UVA McIntire School of Commerce Professor Stefano Grazioli has been named the 2026 recipient of the UVA Excellence in Education Abroad Award, one of the University’s most distinguished honors for faculty leadership in global education.
The award, administered by the UVA Teaching Awards Committee, recognizes exceptional faculty who demonstrate outstanding leadership in developing and teaching study-abroad programs while fostering global engagement and imagination within the University community. Grazioli, who has led international immersion courses to Mendoza, Argentina, for over a decade, was selected through a competitive nomination process open to faculty, students, and staff.
“The award means a lot to me,” says Grazioli, who also serves as Director of the School’s M.S. in the Management of Information Technology (MSMIT) program. “My commitment to teaching abroad is rooted in my own experience as a student. Coming to the U.S. as a Fulbright Scholar was the most empowering and professionally formative episode of my intellectual life. Truly life-changing. Because of it, I aim to design global courses that give UVA students similarly profound personal and professional growth.”
Since 2013, Grazioli has designed and taught two signature global immersion courses: IT International Project Management, an advanced graduate consulting course elective offered through the MSMIT program, which he has taught 11 times, and the undergraduate Global Commerce Immersion: IT Project Practicum in Argentina, which Grazioli has led 12 times. Together, the courses have engaged more than 140 graduate and 300 undergraduate students, with partnerships spanning over 60 Argentine organizations in sectors ranging from banking and high tech to viticulture, solar energy, and government.
What sets Grazioli’s courses apart is their structure. Rather than the “survey” model common to many study-abroad programs, in which students visit multiple sites, learn through observation, and reflect in writing, his courses are built around an international consulting practicum. Each student team is embedded with a single local organization, working onsite to gather data, analyze processes, and interview managers, employees, and customers before delivering actionable recommendations.
“Students don’t just observe a foreign business; they work inside one,” Grazioli says. “Both models have their merits: Where one gains in breadth, the other gains in depth.”
Recent project examples illustrate the scope of that work. UVA teams have strengthened a television station’s cybersecurity posture, identified fixes for a major transportation firm’s ineffective finance and accounting system, and built prototype production-cost dashboards for an energy company. Students present their findings in person, onsite, in Spanish or through interpreters, to audiences that include company owners and senior executives.
The impact of those high-stakes moments is something Grazioli says he never takes for granted. “How much our students care about their clients resonates most with me from the experiences in Mendoza over the years,” he says. “Many experience for the first time the weight of helping a real client solve a real problem. I am genuinely moved watching them rise to that responsibility. That sense of purpose elevates the quality of their work in ways that are hard to replicate in a classroom.”
For MSMIT students, who enter the program with an average of roughly 15 years of professional experience, the Argentina practicum often serves as a leadership accelerator. For fourth-year undergraduates actively weighing consulting careers, it functions as an authentic professional preview. Either way, Grazioli frames the experience not as a class project, but as real consulting work.
“UVA in Argentina takes students out of their comfort zones. It challenges U.S.-centric assumptions and expands their understanding of how business value can be created in very different institutional and cultural contexts,” he says. “Students don’t just read about these differences; they experience them directly, interacting with customers, salespeople, developers, and executives all the way to the C-suite.”
Those differences, he notes, range from the everyday to the highest level of business thinking. “They span from the fundamental, like a working day that pauses for siesta and extends into the evening, to the strategic—how organizations respond rapidly to change, tolerate risk, flex their operations, and adapt to hyperinflation. Students have told me these experiences made them better managers and better global citizens.”
The Excellence in Education Abroad Award comes with a financial prize that Grazioli will receive as part of the formal recognition. The UVA Teaching Awards are presented annually to honor the most dedicated, creative, and impactful instructors contributing to the University’s educational mission.
