MEPhI as a part of a single large-scale stand of Russian universities of the Project Office 5-100 has taken part in the annual international conference and Exhibition NAFSA, held in Los Angeles (USA) from May, 28 to June 2, 2017.
NAFSA (National Association for Foreign Student Affairs) is the largest world non-profit association for international education and exchange. The association includes over 10 thousand representatives of various state and public organizations, foundations, research centers, international and national corporations from more than 150 countries, and its conference is one of the largest forums in the field of education.
Forum NAFSA-2017 gathered more than 9000 representatives of the international academic community from 100 countries. Participation in similar events enables Russian universities to keep abreast of current developments and world tendencies in the sphere of education, to declare itself on the world market, strengthen existing international relations and establish new partnerships.
The delegation of MEPhI was represented at the event by: vice-rector T.N. Leonova, Head of International Cooperation and Recruiting Department of foreign students T.A. Moshkov, manager of the department of protocol, marketing and exhibition activity O.S. Demkina, Head of the Department of Calculation and Construction of nuclear power reactors D.S. Samokhin.
The schedule of the university delegation at the NAFSA forum was quite busy. Russian delegates took an active part in exhibition activities, held negotiations with colleagues from foreign universities like Argentina, Mexico, Korea, as well as representatives of international university associations and other foreign partners.
MEPhI as a participant in Project 5-100 was represented at the national project stand in the format "Study in Russia", one of the tasks of which is to promote the image of Russian education and increase the recognition of universities at the international level. Project 5-100 stand was visited by the Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, L.M. Ogorodova, who headed the Russian delegation.
In the course of communication with representatives of universities-participants of the Project, she paid attention to MEPhI. Noting the significant success of the university in global rankings, ministry representative asked how the university intends to preserve and improve its position and about the priorities for further development of the university.
Vice-rector of MEPhI T.N. Leonova reported that in order to strengthen the competitive status, the university has made a focus on breakthrough scientific directions in which it has unique competencies and advantages. In particular, in addition to nuclear technologies, at which MEPhI previously highly specialized, the university already has a wide range of programs in the following areas - biotechnology, biomedicine, IT, nanotechnology, plasma and laser technology.
In a dialogue with L.M. Ogorodova representative of MEPhI noted some system-wide problems of exports of domestic education, such as lack of mutual recognition of education between the Russian Federation and some countries, enrollment of foreign students, who have already been one or two years in their specialty in their country, immediately to senior courses. And the third problem, the complexity of creating branches or representative offices of Russian universities abroad, because at present this issue is not sufficiently legally worked out.
The Russian exposition aroused considerable interest among industry professionals. This suggests that the international educational community is interested in cooperation with the leading universities of Russia.
