The University of Calabria is a public institution created in 1972 and it is the only example of a residential university campus in Italy.
It has six Faculties (Arts, Economics, Engineering, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Pharmacy and Political Science), forty-three degree courses of I level and thirty-nine specialisation degree courses of II level. There are two Centres of Excellence promoted by the Ministry of University and Research (Center of Excellence for High Performance Computing and Cemif.Cal) and a centre of excellence promoted by the Ministry of Communication (Centre of Excellence in Economics and Knowledge Management) along with many advanced research laboratories, some of which are accredited at international level, as testified by an Agreement drawn with the University System of California.
Major goals set up by the University of Calabria are academic excellence, internationalisation, expansion and support to foreign student exchanges. The University of Calabria devotes a great effort in enlarging its international relationships with other universities as well as with other institutions and organizations promoting mobility of researchers, students exchanges and joint research projects. It also fights with vitality to ensure that students who graduate will be competitive and endowed with that social responsibility needed to be successful professionals in an ever-changing and increasingly complex society. The labour market in all fields requires new professional figures and our University wishes to fulfil these needs. Great stimulus to the creation of international relationships among higher education institutions was provided by the launch of European programmes such as ERASMUS, in the eighties, which gave way to student mobility activities. In 1996 the ERASMUS action was included in a larger programme for education called Socrates. Our University has carried out many training activities in the field of lifelong learning and scientific/didactic research in the framework of the EU Programmes such as Leonardo, Socrates, Adapt, Horizon, etc. and also co-operation with public, private and international organizations.
The different activities have given very good results both in efficacy and in efficiency, thanks also to the new evaluation systems.
The University, thought the structure of the “Liaison Office”, creates a sort of connection among itself, the Enterprises and the surrounding area. The activities realized by the staff of this office (with the support of the different Faculties and Departments) concern with: Promotion and Valorization of Research and Technology Transfer (Research activities, Spin Off, Patents, etc.); Front Office: information about regional, national and EC financing (publishing documents, newsletter, advices, etc) - supporting during the drawing up of the project; Analysis and Research Activities (analysis of Technological Innovation Demand of the Enterprises); Regional and Inter-Regional Networking (Partner Research with: Trade Associations, Research Centres, European Network of IRC - Innovation Relay Center and APRE - Agenzia per la Promozione della Ricerca Europea.

The Language Centre at the University of Calabria (CLA –Centro Linguistico d’Ateneo) was born in 1972 as a Language Lab and it became a Language Centre consequently to the modifications of its statute in 1998.
The Language Centre offers several services dedicated to the teaching of foreign languages. In particular, it organises courses in: French, Spanish, German, English as well as Italian courses for foreign students. Those courses are addressed to students, teachers, PHD students, Socrates and Erasmus students, administrative staff of the university and, in accordance with the limits established by the Technical and Scientific Committee, its courses can be addressed even to people that is external to the university.
The Language Centre encourages the proposal of projects in order to innovate the methodology of teaching foreign languages. In addition, it aims at stimulating the process of scientific and technical knowledge achievement of teachers, researchers, linguistic experts and co-operators, and of the technical staff assigned to the Centre.