To all students

of University of Bergamo

on Campus and not, Italian or foreign

Bergamo, April 12th, 2021

Dear students,

I’m writing to you in relation to the “changes” which Lombardy’s passage into orange zone allows us to apply to our University’s activities.

As you know, I am eager to promote, whenever possible, the reprisal of on-site lessons: I believe we will be able to start again in presence in the period between Wednesday April 14thand Monday April 19th 2021, gradually of course, respecting specific procedures and precautions and according to the different logistics and organizational needs of the different Graduation Courses and their respective sites.

The classrooms are currently undergoing renovations, moving in the direction of an ever more modern and interactive didactic system (technologic update, electrification and further safety improvements), so your lessons may be held in different sites from the ones in which you normally attend: as we are in a very dynamic phase, I suggest you always keep an eye on the University website and each graduation course’s site, so that you can be constantly updated on the adopted procedures and on the assigned classrooms.

As from 12 o’clock, tomorrow (April 13th),you will be able to visualize the lesson timetables, which indicate on-site and online courses; also starting from 12 o’clock tomorrow, you will be able to book seats for the lessons in presence.

To avoid any confusion, I will here recap the different measures for the various activities.

• Lessons are reprising in dual mode, which means both in presence and online at the same time. Lessons in presence can be applied to courses with no more than 50 students.

If, while keeping track of students’ presence in the classroom, we should find that numbers are close or equal to zero, the Department Directors are entitled to decide to reconvert these courses to remote mode, of course having first informed the involved attendees.Lessons are anyway recorded and remain available to enrolled students.

• Regular exam sessions will carry on in remote mode.
   
• Graduation sessions and proclamations will remain, for the time being, online.
   
• Tutor-Student Meetings will carry on in remote mode.
   
• As previously indicated, for the whole of the 2020-2021 academic year, training paths will follow the rules which were given in the document concerning “phase 4”.
   
• All university services which can be booked via app are confirmed in presence: libraries, canteens, study rooms. As for the study rooms, you may be assigned a different one from the ones you normally used for individual studying, for the same reasons I was explaining above, concerning the works for didactic equipment implementation.
   
• The Students’ Help Desk Office will also remain in presence (Monday 1.30 pm -3:30 pm Thursday 10.00 am-12.00 pm), also by appointment.

All of this information you should already know, but I prefer to repeat it, to avoid the risk of any misunderstanding, in such a delicate moment, in which, unfortunately, the emergency is still active and present.

I particularly wish to reassure the First year students, that as soon as Authorities will allow it, we will go back to on-site activities also with them: I presume that, as anticipated in my latest communication, this will hopefully be possible in the last part of the current academic year’s second semester, when the contagion trend should, as we all hope, decrease.

I trust in you, being well aware that things are not easy, both for who has to stay at home and for those who can go back to class: on the one side, you are putting up with a forced isolation which doesn’t allow you to fully live the university experience, on the other, it is possible to feel a certain confusion and fear towards on-site activities, especially when you are by now used to staying closed within the walls of your room, facing a computer monitor.

But these are two sides of the same coin which, together, we will be able to face in the best way, of this I’m sure. Now we must, gradually, rediscover our sense of belonging to a community of people who cultivate and “inhabit” meetings, building them in the physical spaces of our University, and greeting them in the metaphorical space of our individuality.

Come on, students! Let’s start taking back our University and getting in touch with it, and with all the life that fills it.

A big hug (with a little less distance),

Your “Rettore”

Prof. Remo Morzenti Pellegrini