UrFU Rector met with the staff to discuss the future of the university

15:45, July 1, 2015

During the meeting they have discussed the most pressing issues concerning the future of the university

The working meeting of UrFU administration with the heads of departments was held on June 24 at the initiative of the Rector Victor Koksharov. On June 25, the administration met with the staff, the meeting was suggested by the labour union committee of employees. During the meetings the members of UrFU administration responded to the most pressing questions related to the development of Ural Federal University and accepted proposals for correcting some decisions that directly relate to the ongoing structural reforms of the university.

The requirements of the road map of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation imply that the student-faculty ratio is to be 10.7 in 2015. The main purpose of the changes is the transition of UrFU to a new model of university, the university which is actively involved in research and innovation. In order to fulfill this transition, it is necessary to implement major changes in the work of the academic staff. According to the Rector Victor Koksharov, these changes are inevitable, and thanks to them in the future the university will continue to receive government funding within the frames of the program "5-100" and research grants. It will allow the university increasing the development pace.

"As soon as we stop, all these sources of funding will disappear, and we will not be able to maintain a high level of wages, support infrastructure and deal with many other issues related to the development of the university and its employees. I encourage you to show understanding of the necessity to reform the educational and scientific process and, at the same time, to use this unique chance for a qualitative change of your approach to the educational process and research activity," - said Victor Koksharov.

The discussions mainly covered the methods of implementing the planned changes: legal grounds for the change in the academic load of lecturers and replacing the job positions existing before by the new ones (e.g. lecturer-researcher, tutor etc.), the prospects of increasing the share of the independent work of students, the reorganization of academic departments, increasing the quality of education and raising the requirements for applicants etc. A number of the points related to these changes are already placed in the university system of electronic documentation and posted on the website.

The participants of the meetings agreed that it is necessary to continue consultations, try to develop balanced collective decisions and to make regulations that can clearly reflect existing issues. Heads of some departments even volunteered to shift their summer vacations to assist in finalizing the principles of reforms and ways of their implementation. Victor Koksharov expressed confidence that all the ideas and suggestions will make an important contribution to solving the serious problems that the university faces today.

After the meeting with the heads of departments the Vice-rector for innovation Sergey Kortov noted that the leaders of these structural units will be the main figures implementing the changes. "Their opinions and moods are very important, - says Sergey Kortov. - They are in contact with every employee and even students, all the questions are addressed to them, so it is extremely important what the answers will be. All of them are strategically prepared for the changes. None of them rejected the reforms. It was even a little bit surprising as the average age of the heads of departments is 60, and we thought that their position could be extremely conservative. But they support changes. They only ask for concrete information, and that all the problems and details would be discussed together. This is an important result: the people who will implement the changes are ready to develop these changes themselves."