Programme aims

The Degree Programme aims at training professionals able to analyse, restore and conserve biotic and abiotic components of natural and artificial ecosystems, working for entities, institutions and companies, and operating as experts in educational centres, addressing ecological and environmental issues connected with global changes and the social and technical implications caused by these changes. Additionally, the Degree Programme provides the methodological and cultural foundations for a solid education and the basics of scientific research in natural science sectors. With specific reference to the programme, offered entirely in English, environmental sustainability is the model used to develop an integrated approach to the economic and social use, conservation and valorisation of natural resources in a context characterised by constant global changes.

This Degree Programme aims at providing graduates with adequate knowledge tools to help them address and solve complex issues such as those connected with global changes that affect different disciplinary fields and may have an impact on strictly natural and environmental areas, or carry additional social, economic and technological implications.

Therefore, Natural Environment Management and Conservation Experts do not focus strictly on protecting natural systems, but must also:
1) be able work on systems derived from anthropic activities (for example, agricultural areas), which are intrinsically unstable and, therefore, require constant controlling and monitoring. To meet the needs of this second aspect, the Italian learning path is based on laboratory work that provides up-to-date and immediately spendable knowledge together with activities that strengthen students' culture and allow them to develop an adequate critical attitude. The overall aim of this learning path is, in fact, centred around the combination of the two above-mentioned categories of activities.
2) be able to work on systems modified by phenomena connected with global changes. To this end, the learning programme, offered in English, uses a combination of competencies that blend the typical topics of natural and environment science with those pertinent to the economic and social impact produced by global change, as well as the political actions linked to their effects.

Learning path overview:
In brief, the degree programme aims at training professional figures able to bring together the solid culture of naturalistic studies – which in Italy have a great and successful tradition – with the need for monitoring, protecting and restoring natural and anthropic environments. This learning path also aims at setting the natural and/or anthropic environment in a context that includes the effects connected with global changes, and divides it into two curricula that analyse in depth the management and conservation of nature (in Italian) and the ecological dynamics and social and economic aspects linked to global change (in English).
For the above-mentioned purposes, the learning path is organized in blocks of disciplines with study programmes and laboratory work involving multiple fields: biogeography, bio agriculture and ecology, geoenvironmental studies, and social and economic management.