NSU held a strategy session of the NSU Supervisory Council headed by its founder and the Acronis CEO Sergei Belousov.
The session resulted in a recommendation for the NSU management team and a special working group to develop and refine 5+1 strategic solutions by 27 September. The solutions are to aid in NSU and Novosibirsk Akademgorodok integration as well as to enhance the NSU role in preparing human resources for innovation economics.
The working group comprises business representatives as well as the university鈥檚 and research institutes鈥� management, some of whom are successful NSU graduates.
In the course of the session the Supervisory Council suggested establishing a new Institute of Technology as part of NSU that is to provide joint Master鈥檚 and postgraduate programs developed by both the university and Akademgorodok鈥檚 Technopark. The new education research institution is going to develop students鈥� engineering and business competencies including managerial skills for innovative companies.
The Chair of the NSU Supervisory Council, Sergei Belousov believes, 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 get much if you just create a technology. You should be able to promote it effectively. Naturally, scientists and IT experts gravitate towards doing research and developing applications, but a certain judge of management skill would not be out of place. Russian science still lacks such a combination. Nevertheless, we can see some architects of great IT ideas heading big companies that used to be their startups.鈥�
He states it that one of the aims of the Institute of Technology at NSU should be training highly qualified IT managers, which is not less important for innovation-based economy than training researchers and scientists.
NSU Rector Mikhail Fedoruk comments, 鈥淚t is Mikhail Lavrentiev, Akademgorodok's founding father, who said that there is no teacher without students. Every active scientist should pass the knowledge to the following generations. The present day Akademgorodok is to become a single environment for science and education under the umbrella of NSU. It can be achieved in different ways which are not quite clear now, but we will have explored the issue by the end of September.鈥�
In follow-up of the Supervisory Council session, it was decided to maximize indicators of the programs in progress, e.g. to evaluate the performance of existing Chairs and Departments in order to measure their scientific impact. The evaluation will be based on the set of dimensions borrowed from international university rankings. Mark Shmulevich, a member of the working group, adds that not only scientific but also managerial circles of the newly created facility should be evaluated.
Another direction for development in terms of improving the quality of international cooperation is creating international environment at NSU. It includes employing foreign teachers and scientists, developing educational programs in English and increasing the level of English among NSU teachers and students.
Before the next Supervisory Council session the group should also develop a program of cooperation between NSU and big business companies which are supposed to employ university graduates and commission R&D projects. The result will be a complete conveyer belt with businesses providing graduates with the jobs they were trained for, organizing continuous education and facilitating the process of applying knowledge in practice.
An additional point to be considered is a possibility of establishing the Oriental Institution on the base of NSU. Academician Mikhail Epov believes that the institute could facilitate collaboration between scientists at NSU and different Asian institutions. Among other things, more foreign students will be attracted to study at NSU.
