KRSU modernization: everything going according to plan!

In the last week of June, a group of key employees of the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University (KRSU) worked at Polytechnic University as part of the implementation of the SPbPU-KRSU Roadmap activities signed in April 2024. The purpose of the visit was to get acquainted in detail with Polytechnic and its technical institutes, summarize the results of the first stages of implementation of the Work Plan for 2024 and reach agreements on joint tasks for July-August.

The KRSU delegation was headed by Azamat Naimanbaev, First Vice-Rector of KRSU, and included representatives of two leading KRSU faculties — the Faculty of Science and Technology and the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Construction (FAD&C).

The SPbPU-KRSU roadmap is aimed at achieving an ambitious goal: KRSU should become the leading university in Kyrgyzstan, offering advanced engineering education and providing training of highly qualified personnel for the country’s economy. SPbPU has been identified as a coordinator-mentor for the planned transformation and modernization of KRSU engineering education.

According to the transformation plans, KRSU is to enter the new academic year with an updated format. Such a tight deadline required clear coordinated actions of employees of all key departments of Polytechnic and KRSU. During the spring, in the mode of constant communication and online meetings, it was possible to conduct an examination and audit of curricula of educational programs in the main areas of engineering training, develop a regulatory framework and templates for documentation, launch the Slavic Online Center, identify opportunities for mobility and agree on the outline of curricula for the fall semester 2024. Serious issues require serious elaboration and dialog in real space. That is why colleagues from KRSU came to Polytechnic University for a week to study the basic processes, successful models and mechanisms operating in SPbPU in a deep dive mode, to discuss in detail with managers and specialists of Polytechnic University the plans, timelines, figures and procedures necessary to implement the joint Work Plan for 2024 and achieve a profound transformation.

One of the priority tasks of KRSU is the development of the distance education system, and the formation of a pool of KRSU online courses. Polytechnic University is a leader in this area, so the visit to the Center for Open Education was one of the main points of the program. During the discussion, the director of the Center for Open Education Svetlana Kalmykova presented the possibilities of Moodle, described all the necessary steps for the training of specialists and teachers and proposed a program of activities of the Slavic Online Center. In 2024 it is planned to improve the qualification of at least 100 teachers and specialists of KRSU on the basis of SPbPU on the program «Use of Distance Education Technologies» (LMS Moodle). An agreement was also reached on the deployment of the Moodle platform and its customization directly for the tasks and structure of KRSU educational programs. In the future, SPbPU specialists will migrate the system to KRSU’s own resources.

Elena Zima and Vilena Dubyago held a substantive discussion of the audit results and reassembly of FST and FAD&C curricula with Nikita Komartsov, Dean of FST , German Lotsev, Associate Professor of FST , and Ulanbek Azykaliev, Research Associate of FAD&C, at the Directorate of SPbPU Core Educational Programs. According to the results of the discussion, at the extended working meeting, Vice-Rector for Educational Activities Lyudmila Pankova noted that the new model of integrated training of engineering personnel at KRSU, proposed in April, allows in a short period of time to implement the transition to new curricula in KRSU from September 2024.

As part of the official part of the visit of the KRSU delegation to the Polytechnic University, the first vice-rector of KRSU Azamat Naimanbaev met with the first vice-rector of SPbPU Vitaly Sergeyev, vice-rector for international relations Dmitry Arsenyev and acting vice-rector for advanced projects Maria Vrublevskaya. During the meeting, the parties discussed the current results of the implementation of the Work Plan for 2024, the main tasks for the current visit of KRSU specialists to the Polytechnic University, as well as the issues of digitalization of KRSU and the formation of human capital management policy in the Kyrgyz university.

A unique case of SPbPU is the activity of the Information and Library Complex and the organization of the electronic system of access to educational and methodological literature. Therefore, the development of interlibrary cooperation and integration of library systems is included in the roadmap of the two universities.

Simultaneously with studying the basic processes of the university, it was important for the representatives of FST and FAD&C KRSU to get acquainted in detail with the activities of the main institutes of SPbPU and to agree on the harmonization of curricula. For several days the KRSU delegation held consecutive meetings in the key institutes of Polytechnic University.

The guests found time to visit the Boiling Point and get acquainted with the practices of implementation of corporate educational programs.

At the end of several days of work, a visit to the International Campus of SPbPU took place. At KRSU about 250 people study annually in engineering directions, which is 50% of all foreign students in non-medical directions (a total of 1600 foreign students, of which about 1100 in medical directions). In this regard, the issues of creating a comfortable environment, organizing online admission, and implementing international mobility programs are the best practices that SPbPU is also ready to share with Bishkek. During the meeting, practical steps were agreed upon to prepare 30 KRSU students to study at Polytechnic in the fall semester of 2024/25 academic year, to organize short-term internships for at least 10 students, to use the tools of the Open Doors Olympiad to enter SPbPU’s Master’s degree and PhD programs in 2025.

Our task is to contribute as much as possible to the implementation of those agreements reached during this week, which are fixed in the Work Plan for 2024. We are expecting students for mobility programs for the fall semester, we are planning a number of international events for KRSU — from webinars for students on the Open Doors Olympics, to holding a reflection session on the results of the launch of the development program. We need to move forward every day to achieve the results that the Ministries of the Russian Federation and the Kyrgyz Republic expect from us. The decision of the Academic Council of SPbPU to establish the Slavic Universities Project Office at Polytechnic University will allow us to concentrate resources and focus our efforts on achieving the stated ambitious goals, summarized Dmitry Arseniev, vice-rector for international affairs.