Ural Federal University: Any University Student Can Get an Additional IT Specialization
Students of Ural Federal University, regardless of their field of study, can now obtain additional competencies in information technology. Such competencies can be acquired free of charge by completing a nine-month educational program from the university’s “Digital Department”.
“Any student can enter the educational program. All students enrolled in Bachelor’s, Specialist’s, or Master’s Degree programs of any non-IT profile can complete the program and receive a retraining diploma in digital competencies, programming, working with databases, and algorithmic engineering. Each category of students will be offered different programs that will allow them to apply the acquired competencies in their future profession,” says Valentina Ovchinnikova, Ural Federal University Deputy of Vice Rector for Project Training and Additional Vocational Education.
Students will be able to choose one of 25 educational programs in the field of information technology. The educational program will be 256 hours, including independent work. On average, it is 8 hours per week. At the same time, 20% of the total number of hours will be taught by teachers-practitioners, specialists of partner companies in the IT sector. Diploma of completion of the program will be awarded after graduation, if the student is studying on the Bachelor’s and Specialist’s programs. Master’s students will receive their diplomas immediately after graduation from the program.
“Each program has a practical module involving expert lecturers from IT companies. This will definitely help students get really high-quality knowledge and skills,” Ovchinnikova notes.
Natalya Andreychenko, Vice-Rector for Graduate School Development at UrFU, emphasizes that the IT programs will use all the available training technologies at the university, so that students can create a convenient training schedule for them. This will allow them to form a systematic set of knowledge and skills so that they can work with digital products in the future.
“I encourage our students to take advantage of this opportunity. In the modern world, having IT competencies gives a whole new level of competitiveness in the labor market and a different level of salary. UrFU’s “Digital Department” is able to give real IT competencies to students of any field of study – from physics to journalism. For many years, our university has been most actively developing the IT industry in Russia and has already gained a reputation as a forge of highly qualified IT specialists,” says Natalya Andreychenko.
Students in the process of training will have to undergo a comprehensive assessment of the development of digital competencies. For this purpose, an assessment center has been formed together with Innopolis University. The students will be offered tests and cases in accordance with the topics of their additional professional training programs. The results will allow assessing the level of students’ digital competences upon graduation from the “Digital Department”.