ANTONELLA CAMPANINI – SIMONE CINOTTO
UNIVERSITY OF GASTRONOMICS SCIENCES

The UNISG Master Programs

The Colorno campus is the venue for the University of Gastronomic Sciences Master programs: the Master in Gastronomic Sciences and Quality Products and the Master in Food Culture and Communications. In 2009, a new Master program in Italian Gastronomy and Tourism will be also launched, taught entirely in English. Right from the outset, the idea behind these programs was to flank traditional disciplines—albeit given a new guise by their application in the ambit of food culture—with completely new ones. This formula has allowed students to complete the knowledge they have acquired at the undergraduate degree level, put their own competences to good use in a continuous exchange with their fellows and with lecturers and compare them with direct experience of production. It also turns different provenances into a wealth of information to exploit for general educational and professional growth.

The curricula of both the Master programs explore the production and distribution chain from start to finish, right up to the use of food in domestic and commercial preparation and consumption. Students thus have the possibility to find out about a broad spectrum of quality food products from a number of different points of view: from the technological to the humanistic (historical, anthropological, sociological), the communicational, the semiological and the sensory. The general framework of the Master programs is thus made up of different learning projects, integrated with each other as much as possible. The multidisciplinary syllabus, taught by international specialists, is supplemented by stages (field seminars) locally, elsewhere in Italy and abroad, and three-month internships at companies, organizations or associations in the food and gastronomy sectors. The students give back a lot of what they receive from our programs. There can be no doubt, in fact, that the energy that makes the Master programs come to life, and that which is due much of the success they have achieved to date, is the students’ passion for food: food as a cultural fact that sheds light on the world of relations, meanings and values that inform contemporary society; food as a political fact that enlightens the construction of local, ethnic, national, gender and class identities, the balance of power and the sharing of risk and security among different subjects of society; food, finally, as an economic fact that pertains as much to socalled ‘traditional’ material cultures as to the variegated forms that the food production and catering market are assuming in the information society. The impulse Slow Food has given by ‘serving’ these subjects and perspectives on the plate of transnational public culture certainly serves to draw students to Colorno from often faraway places. The Colorno campus and its staff have the responsibility and the satisfaction of meeting their expectations.

Master in Gastronomic Sciences and Quality Products

The first Master to get under way, on February 28 2005, was Gastronomic Sciences and Quality Products. Aimed at an Italian and international public, it is now in its fourth edition. Since lectures are mostly in Italian, this program has catalyzed the attention of primarily Italian students at Colorno, though, over the years, several foreign students have enrolled too. Some of them had previously had a reasonable or good knowledge of the Italian language and culture; others have deliberately opted to live an experience that, especially in the early days, proved complex and demanding. Their tenacity has been rewarded with results. From the second year, all the final papers (brief theses that round off their internships) were discussed in Italian, even though it was also possible to do so in English. Most of the quality food products the students had the opportunity to see, touch, smell and taste (and even ‘hear’, in the context of a complete sensory experience) were Italian as well. Stages in Italy were supplemented by three stages abroad, one per edition of the Master: France and Spain initially; for this year, Norway has been chosen.
It is always interesting to read the students’ accounts of their trips. What comes to the fore is the multiculturality of the students themselves (they come from different parts of the world and have different experiences behind them). Whereas the Italians often have a good idea of the places they are to visit and the products they are to see, students from other countries have to find out by documenting the experience themselves, based on direct acquaintance.
Sometimes this can be a life-changing experience. We have seen well-qualified students, some of them with a steady job at home on the other side of the world, give up everything to pursue ideas they developed when they came into contact with new realities. We have seen friendships blossom, relationships consolidate, and professional partnerships start up among people of different origins and cultural backgrounds. We have seen graduates stay here, sometimes sharing in experiences—one such was the journey along the river Po—with fellows who had enrolled a year before them. Despite a job market as complex and unreceptive as today’s—this, alas, is commonplace—we have seen almost all our students find employment in the food world, often thanks to the internship period that rounds off the Master program.
All this has lasted almost four years. After such a long period, a pause for reflection is in order. Hopefully it will allow us to rethink the Master in Gastronomic Sciences and Quality Products and make it even more interesting and, we might add, ‘attractive’. It will resume in time.
The Master in Food Culture and Communications is closing its third edition and will commence its fourth in November 2008. Taught entirely in English, the program attracts students from many countries (16 this year) and, over a twelvemonth period, introduces them to all the various learning systems described above. Besides attending about 500 hours of lectures in the classroom, the students who have enrolled in this edition have visited olive oil, pasta, cheese, cured meat, fish, ice-cream, balsamic vinegar and wine producers; they have taken part in the most important food and wine and food policy events that have been organized in Italy—from Salone del Gusto to Terra Madre, from Vinitaly to Cibus to Slow Food on Film; they have traveled round Piedmont, Tuscany, Veneto, Puglia, Catalonia, Burgundy and Crete to meet farmers and artisans, markets and holiday farms, restaurants and organic wineries. With a syllabus focused on communications, but which also explores anthropological, sociological, historic, economic, technological, ethical, esthetic, culinary and sensory approaches, this Master strives to create new professionals whose job description can be summed up as ‘cultural mediators’: skilled, refined communicators capable of interpreting the complexity of the food world for numerous audiences, thus adding value to products, services and eating experiences. The program’s appeal resides precisely in its interdisciplinarity—after all, one of the main reasons why it is so interesting to study and address food academically is the opportunity it offers to sit at the intersection of a plurality of interconnected discourse and language—and in its capacity to critically juxtapose theory and practice. In the food communication field, for example, this means having students speak with professional TV and online producers, newspaper and magazine journalists and photographers, and pick up their knowledge of the communications market and its strategies, as well as have them analyze such strategies with the analytical and theoretical awareness acquired from lecturers in communication and semiotics, consumer sociology, cultural anthropology, history and so on.
In our first year of involvement with the Master in Food Culture and Communications we have learned a lot, especially from students—from their encouragement, from their suggestions, and obviously also from their criticisms. It is necessary to add that the majority of students on the Master program have proved very bright: intelligent, motivated, focused on the curriculum and the activities that complete it. Many of them boast excellent academic backgrounds (most studied at some of the finest American and international universities and all have a Bachelor of Arts or equivalent qualification). Among other things—an important sign of the international interest that is growing around the University of Gastronomic Sciences—the last edition received twice as many enrollment applications as the 25 places available. Naturally enough, this broad scope for selection has helped raise the average quality of the students enrolled. In this respect, it is a pleasure to report that, for three years as of 2010, a Fulbright scholarship funded by the Casten Family Foundation will be available to an American student. This will allow us to open a new place in the Master program.
So what exactly are students on the Master in Food Culture and Communications 2007-2008 looking for? First and foremost, they want to receive constant input. Given their education and intellectual curiosity, what they appreciate most of all is the challenge of scientifically profound, advanced, radical argument. True, they love to taste and talk about top quality wines, typical cheeses and prestige chocolates, but they are keen nonetheless to know all about the ‘latest major issues’ in gastronomic sciences, hence the questions of justice and security in the food production and distribution chain and the international debate on the present and the future of food. The teaching methods they prefer and regard as most effective envisage active preparation, involvement and interaction with the lecturer. They want lectures—whether in classrooms or on stage—to be not only interesting but also enjoyable. Our students love writing (each has to compile a report on a thematic stage to a producer, on a regional stage in Italy and on a stage abroad; write a number of research papers; sit written exams; and, finally, produce a final thesis on their internship experience) and they are particularly fond of opportunities and spaces in which they can share and discuss their written work—their ideas—with their fellows. The idea of a Master newsletter—launched this year to circulate updated information about courses and activities in Colorno among the numerous international scholars who work on our teaching staff— was a great success when it was extended to included contributions by students themselves.
In short, the many positive stimuli and signals that come from the students reveal the challenges that the Master program has to address to renew itself and continue to meet a demand that, fortunately, appears to be growing all the time.

We wish to conclude this overview with our most recent challenge. The new Master in Italian Gastronomy and Tourism, which will get under way in 2009, will replace the Master in Gastronomic Sciences and Quality Products. Taught entirely in English and targeted at an international public, the new program will train new professionals, communicators and business persons in the food sector, especially with regard to quality products and gastro-tourism, and, more specifically, on the problem of sustainability in all its economic, political, environmental and ethical connotations. To meet a strong demand, the principal focus of the curriculum is on Italy (and the Mediterranean), albeit without overlooking the global nature of the problems and politics that surround production, distribution and contemporary food consumption.
The curriculum will provide students with advanced teaching on the various dimensions of the Italian diet and gastronomy (Food and Nutrition Studies) and its historic, social and cultural contexts (Italian Studies), with a strong emphasis on understanding the dynamics of gastro-tourism and hospitality in general and the sustainable approach to food production and consumption: the promotion of biodynamic, organic, traditional, local products; the defense of biodiversity; the promotion of food practices that are respectful of the environment, animal rights and human interaction.
The program will include intensive courses on Italian language and culture and, like other Masters, multi- and interdisciplinary teaching in areas such as economics, marketing and food technology, nutritional science, food policy and ethics, the sociology and economics of tourism, communication techniques and semiotics, the history of typical products and of the land, geography and cultural anthropology. It will also feature tastings and technical and culinary demonstrations. Another fundamental feature will be stages to Piedmont, Sicily, Veneto, Puglia and Tuscany, to Mediterranean regions of Greece, Spain or France, visits to producers of and practical lessons about pasta, cheese, cured meats, fish, oil, tomatoes and wine, and, in conclusion, two months of internship at Slow Food, a food company or a food promotion agency.
A distinctive characteristic of the Master in Italian Gastronomy and Tourism that deserves special mention is that it awards the same credits as the first year of the twoyear graduate program in Gastronomy and Food Communications, which is held simultaneously at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo. This means that Master students keen to continue their studies can do so directly in the second and final year of the the program.
Imagining, planning and putting together this new curriculum was in itself a fascinating job. We believe we speak on behalf of the entire scientific, teaching and administrative staff at Colorno when we say that we will help to make it happen with great enthusiasm.

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