Politecnico di Torino

9^th March 2020

in full consistency with the actions taken by our Rector regarding the containment measures of the Corona Virus, I believe it is important and necessary in this particularly complex moment, to share with all of you the spirit with which the School is dealing with this delicate situation of emergency.

At the School, we are putting our utmost commitment in ensuring the continuity of teaching for the benefit of all our students. For this reason, we have started an intense dialogue with the coordinators of all the Specializing Masters Programmes and of the continuing education programmes you are attending since the first week of emergency in Italy. We are taking care of the specific needs expressed by the coordinators, teachers and students and we are trying to respond to them in a timely and specific way.

We are aware that the sudden transition from classroom to online teaching can have a particularly strong and penalizing impact on the Masters Programmes and Lifelong learning. However, as you understand we are facing a real rare, unexpected event, and beyond our control as a university and as trainers, what in risk management is usually referred to as a "black swan". The ministerial provisions that imposed on all Italian universities the suspension of all forms of classroom teaching until March 15^th are based on public health reasons deemed necessary to contain the infection. The spread of the epidemic in Italy and Europe suggests that this emergency and precautionary measures could continue beyond this date.

As I mentioned, we are responding promptly to the different needs coming from each single education programme. We understand that your needs, in this moment of emergency, may be different from those of the students of the Bachelor’s and Master's degree programmess and we are preparing to manage these specificities. Here are some examples of our response actions.

For the Specializing Masters Programmes that require monitoring of the presence by the Financing bodies (e.g. Masters in a High Apprenticeships scheme), in the absence of positive news that lead to the reopening of the classrooms, we plan to start online teaching as soon as possible and we are looking for shared solutions for the validation of students’ remote presence at lessons. A similar argument applies to training initiatives aimed at employees, which we are working on with companies to achieve a method of certifying the presence of students recognized by the Interprofessional Funds for Training, where relevant.

For the Specializing Masters Programmes who provide laboratory and atelier activities, especially in the disciplines of architecture and design, the computer equipment made available by the university will allow them to emulate the classroom methods as much as possible.

For the Specializing Masters Programmes that provide project work activities outside the university, we are adapting ourselves compatibly to the constraints of health caution imposed by the companies and entities with whom we collaborate.

In general, I can assure you that our focus during this period will be to pay particular attention to critical situations and that we will try to avoid as far as possible that the blockages and slowdowns in the teaching calendar caused by this emergency have too negative repercussions on the conclusion of your training programmes.

In the event of individual situations of particular difficulty, we invite you to report them to the Specializing Master Programmes and Lifelong Learning Unit at our email addresses and institutional telephone contacts.

I thank you for your patience and collaboration, as all the administrative and technical staff of the university for the extraordinary effort they are making to minimize your inconvenience.

Yours Faithfully

Watch the Dean's message to the students: