Prof. Weissensteiner, since your election at the beginning of the year, we have been addressing you as the future Rector. On Tuesday, you finally took up your new post. What are you doing in your first days as Rector?

Rector Alex Weissensteiner: In the first few days, there are a lot of small decisions to be made that will enable me to organize my future daily routine efficiently: Who has access to which files, and who controls the countless documents I receive for signature? As a rector, you are confronted with a flood of very different questions and must find answers in the shortest possible time. A good team and clear processes are essential. And yes, this week we also opened the academic year, we started the process of the annual evaluation of professors, and I gave a lot of interviews (laughs).

Your predecessor, Prof. Paolo Lugli, focused his rectorate very much on the new Faculty of Engineering and its campus at the NOI Techpark, which has now opened. What is your big project?

The Faculty of Engineering project is not yet complete. We have now opened the building, which was a great start. But it would be completely wrong to think we have reached our goal. Now we need to position the Faculty as a brand and attract new and more students. We have new courses in the pipeline, such as a master's degree focusing on technological solutions for the health and sports sectors. In a marathon, you would say: we are at the first aid station.

Does that mean the faculty remains your top priority?

It remains one of my priorities. However, one of my main goals for the next few months will be to strengthen the university community. The last few years have been characterized by hard work for the whole community. In particular, the funding from the National Reconstruction Fund PNRR and NextGenerationEU has meant that we have grown very quickly in certain areas. Our external research funding alone has grown from less than one million to 16 million euros. All this has been good for us as a university. But especially after the years of the pandemic, we have also lost something through this rapid growth and the large amount of work. That is why it is so important to me to create moments of encounter and exchange again, to understand together what our priorities are and to set new strategic goals together.

So, creating new visions is not just your job?

I don't think you can dictate a vision from the top down. It is very important to me that such visions emerge organically from the bottom up. But I have a personal vision: to embed the principle of delegation and subsidiarity more firmly in our corporate culture, as far as it lies within my remit. This is also because, as a university, we have now reached a size that requires decisions to be taken at different levels.

Not an easy task...

Yes, and it is a safe bet that this will not be a goal we will have in the first 100 days. It will probably be more of a 'twisting and turning in search of common ground and consensus'. But there are enough good practices from other universities to inspire us.

Does this mean that you will be working on the university's corporate culture and organization soon?

As I said, unibz has now reached a size where the structures that were created 20 years ago no longer work. That is why, even before I took office, we began to understand that, for example, faculties and academic staff should be more involved in strategic decisions. But now it is a question of devolving roles and responsibilities and agreeing on how this should be done. I also want to ensure that we as a university community see ourselves more as one: administration, academics, and students. If we are to meet the challenges of the coming years, we must pull together.

Speaking of challenges, the number of courses offered at unibz has grown steadily in recent years, as has the number of courses offered at all other universities. At the same time, the target group is shrinking due to demographic changes. How do you respond to this?

According to forecasts, demographic change will lead to a decline in the number of traditional students aged between 19 and 24 by as much as ten percent. Today, the picture is already very heterogeneous: about 90 percent of students at grammar schools go on to study after leaving school; at technical colleges, especially in the STEM subjects, only about half do, because many are headhunted by companies right after graduation. And this is precisely the group with a new need.

For which you would like to create a new offer?

Absolutely! We have seen an exponential growth of online universities in recent years that are already doing this, but we don't think we should leave this field to them alone. Since the Covid pandemic, we as a traditional university are just as well equipped to offer online teaching. But at the same time, we can also offer a network and opportunities for face-to-face learning and relationship building.

Does this mean that unibz will be more open to working students?

We already have many working students, especially in the Master's programmes, where 30 to 50 per cent of students work at least part-time. But with the new academic year, we have also launched a pilot project for this group of students, allowing them to extend the duration of their studies and adjust their tuition fees accordingly. But it is not only these young people who need to acquire university knowledge in new ways.

What other targets are there?

You could say there are an infinite number. Our modern working world requires continuous learning. Even those who have completed their studies are far from finished learning for their working lives and need to refresh their knowledge again and again. Not in the form of a complete course of study, but with smaller learning units. At the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, we already offer this type of professional training, for example for banks or the Sanitätsbetrieb.  But I still see a lot of potential here. And the fact that universities like Università Bocconi or Luiss have already founded their business schools proves that the market is there.

Will unibz set up its structure for this type of training, or could it be done within the existing organization?

We are currently looking into both options.

In what timeframe could such new courses be launched?

We aim to start in two years.

The new academic year started this week. For the first time, students are being welcomed on not three but four campuses. Does the new campus in the NOI Techpark also run the risk of changing the life and sense of community on the Bozen-Bolzano campus for the worse because of the separation?

We must be careful not to undermine the Bozen-Bolzano campus and we must ensure a good balance between the two campuses. However, I am convinced that the decision to locate the Faculty of Engineering in the NOI Techpark was the right one. I would even go so far as to say that this coexistence of a campus with start-ups and companies will help us a great deal in positioning the Faculty, i.e. the location will be a deciding factor for future students, in addition to the attractive courses on offer. Of course, as I said, there is still a lot to be done. For example, the cafeteria on the new campus will not be ready until the summer semester, and there is still room for improvement in terms of public transport connections. But I am sure everything will be fine. And the students already have excellent facilities. Individual supervision in the labs is possible here in numbers that others can only dream of.

When we talk about the unibz brand, we cannot avoid the issue of trilingualism. In recent years, this has been called into question and has also been seen as an obstacle to finding enough students for certain courses. How does the new Rector view this debate?

I am convinced that trilingualism is an essential and unique feature of our University. The decision is up to the University Council, but as Rector I will always stand up for the trilingualism of the Bachelor programmes. Of course, these language requirements cost us some students. But at the end of the day, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages - including, for example, noticeably more motivated students.

Is that the case?

Absolutely. I have a comparison with Innsbruck, where I taught for 15 years. Of course, there are a lot of highly motivated students there too. But over the years I've noticed that there was always a group of up to 20 percent of the total in the courses where you could tell that they were only there because they couldn't think of anything better to do. We don't have such students in Bozen-Bolzano. Those who choose to study in three languages have a fundamental motivation. There is no trace of the prejudices often heard about Generation Z. We can be proud of our students; they are extremely motivated and goal-oriented.

However, a trilingual program also requires an appropriate linguistic balance among the teaching staff. How difficult is this balancing act?

We are a small university and of course, we only have so many teachers. And language skills are not the only criterion for appointment. That's why we handle trilingualism with care, but also with a certain amount of flexibility. In other words, it may happen that the ratio of languages taught is not quite balanced in a given term - although this is and will remain our aim and aspiration. But it would be highly counterproductive to teach people in a language they don't really speak. What's important is that students achieve their language goals by the end of their studies.

Now, however, there are a lot of young people starting their studies who have problems finding affordable accommodation. Is this another area you would like to work on, or are we on the right track?

The precarious housing situation is a real problem and one that we will of course be monitoring very closely. If we want the best minds to study with us, it is essential to create infrastructure. However, my predecessor and the entire university management have already done valuable work in this regard, which is now beginning to bear fruit. We can now assume that more will be available soon and that the situation will improve.