ASU Plans to Strengthen and Extend Academic Cooperation in 2019

Astrakhan State University has held another meeting of the Academic Council. The participants discussed important issues of the ASU strategic development in 2019 and new initiatives on working with partner universities.

The meeting traditionally started with a ceremony of handing Certificates of Merit of the Governor of Astrakhan region to the university teachers.

One of the most important staffing decisions was the elections for the position of Dean of the Faculty of Social Communications. The voting resulted in re-election of Prof. Lyudmila Baeva, Doctor in Philosophy who has been running the faculty since 2006.

Olga Egorova, the Head of the Project Office of International Cooperation & Development, addressed the audience with a speech on prospects of further activities within the University of Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In 2018, ASU actively participated in a number of SCO events. For example, Konstantin Markelov, the university Acting Rector, participated in the December meeting of representatives of the leading (basic) higher educational institutions of the Russian Federation and representatives of the Chinese Rectorate of the SCO University. This year will see further development of the cooperation. It should be recalled that participation in SCO activities allows the university to run academic mobility programmes, send its students to study abroad and receive representatives of foreign educational institutions. The international academic network implies joint research activities, joint projects and a whole range of other attractive prospects.

Now ASU faculties are invited to choose those universities that seem to be attractive for cooperation and have common areas of academic interests. The list is quite wide and covers many areas of studies. Konstantin Markelov noted that it is necessary to continue partnership in urgent issues of alternative energy, economics, IT and robotics.

As for training regional specialists, ASU follows the current situation as well: for example, Aleksandr Barmin, the Dean of the Faculty of Geology & Geography, put forward a proposal to launch a new study programme on training teachers of geography as Astrakhan schools lack for such specialists.