Presentation

At the height of a process that started in Bologna with the setting up of the Special School for Archivists (1988) along with a degree course in Conservation of the Cultural Heritage (1992) set up within the Faculty of Arts, the establishment of the Faculty of Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Ravenna,  reporting to the University of Bologna (1996), represented an important landmark in the reorganisation process of the University as pursued by the then Rector, Fabio Roversi Monaco. The overhaul was aimed at the regional decentralisation of the University to facilitate the teaching and administrative activities and to relieve the congestion of the teaching facilities in Bologna, which in 1989 had about 100,000 students, a figure that has now risen to over 105,000.

But the other important purpose of the reorganisation process has been to bring the study of the humanities closer to the actual cultural and economic life of modern society, within a technical and scientific interdisciplinary perspective.  The interdisciplinary approach was implemented when the national context seemed to reject it, especially because of the distrust felt by the Superintendents of the Cultural Heritage, who are now willing to employ students who graduate from this Faculty through the setting up of cooperative companies. Today's cultural and political Italian context with regard to the Cultural Heritage has significantly changed, also thanks to the establishment of this Faculty in Ravenna.

The Faculty's mission is to supply effective and productive education and training capable of offering a concrete occupation in the job market either at domestic or European level, bringing forth the territorial resources which represent a resource for qualified training. For these purposes, a series of initiatives have been started: excavation sites (Tharros, Pantelleria, Suasa, Colombarone, the Roman seaport,  Monte Bibele, Ephesus, Istanbul, Albania, the archaeological park in Classe, Theodore's Palace in Ravenna; Samarkand, Oman and Pakistan); laboratories: diagnostic and restoration laboratory, electronic laboratory for cartographic elaboration and image digitalisation, language laboratory for the study of technical languages; laboratory for the image processing on the basis of non-pervasive and non-destructive diagnostic and restoration investigations;  interrelations with the Sciences and Technology Study Sector (University of Bologna). All these initiatives represent the basis for the specific education and training acquired at the Faculty of Conservation of the Cultural Heritage. A dense network of international relations and the cooperation programs with the University of Cantabria, Montpellier, Moscow Lomonosov, the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece, the National Foundation of Research in Greece and the MIT - Boston give students the chance to benefit from an international education.

Developed in just a few years, the Faculty’s General Library comprises a collection of about 43,677 volumes (of which 6,483 are excerpts) and non-book materials amounting  about 5,844 items. Of this total, 17,641 volumes are the result of acquisitions, while the remainder come from donations made by the Province of Ravenna (5,092), free acquisitions from the specialist libraries of scholars, such as Prof. Pertusi, Prof. Asmussen and Prof. Gershevitch. The Faculty Library’s prestige is demonstrated by the recent donations to the Library assets made by Prof. Pasoli, a scholar of Latin studies. The bibliographic material of the Faculty Library is integrated by the  Archaeology Department Library , in which the bibliographic heritage has now been enlarged and protected by a security system thanks to the Faculty’s contribution. The Library of the Department of History and Methods for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage is jointly managed with the Faculty Library as a unified institution. The Central Library security system has been set up thanks to the sponsorship of Cooperative Ravennati. In addition, the Faculty students and teachers can make use of Ravenna's library network, including the Biblioteca Classense and the Biblioteca Oriani - two important bibliographic centres at international level for their organisation and collection of ancient manuscripts and books; the Faculty is also connected to the Regional Library System via the Internet.

Over the last few years, the Faculty has gone from a ratio of about 43.44 students per teacher/researcher (only including the permanent teaching staff in Ravenna), and to a rate of 18 units if all the teaching staff as in 1999 is considered; and to 36.53 students per teacher/researcher in 2002, a value which can be cut to 16.41 if the whole of the teaching staff is taken into account. The ratio is well above the national Italian average.. The optimal teacher-student ratio in the Faculty of Conservation of the Cultural Heritage makes it unnecessary to set up a tutorship service for students in near future. As an alternative, it is likely that graduate students will offer tutorship as part-time work to help new students in their orientation during the academic career.

Job opportunities are the chief concern for the Faculty. Even before graduating the undergraduate students of the degree course in Conservation of the Cultural Heritage are employed to work for cooperative companies or organisations dealing in restoration, excavation or archive research based in the region. Local companies demand qualified archivists for the organisation of their present-day archives, but the students’ demand for this kind of occupation  remains rather weak, not only inRavenna, but across Italy.

After graduation, according to a statistical survey performed by the University (March 2001), the Italian graduates employed in this sector in 1999 amounted to 72.9% within three years of graduation, while 83.3% of the graduates from Ravenna got a job within two years of graduation. The City of Ravenna has indeed attached special importance to the archaeological sites of Classe and to its monuments as a strategic objective for the City over the next 10 years: for our students and graduates this means a bigger number of job opportunities. The development of the Archaeological Park at Classe (2002) is an example of the city's strategy.  Nevertheless, it is expected that the demand for graduates in this sector in Italy will progressively decrease in the coming years, as the longer the time interval since the Faculty’s opening increases (1996) and the sectoral job market becomes saturated. On the other hand, we also find initiatives such as the Archaeological Park at Classe, which can boast intensive institutional synergies (Municipality, Province, University, Cultural Heritage Superintendents, Banking Foundations) and which represent the cornerstone of the economic activity in Ravenna, also driving its cultural development, or the successful Ravenna Festival with its musical events. All these initiatives are likely to enhance the locally-based job opportunities. Among the other projects  in Ravenna there is the restoration of Theodore’s Palace and the Fabbrica Vecchia or Old Factory (in Porto Corsini).