Happy New Academic Year, ASU!

Ending summer is a traditional time to plan a new academic year at educational institutions.

Mr. Roman Kozyrkov, Director of the Znamensk Branch of ASU.

“We had a high speed of work last academic year; we’ll try to have a higher speed this year. Both students and their professors will face many positive events. We’re planning to launch two new specialties: State & Municipal Administration and Power Industry & Electrical Engineering. We’ll go on using our experience of practical cooperation with various organizations in Astrakhan Region. Our faculty will arrange several round-table talks to discuss issues of education in the town of Znamensk and in nearby settlements.

We’re also planning to cooperate with the 4^th State Central Inter-Corps Ordnance Yard of Russia’s Ministry of Defense more closely: to arrange meetings with commanders and discuss issues of military personnel education with them; to gather a group of students to deliver them the Presidential Program of Qualified Engineers’ Retraining; to discuss launch of specialties that are of special demand for the Yard.

The research area is to face changes, too. Besides arranging a traditional conference “Main Issues of Pedagogics, Psychology, Linguistics, & Teaching Techniques at Educational Establishments”, we’ve planned a forum to consider technological issues. We’ll try to get several patents and protecting certificates for our ICT products that are now developed by our students.

In early September, we’re going to set up a students’ union. We’ll enrich our experience of arranging various events: Initiation into Students, the Students’ Day, Shrovetide, the Day of Town, and the Day of Victory. Our students will go to the International Educational Forum “SeliAs-2014”, where they’ll represent not just our Branch, but the whole town of Znamensk as well”.

Dr. Igor Shakirov, Head of the Chair of Pedagogics, Psychology, & Humanitarian Disciplines.

“In 2014-2015, most of our students will cover bachelor programs, so our Chair is ready to deliver them professional disciplines and practical training in Pedagogics and in Psychology. We’re planning to extend the geography of our practical trainings.

At our theoretical classes, we’ll try to introduce interactive techniques of teaching more frequently. Students give a positive feedback about such techniques. For example, it’s much more interesting to research issues of the pedagogical potential of a particular environment not only by reading a textbook, but also by analyzing photos made by students.

Our Chair will go stimulating our students to perform their researches. Dozens of our students published their papers in scientific journals during the last several years; now it’s necessary that we increase that rate considerably. Our students are getting aware that a portfolio with several published papers could be useful for them in many areas of their future professional activities”.

Dr. Vladimir Lobeyko, Head of the Chair of Mathematics & Information Science.

“Our Chair is to tackle serious tasks in the upcoming academic year. They require intense goal-oriented work that must be done by all our faculty staff members.

First of all, it’s arrangement of the final state certification of our graduates of the engineering specialty “Information Systems & Technologies”. As we fulfilled the task set for our students last year (each software product developed by a student in their diploma paper must be introduced at an enterprise or at an organization), we’re planning to make this task more complex this year: at least 20 % of our graduates must obtain national protecting certificates for their intellectual property – a “Certificate of Computer Program State Registration” or a “Certificate of Invention”. That’ll require a more active involvement of our students in research activities that are performed both right at our Chair and at other organizations. It’s necessary that over 75 % of our graduates take part in such projects.

Another important aspect of training a modern engineer is publication of their research results in periodical journals and their participation in conferences. We’ll try to achieve the following rate: over a half of our graduates must have published at least one paper in a scientific journal by their diploma project defense; most of our undergraduates must have given their reports at scientific conferences.

As for our top achievements, I’d mention two future defenses of D.Sc. theses and a defense of a PhD thesis to be arranged soon. I’m going to publish my monograph in the Radio Engineering Publishing House”.

Dr. Nadezhda Emelyanova, Dean of the Department of Foreign Languages.

“Our Department is planning to go on retraining our faculty staff. In particular, our Chair of Romance Philology arranges courses “Methods & Techniques of Teaching Foreign Languages” that are delivered by our top specialists, as well as Professor Lyudmila Velikanova, Honored Physician of Russia and a Doctor of Medicine.

We’ll keeping on cooperating with the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission and with the Directorate-General for Interpretation & Conferences of the European Parliament, as well as with the Interpretation Service of the United Nations Office in Geneva. We’ll continue to deliver our master program for our future conference interpreters. Besides, we’re planning to launch a network master course jointly by our Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation of ASU and by Kazan Federal University.

We’re going to arrange several large events: the International Conference “Theoretical & Practical Aspects of Linguistics, Literature Studies, and Foreign Languages Teaching Techniques”, the International Training Seminar in Profession-Oriented Translation, and the Festival of Japanese Cinema in Astrakhan.

The Center of International Testing in French arranges three sessions of DELF/DALF for adults and for teenagers; it’ll launch examination sessions to get a DELF Pro diploma for special purposes.

The Center of Training & Delivering International Tests in English will train people to take a TOEFL exam. Besides, the Center is going to extend its cooperation with educational institutions of both our University and other universities of Astrakhan and other cities and towns in South Russia to attract test takers. It also plans to launch training in GRE for those who wish to enter a master or a PhD course.

Cooperation with our partners to be developed, too: Sakarya University (Turkey), Chengdu University (China), Hainan University (China), University of Gilan (Iran), and Kanagawa University (Japan). Languages training will be organized by our faculty staff at these universities”.

Ms. Nadezhda Proshunina, Director of the Scientific Library of ASU.

“The Library of our University has sufficient resources and a good potential to form a modern information and educational environment”.

Our short-term prospects are related to enhancing our services. Our first and foremost goal is to make access to our library resources that we accumulated simpler and wider. We’re planning to provide everyone with an access to our electronic catalogue, to our original databases (for example, to extracts of theses, to rate book, and so on), and to make the web site of our library more informative”.

Dr. Galina Fayzieva, Director of the Institute of Continuing Education.

“In the upcoming academic year, our faculty staff members are full of new ideas and ambitious plans. Following our best traditions, we’re not going to stop where we are now: we’ll continue the projects we initiated last year; we’ll use the benchmarking principle to introduce new concepts of extra professional education at our University. We’ll arrange module training in Corporate Management. That’s a new promising opportunity; it’s aimed at heads of units of our University to develop their management skills by providing them with the relevant education. Our short-term programs, which are parts of the syllabus of the program “Corporate Management”, are to be covered within a certain period (for example, during an academic year).

As we’re aware that it’s necessary to apply the practice-oriented approach to deliver programs of extra professional education, we’re going to attract specialists from the real sector of Astrakhan Region’s economy to deliver courses at our Institute. We had quite an efficient experience of such activities last year, and our trainees gave an excellent feedback. As for this year, we’ll deliver short-term retraining programs aimed at our Region, which shall certainly be of special interest for our partners.

And of course, we took our trainees’ wished into account to extend the range of extra professional programs at our Institute, including individual ones.

The Admission Campaign is still in progress at our Institute. We’ll be glad to see everyone who wishes to cover an extra professional program at the Institute of Continuing Education. We help successful people become even more successful!”