Integral development at the center of the university path

di Carlo Tosti - President of the University and of the Campus Bio-Medico University Polyclinic Foundation

A great result always comes from a vision and the desire to transform the dream into reality.
The stories of the Big Techs born in the garages of California at the end of the 70s, up to the most recent startups, teach us this.

In every field of human activity, success is the result of the sum of personal motivation and preparation, in a balance between ideal tension and pragmatic attitude.

In our University we give weight to this delicate balance and work to train prepared students, but above all aware people. We do this by building alongside the course of study a series of initiatives for the integral education of the person.
In the current scenario, talking about skills in the university dimension also means training people capable of understanding, in their complexity, the real needs of people and putting themselves at their service. If we look at the current moment, bringing out the ideal drive that binds the person to their training path and their role in the world of work becomes a more urgent need than ever to build professionals capable of meeting current challenges.

The Italian university has always stood out for its ability to provide a training model with a solid theoretical basis, focused on the ability to teach how to study and an effective approach to critical reasoning.
Characteristics that the whole world envies us and which find proof of the good work carried out by our universities in the large number of researchers abroad.
But today in our country we are witnessing a new phenomenon: while the training offer is growing dramatically, total university enrollments are decreasing. And if in STEM subjects and in faculties such as Medicine the enrollment data are still going against the trend, here too there are warning signs.

The NHS is hungry for doctors, but there are fewer and fewer graduates willing to specialize in sectors such as emergency medicine, to take shifts in emergency rooms or to work in general practice.

To find concrete answers to needs like these, the university is called to structure, alongside innovative and high-level scientific curricula, real integral training courses capable of bringing out the "vocations" of each student.

In our university, which will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary this year, providing comprehensive training means placing the student at the center of the training project and offering him study environments in which the comparison and contamination between knowledge and cultures are daily thanks to the continuous exchange of experiences , the possibility of getting to know scientific research and the clinical and human problems of patients up close; where it is possible to study and practice in cutting-edge teaching facilities. We have chosen to give our students the opportunity to follow courses on topics that are not strictly curricular, such as ethics and bioethics, which also complete their education at a humanistic level. They can explore firsthand the "hidden" dimensions of their future profession: from university volunteering, in our care facilities or in the area, to experiences in some villages in Tanzania.
We work to help them structure an open mentality, attentive to complexity, sensitive to the needs of the person.
An open mind is also formed by stimulating the international dimension of the study programme. Year after year, the experiences abroad, the relationship with students from foreign countries and the relationship with the visitsing professors contaminate the life of the university. And thanks to specific projects and the support of partners attentive to these issues, our university is encouraging the return of Italian teachers from abroad. A picture thus emerges in which technical-scientific training appears to be only one of the components of the individual training project.
Greater awareness, therefore, for greater motivation, to launch professionals with an edge into the world of work.

From here the university can start again to understand where it has fallen behind (first of all an adequate allocation of funds for research) and set out to place itself at the level of the most cutting-edge universities, increase its internationality and be able to attract the best minds, to truly put ourselves at the service of the growth of students and, therefore, of the entire country.