BE FIRST

4 July 2014

We are the Business School of the world’s first university, a benchmark for a new generation of international and creative managers. Our faculty is composed of managers, academics and consultants. Research, rigorous methodology, a dynamic education and practical experience represent the basis on which we build our pathways to knowledge.

Today, Alma Graduate School becomes the Foundation of the University of Bologna, with a new name, Bologna Business School, thus reinforcing its international reach, as seen in an increasing number of initiatives in the English language intended for a global audience, such as regular conferences, summer school, short-term courses, fellowships, exchange programmes, and last but not least full professional Master programmes.

Alma Graduate School was born in 2000 (with the name Almaweb), as a result of a union between Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, the Cassa di Risparmio Foundation and the Guglielmo Marconi foundation. Since then it has become a project in which knowledge and experience coming from diverse worlds can meet in an interdisciplinary perspective, which represents its defining trait. After a period of rapid and organic growth in May 2006, Alma merged with Profingest Mangament School, a school founded in 1985 by the most important economic institutions in the region . Profingest brought more than two decades of experience in the field of managerial training to the table, as well as an organic link with the principal economic institutions of the region, a solid organisation and an important network of ex-alumni.

The new institutional arrangangement of Bologna Business School is in order for the school to become a reference point for the University when it come to post-graduate managerial training and education, ensuring maximum synergy between the schools own education and that of the academic structures, while simultaneously consolidating collaboration with the entrepreneurial world, by means of having private partners involved in strategic decisions and choice of direction.

Over the last few years the Business School has taken the direction of internationalisation, by developing a Master in Business Administration in which young managers coming from 5 continents (the latest edition had 39 countries represented) while initiating collaborations with other international business schools across the EMBA Consortium (Brazil, China, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, USA).

Since the year 2000, over 3.300 young adults have concluded the master and by adding the students of Profingest, it has given life to a community of over 6.000 managers. Over 300 lecturers are also participating in the community, of which roughly 50% belong to the University of Bologna, while 15% come from other international business schools and 35% are managers and consultants.