Global by Design
Story by Jonny Hart, KLN ’18
From Philadelphia to Japan and Rome, Temple is expanding its international reach and transforming higher education.
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Kareena Kumar gestured toward a 400-year-old marble sculpture standing 8 feet tall as students and visitors gathered around. The sculpture, crafted by the acclaimed Italian artist Bernini, depicts Apollo and Daphne, characters from Greek mythology. It stands at the center of a gallery in Rome’s Galleria Borghese and is visited by more than 400,000 tourists each year.
Kumar is not a tour guide but a student at Temple University Rome giving her final presentation in a class on the history of art in Rome.
The twisting, life-sized sculpture is intended to be viewed from all angles, and Kumar guides the audience around it in a circle while she explains its history.
The scene unfolding inside Galleria Borghese is just a small slice of what students experience at Temple Rome. In a given week, Kumar and her classmates swap their classroom for visits to the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel or Saint Peter’s Basilica.
“What other chance would you get to give a presentation about a piece of ancient Italian art while literally standing in front of it?” says Kumar, a 2026 graduate of the Fox School of Business with a degree in legal studies. “It was surreal to do something like that.”
During a previous session, the class traveled to Tivoli, an ancient village carved into the hills 20 miles outside of Rome. Once a popular retreat destination for Rome’s ancient elite, Tivoli features stunning gardens and villas.
“When you study these subjects in the States, oftentimes you are learning about things that are here,” says Temple Rome Dean and Vice Provost for Global Engagement Emilia Zankina.
Temple Rome students visit places like Milan for fashion classes and Venice for architecture classes. Engineering students tour the Ferrari plant as part of their studies.
Amsu Yallalacheruvu, a marketing major from the Class of 2027, traveled to Warsaw, Poland, for a class on European politics. While there, she visited the headquarters of Frontex, a European Union agency that oversees border patrol and coast guard operations.
Frontex staff gave Yallalacheruvu and her classmates a tour of the agency’s headquarters, guided the students around Warsaw and led discussions about the current state of the world.
“Even though we’re students, they were really interested in hearing our thoughts about everything going on,” says Yallalacheruvu, a participant in the Temple Rome Entry Year Program, where incoming students spend their first year in Rome before finishing their degree at either Main Campus or Temple Japan.
“Rome is an amazing place to be for experiential learning and hands-on experiences,” says Zankina, who took over as dean of Temple Rome in March 2020. “When students come here, they explore all of Europe for a low cost. They can go to Berlin, Paris, London, Barcelona and Prague. It’s a well-rounded experience.”
Global lessons in Japan
Some 6,000 miles east of Rome, Ayushi Chaudhary is learning about manufacturing logistics and operations during a tour of Tokyo’s Chronogate facility. The facility’s proximity to the Haneda Airport in Tokyo makes it a bustling hub for commerce operations happening around the world.
Chaudhary, an international business major from the Class of 2027, is with a group of students from Temple University Japan’s International Business Society. The student organization uses Tokyo’s many business headquarters as functioning classrooms, allowing students to learn about global business from inside the world’s most populated city.
“As someone studying international business, it’s been valuable for me to see how businesses operate in Rome and in Japan, where they have such different cultures and language barriers,” says Chaudhary, who also studied at Temple Rome through its Entry Year Program.
“Experiencing firsthand how these businesses operate abroad, instead of just learning about it from an American classroom, will definitely help me in my career,” she adds.
While studying at Temple Japan, the oldest and largest English-speaking university in the country, Chaudhary completed a yearlong research project funded by Temple’s Office of Research and Innovation.
The project examined the effects of tourism on Kyoto, a smaller and more rural city located 300 miles west of Tokyo.
Kyoto is home to a second Temple Japan location that opened in 2025. The city is well-known for its blend of ancient traditions and modern innovation. Within Kyoto, visitors will find thousands of ancient temples and the international headquarters of companies like Nintendo and Kyocera.
For her research project, Chaudhary interviewed Kyoto city officials and municipal workers. She compiled her findings in a report, which is slated to be published in the Journal for Global Business and Community, a journal for undergraduate students focused on the global economy.
During one weekend of downtime, Chaudhary and friends traveled to Fuji-Q Highland, an amusement park nestled in the shadows of Mount Fuji. They rented a cabin with breathtaking views of Japan’s tallest mountain.
“It was peaceful—less congestion and people,” she says. “Getting that quiet experience away from the big city for a weekend was a highlight of my time in Japan.”
A new era of growth
For students like Chaudhary, a semester or even an entire year abroad at Temple’s international campuses no longer feels like enough. Zankina and Matt Wilson, dean of Temple Japan, say students increasingly are asking the same question: Can I stay longer?
The growing demand is fueling a new era of growth and expansion at their campuses.
This fall, Temple Rome began offering 13 four-year bachelor’s degree programs spanning disciplines from business and communications to computer science and biology. Five more are slated for fall 2027.
Now celebrating its 60th anniversary, the Rome campus has historically been a popular place for Temple students, as well as students from 78 different colleges and universities around the U.S., to spend a semester studying abroad.
But Zankina had long wanted to bring four-year degrees to Temple Rome and enable students to graduate from its new location near Rome’s iconic Piazza di Spagna.
“I wanted to do this the moment I arrived,” she says. “I saw what existed at Temple Japan and thought, why doesn’t this exist in Rome?”
Temple Rome enrolled 318 students in spring 2026, and Zankina believes the addition of four-year degree programs could see the campus doubling its enrollment in the coming years.
While Temple Rome transitions to the next stage of its growth, Temple Japan offers a glimpse of what the future could hold.
Enrollment at the Japan campuses has soared off the charts. Temple Japan, which has been offering four-year degrees since 1982, reached 1,000 students for the first time in 2016. This fall, it enrolled more than 1,000 new students alone, and total enrollment exceeded 4,000 for the first time.
Enrollment at the Kyoto campus has tripled since it first welcomed students one year ago, surpassing 300 students in the spring 2026 semester and enrolling more than 450 students this fall.
Temple Japan expanded once again this September with the opening of its Hillside Center. Each semester, between 800 and 1,000 students are expected to take courses at the eight-story 750,000-square-foot facility, a short distance from the Tokyo campus.
“Our rapidly growing international presence is one of our greatest strengths, bringing a Temple University education to three continents,” says Temple President John Fry. “Our campuses in Rome and Japan are thriving, dynamic learning environments that prepare our students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world. Their momentum reflects the growing demand for a global education.”
Twenty-three years ago, when Wilson first joined Temple Japan as its law program director, the people of Tokyo didn’t recognize the cherry and white ‘T’ logo on his shirt as he walked the city’s busy streets. But a lot has changed since then, and Temple’s global reach in 2026 is undeniable.
“Not only do people know who we are now, but they are gravitating towards us,” Wilson says. “When you see students from Philadelphia studying alongside students from nearly 100 countries, you realize this is much bigger than one campus or one city. This is Temple becoming a truly global university.”
Full story in Temple Magazine: https://bit.ly/47v7xzd