Governor's engineering classes conducted jointly with SUSU will be opened in schools in the Chelyabinsk Region in order to create conditions for graduates of schools and vocational educational organizations to make a motivated choice in obtaining higher education.
The Governor's engineering class is a permanent (within two or more academic years) group of 8th- to 10th-form students of a general education organization, the winner of a competitive selection, who study in the main and supplementary general education programmes, the content of which reflects the needs of the Chelyabinsk Region in the professional orientation.
"I sincerely congratulate us on behalf of the Rector. This is a very valuable project for us, and we thank everyone who participated in this program. Governor's engineering classes are not just professional orientation, but training of personnel by universities of our region. It is important to train future specialists for Chelyabinsk employers and ideally fit into the specifics of the region," says Marina Potapova, Vice-Rector for Education.
Universities and specialized enterprises will join the learning process as part of the project. Students will enjoy excursions to laboratories and production, engineering competitions and scientific conferences, practical classes and experiments in the following areas: intelligent manufacturing; materials science and physics; ecology and living systems; IT technologies and information security in industry and military industrial sector; electronics, radio engineering and communication systems, instrument engineering, optical and biotechnical systems and technologies; electrical and thermal power engineering; mechanical engineering; physical and technical sciences and technologies; chemical technologies; materials technology; automation of technological processes and production.
SUSU has successfully passed the selection among 21 applicants, thereby training in the Governor's class at the university will be carried out using educational material of increased complexity (additional, i.e., in-depth training) in the subjects of the chosen engineering direction and its applied focus with the mandatory implementation of federal state educational standards of the basic general or secondary general education and relevant federal basic general education programmes.
"We are planning to hold a visiting session for children from engineering classes. We will also involve industrial partners, teachers and students of SUSU as session mentors. I assume that we will take small teams from engineering classes, who will then come and become a critical minority within their engineering classes, and will be ideological inspirers. We also have the Big Challenges competition ahead, which gives children interesting opportunities and benefits from participation at the federal level," says Svetlana Chistiakova, Head of the Kurchatov Centre.
Specialized classes are designed to make the transition from school to university smoother and more meaningful: during their studies, children will be oriented in a variety of engineering areas and will be given the opportunity to "try out" the profession in practice. Universities, vocational education organizations and specialized industrial enterprises will join the educational process. This will allow solving a number of important problems: increasing the motivation of schoolchildren to choose technical areas of training that are relevant for the region; acquisition by future school graduates of practical skills in solving engineering and technical problems, participation in research and project activities.
The main result will be the creation of a unified educational space based on the principles of integrity and continuity, which will allow the formation of key meta-subject competencies of a school graduate, which provide the opportunity to obtain an engineering education while training personnel for the economy of the Chelyabinsk Region.