Welcome New Students, the Adventure Begins
5,538 welcomes to Bocconi! That's how many students from 94 different countries (including 858 here for a semester) are entering Bocconi on 26 August. For all of them we have organized three weeks of welcome activities and socializing to help them get acquainted with the University. In the coming years this will be their home, but also the starting point for discovering new countries, through participation in international programs, and for approaching the world of work with the support of our career service. Every year at this time as I walk through the corridors of Bocconi, I feel two emotions upon seeing the faces of these youngsters.
The first is pride, as a Bocconi alumnus and as Rector, in seeing that our University is to all effects a school with an Italian heart projected into the world. We are international because our students, our teachers and our staff are international. And not only because of the number of passports and languages ​​circulating on campus, but because we have grown accustomed to thinking without geographical and cultural boundaries.
The second emotion I feel regards our students, who arrive full of hopes and ambitions. As an educator I feel the responsibility to respond fully to their expectations and help make the university experience a springboard for all of them to achieve their individual goals.
And this year, I want to give a special welcome to the 38 students of the World Bachelor in Business, because even if they are enrolled in their third year, they are only now entering Bocconi. Here they will spend year three of this innovative program, having attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for the first year, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for the second year. Three years ago, when we launched this extraordinary program, they were the pioneers who, chosen from more than 1,000 applications, were the first to join us in betting on this new way of understanding university education: not one degree, but three; not one country, but three continents. So together with the warmest of welcomes, I also want to thank them for believing in this ambitious program and for contributing to its success.
Pioneers today, managers tomorrow in a future that is closer and closer, more and more interconnected.