Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
An Italian-language instructor at the University of Illinois Chicago for more than 24 years, Maria Iusco is the creator of the school’s longest-running study abroad program, which has brought hundreds of students to Siena and Salerno in Italy.
Speaking two or more languages is an asset that helps students become citizens of the world and opens more professional opportunities for them, she says.
“This is what I build on in all my classes every single day,” Iusco says. “This is a gift that was given to me, and this is what I give to my students.”
Born and raised in Chicago, Iusco grew up in a family that “breathed and lived” Italian culture and customs, from dinner dances to parties, concerts and holidays with friends and neighbors.
Her mother is second-generation Italian American, while her father is from Carbonara di Bari, originally its own town and now incorporated into the city of Bari. At home, they spoke a mixture of Barese dialect and Italian.
Iusco’s father owned a hair salon, which he’d close every summer to bring his family to Italy.
“As children and teenagers, it was so special, because our summers were filled with months spent with our cugini at the beach, fun in the piazze, meals with la famiglia and many feste di paese,” she says. “My father would keep us out of school for an extra week because we couldn’t miss all those special holidays happening in the month of August.”
Iusco attended Mother Guerin High School in River Grove, where her mother insisted she take Italian all four years. “I just adored two of my Italian teachers, Noreen Moore and Joan Durkin. They were beautiful, gentle, and so patient, and I truly learned so much from them and aspired to be like them,” she recalls.
She majored in Italian, English and secondary education at Rosary College (now Dominican University) in River Forest, where she met two “amazing” professors, Brunella Dutton and Paolo Giordano, she says.
Then, because her father had always dreamed of her becoming an attorney, Iusco moved to Bari to study jurisprudence.
Law school, however, wasn’t for her, so she switched to studying foreign languages and literature, earning a degree in 1997.
After a stint working as a ticket agent at O’Hare International Airport and for Banca di Roma, Iusco was hired by UIC in 1999.
In her first semester, she began the study abroad program, which was officially offered for class credits starting in 2002.
“I was a product of study abroad myself and I wanted my students to get that same chance to live that experience,” she explains.
“To smell the lemony air of the Amalfi coast, to feel the cobblestone streets of Rome under their shoes, to hear the horses running in the Palio di Siena. The only difference is that I left when I was 21 and came back at 33 with a suitcase full of culture, love, family and memories and a whole new university degree and a ton of new friends.”
Iusco now lives in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, four minutes from her parents, and 10 minutes from her brother and his family.
She plans on continuing to teach and take students abroad for at least another seven or eight years. When she retires, she envisions splitting her time, six months each, between Italy and the United States.
