Professional Managers as Demand of Our Times

Now long ago, the notion “manager” was mainly associated with business. Now high requirements towards corporate management are set in social spheres as well: in education, in healthcare, in culture, etc. It’s quite often that a top manager of a public organization has a profile higher education, which has little to do with management; that’s why such a top manager has to face serious difficulties in planning and goal-setting, in HR management, in resolution of conflicts, etc. The Presidential Programs that is delivered at Astrakhan State University helps top managers of various organizations obtain a top-level managerial education with quite a short term. “I’ve been working within the system of education for many years. I’ve got experience, but I’m lacking knowledge quite often”, Ms. Tatyana Filatova, Deputy Director of the Astrakhan Regional Special Correctional School of General Education, says. “When I work, I often lack knowledge of the management structure of an educational institution”, Mr. Alexander Rybin, Deputy Director of Astrakhan’s Nursery & Primary School 65, says. “The educational system is now undergoing permanent reformation, so a modern manager must enhance their professional level constantly, develop and introduce new systems of management, be a real Professional”. The trainees are sure that their coverage of the Presidential Program will help them fill gaps in their knowledge of management to advance to a new, a higher level of corporate management.
Professional teaching by instructors, the syllabus made up in accordance with needs and demands of a particular sphere, variability of forms of classes, innovative technologies – all that has impressed the trainees greatly. “Our instructors don’t just have knowledge; they have skills to manage such an uneasy audience as us, adult trainees. I really like their serious attitudes towards our educational process”, Ms. Filatova points out. In Mr. Rybin’s opinion, one of the main advantages of his studies is a large amount of practical workshops to supplement the theoretical base. “We got new knowledge how to set goals and tackle issues, how to form a team ready for constant changes, how to introduce modern methods into the system of administration and instruction – I can’t list everything! We always tested theory in practice. For example, a practical workshop at the Elko-Megastor company was of great value for us”.
As for the trainees’ wishes to improve the educational process, they emphasized the necessity to access lecture and practical materials at any time. “It’s quite often difficult to combine our work and studies”, Ms. Filatova remarks, “That’d be great to record academic materials on disks. Such practice exists at other educational institutions. I think many trainees would buy such materials with pleasure”.
Managers of educational institutions remark that their coverage of the Presidential Program at our University has met all their expectations: besides the necessary knowledge and valuable experience, their studies have given them new friends, new interesting contacts, new ideas (and even new particular suggestions) to cooperate with university lecturers; it has also helped reveal relevant issues of the educational system and find ways to solve them.

Russian original information and photo source: the Innovative Laboratory of Information Linguistics of ASU

Translated by E.I. Glinchevskiy