Alumni, the stars and stripes network is born

Building a community of University graduates in the United States, helping Italian students to integrate and enabling Cattolica to update its research programmes according to market needs: these are the objectives of the institutional journey promoted across the Atlantic. "We are here ," explained the Rector, Prof. F. Anelli , "to enter into agreements with American universities and to give our students the opportunity to develop their activities, here as well as in Europe and in other parts of the world."

Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington were the cities where the Rector, together with a delegation from the University, visited. In particular, an agreement was signed with Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia for the first "double degree" in Medicine, synergies were also established in the banking and finance sector with Fordham University and a collaboration with Boston College. The Rector's delegate for coordinating internationalisation projects, Pier Sandro Cocconcelli, explains Cattolica's international vocation is already in the numbers: "Of the more than forty thousand students we have, four thousand come from abroad and, of these, most from the United States. We have long had courses in English and exchanges with foreign universities. Twenty percent of our graduates have been abroad, and we want to increase this percentage."

Boston, New York and Washington hosted the first UCSC-USA Alumni reunions , which were attended by more than one hundred graduates of the University. "For us, the relationship with the Alumni is not ancillary ," the Rector stressed, "on the contrary, it is essential to the university's activity. If we want to build a community with all the students of the university, we cannot limit ourselves to the 4-5 years in which we live on campus: we have invested in people not only in terms of skills, but also in building their identity. And people are our best calling card in terms of quality, they are our best ambassadors."