Nick Smeriglio grew up in a Chicago suburb. Edoardo Franco grew up seaside in Taranto, Italy. Aside from Nick’s Italian heritage and the American movies that Edoardo grew up watching, there wasn’t much connecting the two when they first met. By the time they parted ways, Smeriglio and Franco counted each other as best friends.
“The year that I went to Italy and then my Italian friends came to Marquette was one of the best years of my life,” says Smeriglio, who graduated from the College of Business Administration in 2016.
Marquette has had longstanding ties to Italy through its faculty-led business study abroad program, as well as through semester-long abroad program partnerships with John Cabot University in Rome and Gonzaga University in Florence. The relationship runs in the other direction too — LUISS University, a private university in Rome, sends master’s-level exchange students to Marquette.
Franco discovered Marquette on one of these exchange semesters. Although LUISS University offers exchange programs all over the world, America was the most popular choice. Spots in the program were competitive, and Franco, who was studying international business management, claimed his at Marquette in fall 2015.
“I’d heard of the city before because of the TV show ‘Happy Days,’” Franco says. “I knew that Harley-Davidson was there and Dwyane Wade for Marquette basketball, but not much else for information about the city. Once I was there, though, I fell in love with it.”
It helped that Franco and several other friends from LUISS University had already met Smeriglio when he went to Rome on an abroad semester the prior spring.
“Success happens when you get in touch with other people and are curious about differences.”
Edoardo Franco, Exchange student at Marquette University
“Someone from Marquette or LUISS reached out to me and said that a couple of guys from the university in Italy were going to do the fall exchange,” Smeriglio says. “They asked whether I could meet with them. We got coffee in between class at a vending machine, and I remember learning that students at LUISS had about 10 espressos per day.”
Smeriglio began seeing Franco and his friends more frequently throughout his semester abroad, practicing Italian with them in between his all-Italian language classes. The friendship continued the next semester — Smeriglio picked Franco and his friends up from the airport in Chicago. They went to Marquette Basketball games, traveled to St. Louis on Fall Break, and went home together for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The latter was most meaningful for Smeriglio, whose family came from Calabria and Sicily. Franco’s grandfather particularly appreciated that Domenico, one of the Italian students, cooked with Calabrian chili paste, satisfying his cravings for spicy food.
“My grandmother was crying from laughing so hard, saying ‘I forgot my husband likes spicy food,’” Smeriglio says.
After dinner, the whole group gathered around Smeriglio’s grandfather for hours as he told stories about immigrating to America in the 1950s. For Smeriglio, it conjured images of the time he had spent tracing his grandfather’s heritage during his study abroad semester. He spent four weekends in Sicily visiting his grandfather’s hometown, bonding with the family members who had stayed behind. The library in Turin, where Smeriglio’s grandfather got his tailoring degree, still stood, waiting for the grandson to visit decades later.
“Who would possibly think that your choice of college would result in something so far beyond a degree?” Smeriglio says. “That stuff is priceless to me. Family roots are everything, and learning about my family was so important — Marquette gave me that opportunity.”
The exchange proved just as valuable for Franco. He traveled all over the country. He contributed to a team that won a global logistics competition under the direction of Dr. Mark Barratt, who now chairs the department of supply chain and systems intelligence. His business acumen expanded enough to put him on the path to the career he now holds, managing 15 stores and more than 40 employees as a sales manager for hearing care company Amplifon.
Franco attributes everything he gained to a willingness to experience temporary discomfort.
“Success happens when you get in touch with other people and are curious about differences,” Franco says.
He also thinks Marquette is one of the best places he could have chosen to do that.
“This was a special, happy place for me. I remember it with a big smile — anytime I talk to an American, I tell them that I studied at Marquette.”
“If you can make progress toward your degree in another country, do it; that was the time in my life where I learned the most,” Smeriglio says.
