Professor Gianluigi Greco is a candidate for the office of Rector of Unical. We asked him some questions to know their goals, ideas and desires.
How do you imagine the future of the university?
«I am pleased this question because, as a former student Unical, I am aware that this university has allowed me to acquire excellent knowledge and skills, but above all it taught me to imagine my future. I learned that imagining and planning, in this land, must be necessarily contiguous actions, lesson I treasure and that I try to put to the system. The problems we will have to deal with well and concern the scarcity of funds for the right to study, the conclusion of PNRR funding, the need to promote initiatives for a more just provision of ordinary funding funds, the demographic decline and aggressive competition of the telematic universities. These are interconnected challenges that require innovative strategies to preserve quality, attractiveness and sustainability of the University. However, we are an institution rooted in a territory and in a collective memory, we feel the care that people reserve us and expectations towards us, and we are therefore ready to measure ourselves with the new time that comes. My program, which can be consulted on the net, specifically enters the measures possible in all areas of the University, identifies critical issues and proposes solutions to be developed in collaboration with those who live daily in the “cubes”. If of this long elaborate I had to summarize the soul, I would say that our future task is to transform the challenges into growth opportunities, not limiting itself to managing the existing but always teaching itself towards new possibilities, working with assiduous commitment and determined for the generations that come and to offer them the best growth opportunities. My vision is that of a university that builds its future with confidence along the path of quality and transparency. The Unical is first of all community, it is refusal of individualisms and must continue to be a space for construction of critical thinking, a point of reference for the entire Calabria “.
How much did university grow compared to when she was a student?
“In a few decades the face of the university is certainly changed; We have better structured our internal processes, we have diversified the training offer very much, we built solid networks of international relations and started an increasingly tight dialogue with the territory. These and many other changes – really too many to cite them all – are however phenomena that cross the boundaries of the campus. The cultural references are different today, society has changed, Calabria itself is a construction site in the making. The university therefore grew so much and in many directions, but to truly grasp the spirit of the question I think it is useful to overturn its meaning. What really strikes me in this continuous becoming is the firmness and constancy with which some basic values are proposed again. The enthusiasm of when I attended the UNICAL classrooms as a student is the same that I read in the eyes of my students and my students, who are committed to the construction of their future here. It is certain that new ways of communicating have become fundamental in the dynamics of relationships, but however the way of making community in class does not change, their curiosity does not change towards the world around them, does not change the tension towards the future. All those characteristics of an age group that is fundamental for the destinies of our region do not change. The awareness does not change that this place represents a collective heritage to be preserved and growing ».
What is the figure of Rector who most inspired and inspires it?
“The history of the University teaches us that each rector has contributed to the growth of the university according to their vision and talent, adapting to the possibilities of the historical moment: some had to defend the existing in critical times, others were able to open new horizons. In my program I often called myself back to the visionary work of Beniamino Andreatta and of those who accompanied him in his constitutive company. The philosophy behind the idea of founding Unical was truly revolutionary for the south: to build the future through knowledge. History showed us that its intuition went beyond the simple creation of an university, because it aimed to build a “bridge” between a Calabria perceived as “an island without sea” and the world. Andreatta was convinced that only by looking away could the awareness of what you are, and that the university should be a cultural transformation engine before economic, capable of reconfiguring the “coordinates of the possible” of a region too often told through the marginal filter. His constitutive principles were consequent: to train not only competent professionals, but a new ruling class with ample vision, critical analysis skills and skills in designing innovative solutions. The dream was to encourage a virtuous development circle that involved the entire territory in a collective emancipation project based on culture. From this extraordinary lesson I believe must continue to draw inspiration not only the future rector, but the whole university community ».
