Governance, Faculty & Staff

At Unicollege, each campus (Florence, Mantua, Milan, and Turin) holds a Dean of Academic Affairs, who oversees the global academic activities dispensed in the given campus. It is however the campus in Turin that holds a primus inter pares role and therefore centralizes and manages all activities across the four campuses – exceptionally, the Dean of Academic Affairs of Turin is also appointed as a representative for the campus in Milan.

The three Deans of Academic Affairs, along with the President and the Heads of the 10 Schools compose Unicollege’s Academic Senate; such body proposes, modifies, integrates, or removes all general academic practices that regulate the academic life within the Institution and beyond. All decisions finalized within this body are then communicated, via the Head of Schools, to members of Faculty and staff– of each designated school and department.

Each Department can nominate a representative (Coordinator), who holds a representative role within the School board.

As an accredited university by the Italian Ministry of Education, Unicollege undergoes strict annual reviews by internal and external audit agencies, as well as by the (Italian) Ministry of Education itself. This continuous process of supervision provides the university with top-ranked performances especially in the realms of training and teaching, which are continuously monitored on a school, department, campus, and centralized university level.

As an international university providing education in 10 languages of instruction, Unicollege holds a highly qualified cohort of instructors, who come from some of the country and the world’s most prestigious universities – such as Harvard University (USA), Leiden University (Holland), Central Saint Martins (UK), as well as Université de Strasbourg (France), Università La Sapienza (Italy), Universität Hamburg (Germany), and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). This rich and diverse academic, professional, and linguistic scenario guarantees representation, academic diversity, and a dynamic learning and human environment (for both instructors and candidates).

Unicollege is founded on the principle of academic freedom, thus assigning, to each instructor, personal and academic flexibility in the delivery of lessons, courses, and proposed programs. However, its unique presence in UNESCO cities such as Florence and Mantua, as well as the centers of prestigious capitals such as Milan and Turin provide a unique learning opportunity, whereby the city itself becomes the class.

Candidates studying at Unicollege will therefore live a learning experience that hybridizes:

• Immersive learning: taking advantage of local peculiarities, and learning in workshops, businesses, venues, squares, selected locations, and tours that exacerbate authentic knowhows, crafts, knowledge, experience, and professionalism.
• Complementary learning: as a study abroad experience taking place in the Italian context, the very cradle of humanistic knowledge and culture, courses at Unicollege tend to reiterate this complementary and intersectional approach across disciplines and knowhows, and to deliver programs that hybridize subjects, areas, and disciplines. As a result, most courses hold a dual code (i.e., cross-listed) that exacerbate the very humanistic approach to juxtapose, enrich, and complement human knowledge and discovery.
• Practice-based learning: in addition to the immersive learning approach described above, Unicollege learning experiences are often complemented with a practice-based component that provides the actual, active participation of students – who are involved in organically practical sessions, where they do, make, touch, sense, experience as part of their learning process.
• Self-empowering learning: each school at Unicollege holds the name of an inspiring character that changed lives on both a local and universal level – i.e. Pietro Leopoldo was the world’s first political modern leader to abolish death penalty; Artemisia Gentileschi was the world’s first official female artist; Maria Montessori is considered the world’s pioneer of modern pedagogy.

This gender-balanced nomenclative approach exacerbates the intent of Unicollege to provide inspiring references to international candidates that seek inspiration and sense of universal human and intellectual connection. In this sense, and through trained faculty, Unicollege seeks to spread a learning experience that is self-empowering, self-definitional, and intellectually inspiring, drawing from unique characters that changed the history of the world forever.