Ursula Nocentini retires

Ursula Nocentini has retired from the Budget and Financial Service after 34 years of working at the Institute.  She, along with Gino Fabbrini, was warmly celebrated by several dozen friends and colleagues with a retirement party at the Badia on 26 March.

Ursula commented on the unique career she feels she had at the EUI, given the possibility to get to know people from all over the world and from many different cultures among both the staff and academic members.

Like other people who have retired before her, she notes how the physical expansion of the Institute, as well as the introduction of new technologies, has dramatically transformed the university over the past several years.  While she appreciates the progress made since the Institute abandoned the use of manual typewriters, communicating by telegram and hand-registering commitments and payments, she also notes that such changes were accompanied by less human contact. She fondly recalls the days when the Institute was so small that everyone knew each other.

Ursula is happy to start with this next phase of her life, and, with more time to spend with her parents in Switzerland and to pursue interests here such swimming, reading and music, is sure she will never be bored.

She thanks friends and colleagues who contributed to her farewell gift, which was sufficient to make donations of more than €400 each to Save the Children and to the Lega Italiana per la Lotta contro i Tumori.   She will also tenderly care for the rose bush and the camelia plant —her living keepsakes from the Institute.