My experience in Ravenna has always been focused on the relationship with the city and the territory, and my training and the work carried out in recent years have also allowed me to gain in-depth knowledge of the specificities and problems of the various university structures of the Campus, especially those relating to spaces and organization. From this point of view, the University's commitment to strengthening our Campus determines the main points on which the program of my mandate is based, which in a general sense aims to promote and guide a process of renewal in which recovering the function of political direction of the Campus with the aim of orienting the future, guiding choices and decisions, foreseeing problems instead of chasing them. What is needed is planning and strategic choices, dialogue and collaboration with the Support Structure and local institutions, synergy and integration between the various bodies. Spaces and organization, student services, support for teaching, research and the third mission, relationship with the territory, are the elements of this change.
The identifying feature of our Campus is its interdisciplinarity, with the presence of important teaching and research centers referable to different disciplinary areas. The aggregation of these, almost spontaneously around themes that concern cultural and environmental heritage, is a characteristic to be enhanced and directed towards strengthening the sense of community of the Campus. I therefore believe it is important to extend as much as possible the shared participation in the management of the major themes on which the life of the Campus is structured, forming a working group capable of dealing with both specific themes relating to the different locations and transversal themes that concern us all, such as support for teaching, research, the third mission. The complexity of the issues at stake must be addressed with an approach open to discussion, also involving all the components that structure and bring the Campus to life. The role of TA staff and those in contact with the public is essential to build new ways of programming the services offered; therefore, the active involvement of people is needed, respecting roles and skills, through public discussion spaces and tools for sharing ideas and proposals. We must all build a new Campus together: we are a community with extraordinary human capital, and we must enhance commitment and skills, motivate and involve, work with enthusiasm, for a Campus we can be proud of.
The spaces can become the promoters of development, in quantitative terms through the procurement of new buildings and in qualitative terms through the improvement of existing ones; but above all by developing a strong identity project for the Campus on which to converge the University, the Departments, the Support Structure and the Local Institutions. The correct and shared use of the spaces and services provided also passes through an organization of the TA staff capable of enhancing the skills and professionalism present, providing safe and pleasant work environments to work in harmony, pursuing the quality of work and promoting correct relationships between people.
Students must be at the center of Campus initiatives to support the education system, to ensure the best study conditions, offering quality teaching and a system of adequate services. The general objective is to increase the student population numerically, strengthening internationalization and orientation actions towards the Campus. For these objectives, a close and synergic collaboration with the Support Agency and with local authorities is necessary, aimed at improving the transportation system for commuting students and overcoming the chronic lack of accommodation. But to make the Ravenna Campus more attractive, it is above all necessary to improve student services, seeking spaces suitable for growth: libraries and study rooms, a system of catering at an agreed price, facilities for sports and leisure time with agreements, are a first list. In this sense, a closer connection with the territory can allow for increasing and enriching opportunities for internships and training experiences, to design post-graduate training initiatives capable of responding to the ever-changing needs of society and the productive world.
Campus actions must pursue a high quality of teaching, first of all by finding an adequate supply of facilities in terms of classrooms, laboratories and study rooms, to be combined with the improvement of existing spaces with cutting-edge digital systems and tools. In parallel, it is necessary to proceed with the definitive systematization of spaces for common use to optimize their use, including shared use.
It is necessary to strengthen research support services and make relationships with businesses and scientific and cultural institutions in the area more functional and structured. Professors and researchers of the Ravenna Campus pursue high-quality levels of research in the various disciplinary fields, with excellent results but nevertheless collaborating with each other through mostly personal initiatives. Greater strength would instead derive from collaboration strategies, in a framework of a strong Campus identity that would make everyone more recognizable as belonging to a reality of excellence in teaching and research. In this sense, the identification of common study and research spaces open to PhD students, research fellows, visiting professors, can foster integration between the different research structures.
The Campus can also promote specific common objectives, distinctive of the training and research offering, encouraging the dissemination of results and strengthening their international dimension. This results in support for the Third Mission activities of the Departments which, in synergy with the Support Body, will allow actions to promote the training, research, internationalization and technology transfer activities of the various structures in the area, as well as the activation of relationships with institutions, local entities and businesses, which today are mainly left to the initiative of individuals.
A central element in the development of the Campus is therefore the construction and development of an effective dialogue with local institutions for the construction of a network of spaces for study and research integrated into the city, and also a direct relationship with citizens through the dissemination of the products of our work through cultural events in which students are also involved. What has been outlined and described constitutes a first reflection for a project that is not short-term. With the working group we will build a real programmatic document, to guide the future development of the Campus, obtaining the first, significant, results in the time horizon of the next three years.
Luca Cipriani
Contacts
Luca Cipriani
Dipartimento di Architettura - DA
Address
Viale del Risorgimento 2 Bologna (BO)