As the year 2022 comes down to its final weeks, Courtney Cothren and Katie Broniec will always remember what they did this summer.

The Montgomery City residents and neighbors went to Bergamo, Italy to participate in the University of Missouri-Columbia study abroad program that started in May and ended in June.

“Katie was on the trip as a student and I was on the trip as a teacher,” Cothren said. “So it was kind of funny for two people from Montgomery who live down the street from each other.”

Even though they weren’t in the same class together, Cothren and Broniec enjoyed the experience of going overseas and running into each other several times.

“It’s definitely not an experience that everyone gets, so I’m very fortunate and lucky to have that experience,” said Broniec, a 2020 Montgomery County High School graduate. “I love traveling. It’s probably one of my favorite things to do.”

Cothren, an associate teaching professor at Mizzou’s business program, taught international marketing. Broniec, a junior at Mizzou who plans to graduate in May, took a finance and management class.

Broniec said the trip to Italy was her biggest highlight of 2022. It was her first time going overseas.

“It was so amazing to be over there and get to experience something new,” Broniec said. “I love doing new things. Italy has been at the very top of my list of other countries that I wanted to see. So I was very happy that it was the first country I got to see besides the U.S.”

Cothren taught overseas for the first time. She stayed in Italy for three weeks and taught for two of those weeks.

“It was a four-week program,” said Cothren, who has taught at Mizzou for seven years. “We have a partnership with the University of Bergamo. The year before, I taught for the University of Bergamo online. We didn’t study abroad because of COVID. So that year, I co-taught with an Italian professor and had only Italian students. I taught them online about three times over the summer. This past year was the first time that we’ve got to go back in person since COVID.”

Cothren is no stranger to Europe. While she was a student at Stephens College in Columbia, she studied abroad for a semester at the London College of Fashion. During that time, she spent a week in Florence, Italy.

Cothren’s family, which included three children, also went on the Bergamo trip.

“I grew up here in Montgomery, so I was used to living in a small town,” Cothren said. “I went to college in Columbia, which was big to me, but definitely not big. All of the sudden, I was living in London, which was really different to Montgomery. I did an internship there, so I did my internship in a fashion PR (firm). It’s so different from Missouri, but I loved that. I loved traveling and experiencing different cultures. It’s always been my goal of mine to take my kids to Europe so they could experience different cultures. So this teaching and studying abroad allowed me to do that.”

Bergamo is located in northern Italy and has a population of over 120,000 people. Broniec stayed there for five weeks.

“It was amazing,” Broniec said. “It was so beautiful. The views were unbelievable and the food was incredible.”

At the end of the study abroad program, Cothren and Broniec attended a formal dinner that included Italian students, Mizzou students and professors.

“It was just a nice get together to get to say hi and bye and talk with everyone before the end of the trip,” Broniec said.