An Ecosystem called University
(2021)Abstract
This book is dedicated to the university as a protagonist of change. Its purpose is to see the university as a place where the lines between organization and system are fluid, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the product is knowledge as an end, a means and a way of developing the individual (critical sense) and its interaction with the environment (instrumental reason).
The book seeks throughout to foster the image of the Ecosystem University as being a producer of novelty, where the only certainty is uncertainty. The university undergoes a process of permanent spiral growth – the spiral of knowledge without any control of causality – and creating, through its environment, responsible citizens, and free-thinking persons.
The Ecosystem University is under permanent construction and deconstruction. It is the beginning, which is creation, permanent creation from the present and the past that is assumed in the present.
Our work to rediscover the natural feel of an ecosystem embedded in the university and the rich experience of community will take us by the hand and lead us, proud professors, to the purest origin of human knowledge with a flair of joie de vivre: the refreshing purity of the new and the authentic value of ingenuity that will allow us to be ourselves in that very moment: a community that self-organizes, builds projects of life and culture, and determines its own destiny.
The author's doctoral thesis: "Innovazione organizzativa per la valorizzazione della ricerca scientifica." It won the title of best doctoral thesis of 2017 at the University of Ferrara, Italy, for addressing relevant issues attributed to the socio-economic role of the university in building a knowledge society focused on the individual. It was based on a case study how this model was implemented at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, where the author has been the head of research since 2015.
Description
This book is dedicated to the university as a protagonist of change. Its purpose is to see the university as a place where the lines between organization and system are fluid, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the product is knowledge as an end, a means and a way of developing the individual (critical sense) and its interaction with the environment (instrumental reason).
The book seeks throughout to foster the image of the Ecosystem University as being a producer of novelty, where the only certainty is uncertainty. The university undergoes a process of permanent spiral growth – the spiral of knowledge without any control of causality – and creating, through its environment, responsible citizens, and free-thinking persons.
The Ecosystem University is under permanent construction and deconstruction. It is the beginning, which is creation, permanent creation from the present and the past that is assumed in the present.
Our work to rediscover the natural feel of an ecosystem embedded in the university and the rich experience of community will take us by the hand and lead us, proud professors, to the purest origin of human knowledge with a flair of joie de vivre: the refreshing purity of the new and the authentic value of ingenuity that will allow us to be ourselves in that very moment: a community that self-organizes, builds projects of life and culture, and determines its own destiny.
The author's doctoral thesis: "Innovazione organizzativa per la valorizzazione della ricerca scientifica." It won the title of best doctoral thesis of 2017 at the University of Ferrara, Italy, for addressing relevant issues attributed to the socio-economic role of the university in building a knowledge society focused on the individual. It was based on a case study how this model was implemented at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, where the author has been the head of research since 2015.