The parties agreed to establish joint scientific, educational and research centers, as well as exchanges of students and teachers.
On Monday, July 1, Vladimir Litvinenko, Rector of the Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University, and Mohammad Reza Akhangar, President of Imam Hossein University, signed an agreement on academic partnership in the field of education, training and scientific research. They noted that combining the efforts of the two universities will increase the capabilities of each of them.
During a working meeting where specific projects of mutual interest were discussed, Vladimir Litvinenko, at the request of his Iranian colleagues, spoke about a pilot project to improve the Russian higher education system. He drew the attention of the guests to the fact that one of the most serious problems of our time is the shortage of competent engineers capable of improving the efficiency of the mining process and the entire chain of creating end-use products from them. This situation is typical for almost all countries of the world, since the two-tier education system imposed by the West on developing countries practically excludes the training of specialists directly for production.
The United States and Europe are struggling with the consequences of this state of affairs largely due to brainwashing from other, less prosperous regions of the planet, thereby implicitly weakening competitors. But Russia, in order to ensure the sustainability of its socio-economic development, goes the other way – creates conditions for the training of its own young engineers. These are the goals of the pilot project.
«The most difficult thing in this case is to ensure that students gain skills and practical experience. Take, for example, drillers. It is no secret that specialized companies use various types of equipment, which differ both in the type of drive devices, and in location, that is, marine or terrestrial, and in the method of movement, and in the drilling technologies used. Our task is not only to familiarize young people with all these installations, but also to provide them with the opportunity to practice them independently. After all, in the event that the guys even go somewhere to the production and they are allowed to take part in the workflow there at some specific installation, then later they will enter the labor market as narrow-profile specialists. We also need them to have a certain number of operating hours on various machines, this will dramatically increase their demand», - Vladimir Litvinenko emphasized.
To this end, the St. Petersburg university carried out a large-scale modernization of its Sablino educational and scientific training ground at its own expense, installing a variety of types of drilling equipment there. Now students can take not only introductory, but also full-fledged production practices there, and come to enterprises after completing the 4th year, already having some experience behind them. However, the success of the pilot project depends not only on investments, but also on the ability of the academic community, which is essentially very conservative, to mentally transform.
«The teacher's mission has changed. A modern teacher should feel, first of all, like a mentor who is responsible for the level of competence of 10-20 people, depending on the size of the group. For these people to receive not only theoretical knowledge by the time of graduation, but also practical skills necessary for their professional development. We are investing huge amounts of money in the modernization of engineering education, but the human factor, as always, is of priority importance», -Vladimir Litvinenko said..
His colleague Mohammad Reza Akhangar stated that the Mining University's experience in improving higher education will be very useful in the future not only for Russian and Iranian universities, but also for universities in many other countries. After all, there has been talk about the obvious disadvantages of a two-tier system for a long time, and all over the world, however, it turned out to be somewhat easier to implement than to modify.
«We had huge doubts about the need to adopt this European experience. Moreover, at one time we made some changes to our curricula aimed at adapting them to the tasks we face. We sincerely hope that you will bring the pilot project started to its logical conclusion, and will be able to bring engineering education to a qualitatively different level. Similarly, we hope that our joint plans related to the development of cooperation will be implemented, and this will allow us to get a little closer to the final goal. And it consists in creating conditions for the growth of well-being and opportunities for people all over the world, regardless of the region where they live», - the President of Imam Hussein University addressed the Rector of Gorny.
Vladimir Litvinenko called on both sides to radically revise the goal-setting of the Russian-Iranian partnership by intensifying specific joint projects. Among the promising areas, he attributed, for example, research related to the search and production of deep oil, as well as the construction of petrochemical plants, the technological chain of which allows the production of plastic products, tires, solvents, detergents, medicines, cosmetics and other end-use goods from hydrocarbon raw materials.
In conclusion, representatives of Russian and Iranian universities discussed some specific points of the future roadmap, and Mohammad Reza Akhangar gave an assembly lecture for students of the University of Mines dedicated to outstanding Persian scientists. Among them are such world-famous personalities as Avicenna (ibn Sina); Omar Khayyam, better known among us as a poet, but also a philosopher and mathematician; the author of numerous monumental works on history, geography, philology, astronomy and a number of other sciences Hafiz Shirazi, who lived in the XI century.XII century, and many others.
