Ural Federal University: Telecommunications Program to Be Modified

Bachelor’s Degree program in Telecommunications will be modified to meet the needs of the labor market. Ilya Obabkov, Director of the Engineering School of Information Technologies, Telecommunications and Control Systems of the Ural Federal University, told about it at the meeting of Victor Koksharov, Rector of the Ural Federal University, with Ivan Pichugin, Vice President of Rostelecom.

As the Head of the university stressed, the main feature of the program should be project-based learning, supervision by telecommunications specialists, including mentoring and ongoing counseling of students.

The University offers three different types of Master’s programs: from a system of accelerated learning to practical classes on the topics of enterprises and production portfolio, said Valentina Ovchinnikova, Deputy Vice-Rector for Project Training and Additional Vocational Education of the Ural Federal University.

“A system where we act as both a customer and a participant in the educational process seems to us to be the most effective. At the same time, we need to focus on practice-oriented training: both for new students and for our employees,” says Pichugin, who heads Ural Rostelecom.

Speaking about the personnel of the Regional Representative Office, Ivan Pichugin emphasized that 65-70% of the employees are technical specialists: IT and communication specialists. According to him, Rostelecom considers the university as a key partner in recruiting specialized personnel and plans to expand cooperation.

“We are grateful for your feedback and support of the initiatives, as well as joint participation in the projects. In the area of digitalization of education, we offer ready-made solutions to the university, from data networks to the implementation of virtual and cloud systems,” the Vice President added.

Oybek Partov, Head of the University Center for Partner Relations Development, made several suggestions to the company regarding integration into the UrFU event agenda, from the freshman and graduation party to industry-specific career guidance events, specialized exhibitions, and conferences.

He also talked about new prospects for cooperation such as establishing a personal scholarship to attract the most talented graduates to the company and support student initiatives or consolidating the Peak IT scholarship with other market leaders for the best student IT solutions for university products.