Academic Council: New Departments and Achievements

On June 29^th 2012, the latest regular session of the Higher School of Economics Academic Council took place at the HSE. The agenda included information on the launch of new faculties and departments, approval of certain regulatory documents, as well as the results of the voting process for the teaching staff competition.

For over 10 years the HSE has been the leading Russian university working on education in logistics. Since 1999, there has been a department connected with this field working within the University, in 2003 the first students were enrolled in this specialization, and in 2008 the HSE was the first institution in Russia to create a School of Logistics. Over these years, as part of different programmes, the HSE has trained a total of four and a half thousand experts in logistics and supply chain management. The accumulated experience in education and research carried out by the School was the basis for the development of a Faculty of Logistics, and it was this idea which was considered at the recent meeting of the HSE Academic Council.

The new faculty will include four departments (logistics, supply chain management, logistical infrastructure management and information systems and technologies in logistics), as well as the International Center of Training in Logistics which will offer continuing education. Valentina Dybskaya has been made dean of the new Faculty, and academic supervision will be carried out by Viktor Sergeev, tenured professor at the HSE. According to Valentina Dybskaya, the new Faculty’s plans for the next academic year include the creation of a project and educational laboratory, as well as signing partnership agreements with the University of Buckingham (Great Britain) focusing on logistics in the  car industry.

A new Faculty of Human Sciences will be founded as part of the HSE Nizhny Novgorod campus. The launch of the faculty will allow the university to strengthen links between education in human sciences, mathematics, social sciences and economics at the campus. Valery Zusman, head of the Department of Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, will become Dean of the Faculty.

Some new departments will also soon appear as part of HSE Moscow. A Department of Economics and Management in Non-Governmental Non-Commercial Organizations is being launched as part of the HSE Faculty of Public Administration. Director of the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and Nonprofit Sector (CSCSNS), Irina Mersiyanova, will head the new Department.

It is well known that one of the university’s strongest sides is the unit which carries out expertise and analysis in educational reform, as well as general and additional educational programmes in this sphere. A new Higher School of Education is being founded at the HSE. It will include the Institute for Educational Studies, the Institute of Contents of Education, the Center of Synergetic Anthropology, the International Laboratory of Educational Policy Research and the Project and Educational Laboratory ‘University Development’. Isak Froumin has been approved as Director of the Higher School of Education.

Vadim Radaev, First Vice Rector of the HSE, unveiled the preliminary results of the vote for the best teachers at the Higher School of Economics in 2012. About five thousand people participated in it, and over 300 teachers were named as outstanding. In addition to this, 37 teachers were named as the best as voted for by HSE graduates, and over 50 people were acknowledged as the best academic supervisors and heads of HSE projects. The students who participated in the voting also had an opportunity to write special ‘love letters’ to the teachers they remember the most fondly – and in the end there were about 140 such letters.

Vadim Radaev delivered a report at the Academic Council session about the results of the international examinations in English language held in 2012 at the Higher School of Economics. In accordance with the new English language teaching concept, the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and Business English Certificate (BEC) higher level, were carried out at the HSE from March 27 to April 2. Second-year undergraduate students, who started the new programme of education involving an intensified English training in 2010, took their IELTS exam and  fourth-year students of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs took the BEC test.

According to Vadim Radaev, the results of the tests were very promising. Out of 994 students who took IELTS, 863 received good grades (5.5 and higher), and out of 94 students who took the BEC test, 85 students received 81 points or higher. This experiment of organizing international English language tests at the HSE will continue in 2013, and from 2014 it will be expanded to all HSE faculties and campuses.

Another summarizing report – about the HSE April Conference – was presented by Andrey Yakovlev, Director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies and deputy chairman of the conference’s programme committee. A total of 1188 people participated in the conference which took place from April 3. 5, 500 papers were discussed, including 75 by international participants and the problems of economic and social development were discussed through 25 topical sections, including 173 sessions and 15 roundtable discussions.

Honorary reports at the conference were presented by Kenneth Arrow, Nobel laureate in Economics, Claude d’Aspremont and Jacques-François Thisse, professors at Universite Catholique de Louvain, as well as Andrey Markevich and Mark Harrison, laureates of the National Award in Applied Economics. The conference also included 9 public lectures, including those by Justin Yifu Lin, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, Deepak Lal,Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, Marek Dabrowsky, a prominent Polish economist, as well as other international experts and researchers.

The 14^th International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development will be held at the HSE from April 2 – 4, 2013.

Oleg Seregin, HSE News Service