Message from the Dean to the University Community of the UPF Barcelona School of Management

1 Abril - 2020

Oriol Amat

Dean of the UPF Barcelona School of Management

Dear students, teachers and management staff,

First, I would like to wish you all and your loved ones the best of health, and if that is not the case, I hope that the situation evolves as best as possible. At this time, health is a priority for everyone, and this is where many of our efforts come from.

For the UPF Barcelona School of Management, added to this concern, the most important is to ensure the continuity of the teaching activities, a fact that we have achieved since the crisis of the coronavirus, thanks to the efforts of a human and technical in-house team and a highly trained student body with great human quality. All of you have made this possible and we are still working on it. Many thanks to all of you for your work –a lot and very well done–, that in these days has given continuity to the teaching and to the one thousand and one daily tasks, now in remote mode.

As you know, the Pompeu Fabra University has planned to organise all the teaching for the last term of this course in a non-face-to-face format. Therefore, we have already done so, but I would like to point out that if the situation caused by the health crisis changed before the end of the course, we would return to the face-to-face class format.

Similarly, and especially thinking about programmes involving students from other places who have returned to their countries and who, for some reason, could not return to Barcelona during the rest of the course, I would like to convey another key message: if we recover the face-to-face format, from the School we would study how to facilitate the development of the programme from a distance, in order to be able to finish it.

We must have clear that, especially in this convulsive context through no fault of our own, we must avoid as much as possible the suffering and bustle to our students. And we will do so as far as possible. Trust this.

We keep in touch through all the ways that technology brings us. Thanks to all of you for your ability to adapt, for your immense effort and for the collaboration that you keep on showing, factors that are important in difficult moments like the present one. What you are doing encourages a lot and what is more, at every turn, for sure, we will learn.