A chance email gave Anna Methe the opportunity to be one of 20 students awarded a scholarship for the 2025 MAGICA Summer School, spending a week at the H-Farm campus, Venice, Italy, in June.
She set off from Reading University, in the UK, with hopes of building on her masters studies in applied meteorology and climate. She returned with a new network of international contacts, a fledgling business idea and an ambitious plan to accelerate her career plans.
Before moving to the UK for her masters, Anna was a double major in Environmental Science and Sustainability and Economics & Business at Cornell College in Iowa.
Her motivation for applying for the summer school, was concern that with climate science and adaptation research are moving so fast and the climate services landscape is evolving so rapidly, her skills might not keep up. Anna says:
The application process was simple and the H-Farm College team let me know the next day that I had been accepted!
What really appealed to me was that the course was focused on sustainability, climate and environment.
After overcoming the initial hurdle of finding her way around a completely new country and city - where English is little spoken outside Venice itself – Anna met up with another of the students and together they made their way by bus to the H-Farm campus which is about 50 minutes out of the city.
Thanks to MAGICA Climate Project funding, the students’ tuition, accommodation, meals and social activities were covered. Anna paid for her return air fare, using money she saved by taking a cheaper flight a day earlier to spend a night in a hotel in Venice, and a day exploring the historic city. She was also captivated by H-Farm’s historic accommodation block which inside had all modern facilities – including air conditioning, it was a very hot week!
Her fellow students came from Italy and other European countries. Anna says:
I made friends and connections with all the students as well as with the professors who offered to stay in touch with us on LinkedIn and to support us when we come to applying for jobs.
Throughout the week of study we also worked in small groups to prepare pitch presentations to give to a panel of entrepreneurs at the end – and my team won! So we are going to stay in touch to progress our idea after I have completed my masters.
Their idea has such potential that her group are keeping it under wraps other than to say that it is a sustainable service. Other pitches focused on topics such as food waste and water wastage in rice production.
Anna explained what she gained from the Summer School:
The way my degree was structured I didn’t get a lot of tuition on the finance side of starting a business and the course helped me to visualise what I need to be doing and contextualise it. It was delivered in a very relaxed atmosphere so that we felt welcome to ask any questions at any time and all the lessons have been shared as PDFs so I can continue to refer to them. Much of we learned during the MAGICA Summer School can be applied to other roles, such as leadership roles I might take on in the future and help me to gain promotions.
I feel more equipped to start my own business and to do it sooner than I had thought.
I wouldn’t have had this opportunity without the MAGICA Summer School, my department head at Reading University just happened to share the details around and it sounded so cool that I applied. The others on my course are quite jealous!
My advice to anyone considering applying to a future course, is just do it. It’s a really rewarding and unique experience that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Anna Methe at the MAGICA Summer School
- Read more about the 2025 MAGICA Summer School at H-Farm College in this LinkedIn post by Matteo Gallo, a student at the University of Pisa.
