Under the guidance of our plus3 directors and our CAPA partners, we were fortunate today to be able to visit University of Austral’s beautiful campus. Under the perfect sunny breezy wall weather, we took a through tour of the campus that was filled with energy. From this tour and the three lectures we were fortunately given today, I not only learned a lot about the health care system but also some significant differences between University of Pittsburgh and Austral.
Starting from the appearances side, the architecture style of Austral seemed to have a lot more European influences, and rightly so. In addition, the relaxed yet elegant school buildings created a very welcoming and heart-warming feeling for all the students and even the visitors like us there. Moreover, I noticed that Austral had beautiful tennis courts in the middle of the green grass lawn, this is significant to me personally as I was Pitt offered tennis courts to students as well. All and all, I thought Austral offered a great balance between modern and classic architecture, which I think Pitt does a good job as well, the more classically designed cathedral of learning and the modern aesthetics of Posvar Hall is a great example of that.
However, I personally noticed a lot of differences regarding the sense of community at Pitt and Austral. To start off, I realize that the nature of the location and culture, size of the school and the drastic difference in climate conditions are critical in analyzing the differences between these two universities. With that being sad, I personally believed that Austral has a more tightly knitted community compared to Pitt. I believe this is largely due to the size of the university and the culture of Argentina. Argentinians are known to be a lot more intimate and passionate compared to Americans. I believe this contributes to the tighter sense of community that I felt today. In addition, I believe that smaller campuses or schools that are less populated create tighter communities simply for the fact that you are more likely to encounter the same people twice, making it easier to socialize with them. As tightly knitted as I believe the Pitt Business school is, it is still slightly beneath the welcoming nature of Austral due to many factors. All and all, it was very intriguing to observe and analyze the differences and similarities between Pitt and Austral.