PALERMO (ITALPRESS) – An opportunity on the one hand to celebrate a growth that does not stop, on the other to relaunch the idea of fragility not as weakness but as a force: the University of Palermo celebrates 220 years of activity with the inauguration of the academic year 2025-2026. The event took place in the Magna Hall of the Engineering Department: it is, as every year, a significant stage for the university community and the city, as well as a renewed commitment of the university towards the territory. At the heart of the event there is the theme Fragility is resilience: in a particularly complex global context, the University chooses to stand side by side with its boys offering them support and comparison tools. According to the data of the Integrated University Service for Psychological Support (Siasp), established in November 2024, there are 750 requests received regarding anxiety or sadness problems: half of these previews interventions of not short duration, while 3% of these arrives from foreign students; moreover, in only 2025 were provided 7.500 hours of intervention by two psychotherapists.
On the other hand, looking at the updated numbers of the university, the number of courses is attested to 165 with 80 three-year degrees, 74 teachers and 11 single-cycle masters: in relation to new courses there are three three-year courses (Industrial engineering and Informatics in English, Law for the innovation of public administration, Science and technologies of animal productions), two courses of health area (Technical of physiopathology At national level, the athenaeus is second in Italy by number of activations, with over 30 courses of study in four years. The number of graduates increased by 8 thousand units compared to the previous year (+5%), while the registrations grew by 9.5% at a total level and 25% in the Master’s Degrees: the total enrollment was increased by 7%.
Also significant are the numbers of internationalization with 626 new students, 415 inscriptions in master’s degrees and over 200 more recordings compared to the previous academic year (+45.3%). “Ours is a steadily increasing university, our parameters are all positive especially with regard to the growth of registrations – emphasizes the rector Massimo Midiri, – Our reputation has grown precisely for the policy of working together with companies; also international numbers are rising, as well as the attractiveness of Palermo as a Mediterranean University.” The choice of fragility as resilience, he adds, is dictated by the desire to adopt “a more optimistic approach linked to the analysis of what children perceive. Sometimes the university experience translates into an extraordinary life experience, in others there are facts of a family, social and personal nature that lead to personality disorders, psyche, psychological fragility that can be resolved autonomously or evolved towards worse disorders: the athenaeus wanted to set up a network of control, through a special psychological center, in which specialists through questionnaires interact in a very easy way with the boys and Malaysians.
“This thing has been greatly appreciated by the boys, they know that we work for them in that logic to build day by day a university that sees the student in the center in a non-formal but substantial key.” He echoes the Director General of the University Antonio Sorce: “The choice of the theme Fragility is resilience comes from a context that at this moment sees a great fragility by society and the student community: it has been thought to address this issue with a moment of reflection that puts in place a will of resilience, that is to overcome fragility to make it an opportunity to regain strength, both in the student community and in the same university, to ensure a prosperous future to our children.” In his speech to the students Midiri celebrated two figures: one is the young Palermoman Mauro Glorioso, who recently received from the President of the Republic the title of Knight of the Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic, as an example of resilience and determination for having obtained a degree in Medicine after being tetraplegic; the other is the internationally renowned physicist Antonino Zichichi, who died on 9 February after having dedicated his own cultural contexts.
The rector then dwelled on two Sicilian realities that in their fragility proved resilient: on the one hand Gibellina, reborn after the earthquake of 1968 and became the Capital of contemporary art in the current year; on the other Niscemi, which after the January landslide is demonstrating great capacity for reaction and cohesion. Marco Rovelli also took part in the ceremony: “The children must understand that fragility is a force, but they should understand it first of all adults, which too often do not realize the transformations that young people have undergone having grown up in a world that in the last 40-50 years has radically changed and had a profound anthropological mutation. The psychic implications of these transformations are just as deep: if adults do not take responsibility to understand how much the gaze of young people is displaced they will hardly come to give them that space necessary to ensure that fragility can turn into force.”.
For this to happen, he adds, “a sharing is necessary, leaving individualization and isolation and returning to conceive the relationship as a fundamental space of growth: first comes the relationship, then the individual. The primary task of schools of every order and degree is to create spaces of autonomy, cooperation and collaboration: this is difficult in a world that goes in a whole other direction and puts in the center the government of the ego, it is necessary that the school and the University go countercurrent”.
– photo xd8/Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
