Siberian Federal University: The Final Graduation Project of Students of the School of Business Management to Help RUSAL in Solving Environmental Problems

On 21 June 2022, the School of Business Management of Siberian Federal University defended a comprehensive final qualifying work. Students of different majors and minors presented projects united by the task of environmental reorganization of RUSAL JSC.

The comprehensive project consisted of 8 local projects: the students were engaged in the justification of capital expenditures, studied the criteria for selecting external and internal stakeholders, selected digital technologies for project management and developed risk management systems.

One team melted together future specialists in strategic and project management, financial and market managers, students who studied digital technologies for business management and risk management of technological development and environmental transformation. The work was supervised by leading specialists of RUSAL JSC.

Students who took part in group work on the project noted the usefulness of this approach for the development of professional skills. “As part of the project preparation, we had a real internship at RUSAL, worked directly at the enterprise and got access to first-hand information. In addition, the specialists of the company and our lecturers guided our work and advised on the most difficult issues,” shared Daniil Luchikhin, student of the School of Business Management, SibFU.

“We enjoyed working in a team where everyone had their own clearly defined area of responsibility. We understood that the overall result of the project depended on the result of each of us,” Veronika Shchegolikhina, a student, added. “When we first started, we did not even expect that we would eventually get so much useful practical knowledge and skills. I think it was an invaluable experience for each of us.”

Zoya Vasilyeva, director of the School of Business Management, notes that the comprehensive thesis is the result of practice-oriented training and an element of the ecosystem of innovative entrepreneurship: “The students were able to meet expectations of a large company operating in the world commodity markets. They professionally and in detail worked out the project on the basis of scientific and methodological justification and selection of the world’s best practices of technological, environmental and digital transformation of business management.”

The conclusions and recommendations made by the students while working on the project will be used in the activities of RUSAL JSC.