May

New Academic Calendar

On April 16, the Academic Senate met and one of the items on the agenda concerned the approval of next year's Academic Calendar.

The process that preceded today's decision was long and saw various steps.

The Institutions of the University and the Student Representatives of all the lists began to discuss the issue a few weeks earlier. The central point of the discussion was from the beginning the week of suspension between the period of lessons and that of exams.

The question arose from the fact that the week of suspension tightened the exam session too much and, often, it was not possible to guarantee adequate spacing between the various exams.

We representatives were against removing the week, considering these days very useful for students to prepare for exams.

In the Consulta della Didattica of 10 April it was discussed in this regard. The final opinion, resulting from a compromise that followed a stalemate between the two proposals, was to maintain two days of suspension before the winter session (the first two after returning from the Christmas holidays) and the first three of the week after the end of the lessons of the second semester. In the remaining days of that first week, however, it was proposed to include the appeals of the courses of the semester preceding the current one.

The representatives of the Central Bodies therefore decided, to assess the impact that these proposals would have had, to call by mutual agreement, a questionnaire in which about 3000 students participated in a few days (we would have liked them to have been many more). The result expressed a strong majority that affirmed the usefulness of the week of suspension.

On April 13, the representatives of the Central Bodies met with the Rector to clarify their position regarding the will to maintain the week of suspension.

The Student Council, on the same day, expressed the request to maintain both weeks of suspension for the next academic year.

In the Academic Senate of April 16, the Representatives brought the request to maintain both weeks of suspension. The discussion of this point has seen various interventions for and against. The debate led to the prevailing opinion expressed by the Consulta della Didattica, with the addition of having Saturday as a useful day to plan the dates of the exams. In addition, also for the next academic year both appeals of the winter session will be useful to graduate in February. The other characteristics of the calendar remain in fact unchanged compared to that of the A.A. 2017/18.

In summary, the important novelty of next year's academic calendar will be on what for 17/18 was the week of suspension. For engineering there will no longer be the whole week free from lessons and exams but only the first two days for that of January and the first three for that of June. On the remaining days of the week, the University undertook to put only appeals of the courses of the semester preceding the current one (therefore those of the second semester of the previous year in January and those of the first semester of the current year for June). For the courses of the AUIC and Design schools, a calendar remains unchanged compared to the 2017/2018 academic year. We attach the image that outlines the academic calendar of 2018/19 for the various schools.

As Student Representatives we believe that we have done our duty and, although the final decision was not the one we had proposed, we took part in the process that was followed and that led to this decision.