The Project

The ALPIP acronym (America Latina PIemonte Politecnico) denotes an ambitious project in cooperation with Latin American countries to enhance academic exchanges and to promote new avenues of internationalisation that see the cooperative participation between universities and the socio-economic system.

The Context

  • Development depends not only on local structural factors; it also depends heavily on the level of interaction, collaboration and integration with other local systems. Generally, social and economic growth does not achieve satisfactory results if it is not "fertilized" by continuous exchanges in cultural, entrepreneurial, training and economic fields.
  • The current level of cooperation and academic mobility between Europe and Latin America is not sufficient when compared to the educational possibilities and common political and economic interests between the two regions.
  • A meaningful factor for success will be an increasingly integrated approach in the relations between local systems that will provide for the sharing and mutual responsibility of strategies among the different actors (in the entrepreneurial, financial and educational fields) involved in development.
  • Italy and Latin America have common cultural roots; they share common values and are facing similar problems.
  • Mobility and collaboration are facilitated by the absence of substantial language barriers and also by ties deriving from past emigration from Italy and specifically, the massive outflow from the Piemonte Region.
  • The business sector of the Piemonte Region has a significant presence in Latin America, an area considered strategic for future development.
  • The Politecnico di Torino has a leading position in the process of reformulating education as a policy of development, to be integrated with other development strategies (economic, employment, industrial).
  • Moreover, the Politecnico di Torino now has an extensive and varied network of collaboration and partnerships with companies of primary importance (FIAT, MOTOROLA, TELECOM, etc.) and it is following a policy of education and research to support a development strategy founded on social cohesion.
  • For more than ten years the Politecnico has played an important role in the COLUMBUS Project, born from and sustained by the Conferenza dei Rettori Europei (CRE) and by the Association of Latin American Universities (AULA).
  • On the occasion of the conference "Converging Paths for Academic Renewal: the Euro-Latin America Agenda", held in Torino on the 16th and 17th of November 2001, an Action Plan was signed, with which this project fits perfectly.

The specific objectives

  • Mutually reinforce the level of presence of Piemonte and strategic regional areas in Latin America
  • Promote a significant interchange of students in the Polytechnical science sectors (Master of Science degrees, Specializing Masters, PhDs).
  • Strengthen the connection between companies and the socio-economic situation within each of the involved regions.
  • Set up international collaboration and partnerships between universities, businesses, associations and industrial institutions in sectors that offer important opportunities.

The Actions

The strengthening of the ties between the socio-economic systems of Piemonte and Latin America is to be achieved through a series of coordinated interventions:

  • Educational initiatives supported by a system of scholarships:
    • that will lead to the conferment of Lauree specialistiche (Master of Science degrees)
    • that will lead to the conferment of Master di II livello (II Level Specializing Masters)
    • that will lead to the conferment of Dottorato di ricerca (PhD equivalent)
    • for bilateral training periods
  • Branch actions:
    • create catalyzation points (Piemontese in Latin America and Latin American in Piemonte) to strengthen the collaboration between the local systems into a logic of closer relationships between education, research and the social and economic situations
    • involvement of associations of Piemonte emigrants
  • Research:
    • support of interchange between university teachers
    • support to the mobility of young researchers/PhD students

The partners

The ALPIP Project is promoted by a number of subjects having diverse and complementary roles and characteristics:

Poliweb

Last modified: 24/05/2007 9:03 am