into a single model.

Describe a time when you felt especially proud to be part of the FUA team.

Without a doubt the first time I gave a speech in front of a dinner audience at the James Beard Foundation. While there are so many moments that I can count in Florence, as a food lover whose stomping grounds during college days were in the SF Bay Area, I never once thought that I would end up organizing an event and publicly speaking at a revered food institution, not to mention doing so through a job abroad.

Funnily enough, thanks to a life-changing decision that led me to Italy and my entrance into the world of education, I unexpectedly fulfilled a dream-like situation that my college self 10 years ago would’ve laughed off as an impossibility.