By Rachel Kossman, News Correspondent

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On the first Saturday of spring break, 17 Northeastern students stood frustrated at Logan Airport.
The students were scheduled to participate in a weeklong trip to Rome, as part of their course, the Meaning of Death. The class is a lecture that Northeastern offers, and focuses on the way in which numerous religions view death and the afterlife. This was the first trip that was offered in conjunction with the course, said Susan Setta, professor of religion and philosophy at Northeastern who has taught the course for the past 30 years.
Though the delay left many students distressed at the time, Setta arranged to keep the trip on track, and left before the predicted storm hit that Monday.
‘Professor Setta handled it so well,’ Gina Strumolo, a sophomore psychology major who went on the trip, said. ‘She got on the phone right away, she called up all different people. I don’t know how she ended up doing it, but somebody found 19 open seats on a flight to Pisa.’
After a three-hour train ride from Pisa to Rome, the group got to the city in the late afternoon and got to see the Vatican lit up at night, they said.
Besides this first bump, the rest of the trip went off without a hitch, students said.
Of the 360 students registered in the course, 17 chose to participate in the trip, which did not influence their grade, but gave them a chance to get more of a first hand perspective on the concepts they explored in the classroom.
The weeklong stay in Rome brought students to places like the Scavi excavations below St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum and numerous churches, museums and statues they studied in class.
The content of both the class and the trip has fascinated Strumolo to the point that she is now contemplating adding a minor in philosophy to her degree, she said.
‘There was one statue and it was filled with Egyptian symbols and we had [studied it] in class,’ Strumolo said. ‘We were able to pick out all the symbols and Professor Setta was like ‘I’m so proud of you guys.’ We were able to see so much that we learned in class and we’re able to still apply it now.’
Setta said that Rome was the perfect place to take the class as death and religion are seen consistently throughout the city.
‘Rome is just bizarre ‘- it’s death everywhere,’ Setta said. ‘We’ve talked about all this stuff in class. Now they get to see things I show slides of ‘hellip; It’s pretty remarkable.’
Experts and historians say hundreds of thousands of men were killed at the Coliseum.
The Coliseum and the dozens of churches and ruins scattered throughout the city are just a few of the sites the students visited that enabled them to view the city through the lens of their course studies.
‘I think if I went to Rome on my own without [Professor Setta] I wouldn’t have seen half the things that I saw, just because she had it set up so perfectly,’ Jessica Cappucci, a freshman biology major, said. ‘It was nice too because at 1 p.m. we could do whatever we wanted so we weren’t tied down so much. We’d split up into our own groups and we still got the taste of Rome without all the education.’
Although the students visited some of the sites popular among tourists, Setta said she tried to place emphasis on the students learning to navigate the city on their own, pushing them to explore. Often, the students were out of the hotel from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m, mastered the subway system and wandered the city in smaller groups.
‘Rome is a lot like Boston in that it’s a small, walking city,’ Setta said.
The cost of the trip was approximately $1,500, which all of the participating students paid for either themselves or with help from their families, as the group did no fundraising and Northeastern did not help in financing the trip.
‘It was very affordable, that’s why I went,’ Cappucci, who estimates she spent a little less than $2,000, said.

Setta said the cost was within reason, especially when compared to the other ways students spend their savings over spring break.
‘My parents would’ve never paid for Daytona, but they would have paid for this,’ Setta said.
Kelly Coelho, a freshman majoring in psychology and education, said she used almost her entire savings to cover the costs of the trip and loved it, even though her bank account is now empty. She said the trip really opened her eyes to religion.
‘It sounded really interesting learning about different religions,’ Coelho said. ‘I was raised Catholic 100 percent and since then I haven’t really been a practicing Catholic. I still have my beliefs, but I was really very interested in learning about other religions and what their views were.’
Both Cappucci and Coelho noted how well the group got along abroad. All 17 students now sit together in the second and third rows of class and hang out outside of lecture on a regular basis, they said.
Cappucci said she felt that the trip has since motivated her to come to class and truly appreciate Setta’s lectures.
‘It definitely got me involved because religious studies and biology, they’re such different things,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I’d be in class and be like ‘okay this is cool but it’s a little too much, two hours of lecture ‘hellip; But now I’m really interested in it.’