Associate Professors at St Petersburg University are the authors of the instructor’s manuals for the course "Fundamentals of Russian Statehood"
The final conference "Fundamentals of Russian Statehood" for lecturers has been held as part of the DNA of Russia project in Moscow. The solemn ceremony awarded the lecturers participating in the project and presented reports on the development, principles and implementation of the course at Russian universities. St Petersburg University lecturers also took part in the conference.
Following the results of the expert examination of the reporting projects, 20 lecturers were awarded for the ‘Best instructor’s manual for the course "Fundamentals of Russian Statehood"’. Among the winners are Olga Kruglikova, Associate Professor in the Department of History of Journalism at St Petersburg University, and Ekaterina Naumova, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Philosophy and Philosophy of History at St Petersburg University. They received awards from Aleksandr Kharichev, Head of the Office of the President of the Russian Federation for ensuring the activities of the State Council of the Russian Federation, and Olga Petrova, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education.
The conference brought together representatives of 27 flagship higher educational institutions and academic staff from more than 80 universities.
The conference was attended by representatives of various departments of the University. Among them are the following: the Institute of Philosophy; the School of Journalism and Mass Communication; the Faculty of Sociology; and the Faculty of Political Science. Among the participants were: Vladimir Kalinovskii, Associate Professor in the Department of Museology; German Bokov, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies; Aleksandr Kuteinikov, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of Political and Social Processes; and Oleg Alekseev, Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Theory and Philosophy of Politics.
Sergey Kiriyenko, Senior Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Russia, addressed the participants in the event. ‘In an unthinkably short period of time, you have managed to perform a colossal and extremely important job. You developed a new course "Fundamentals of Russian Statehood" and it is of high quality,’ said Sergey Kiriyenko, thanking the authors of the course. ‘From the very beginning of the work, the organisers initiated a wide discussion, which involved more than 600 educational institutions and about 70 people to develop the new course.’ He added that the course would eventually adapt to changing realities. ‘The world has been changing much faster than academic courses and materials have been. This gap has been growing more and more, and today the world is changing even more rapidly. The fact that we have come to the moment to close this gap is an obvious fact,’ said Sergey Kiriyenko.
The course "Fundamentals of Russian Statehood" starts at Russian universities in September. It includes lectures and seminars and is designed for 72 hours. The course was developed as part of the DNA of Russia project. In total, more than 2,000 lecturers of social and humanitarian disciplines are currently involved in the project. The regulatory framework for the project was prepared in advance, including amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and a presidential executive order on the national development goals of Russia until 2030.
According to Valery Fadeev, Advisor to the President of Russia, Chairperson of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, it is an excellent project to develop the course ‘Fundamentals of Russian Statehood’. ‘What is ahead is the development of not only university courses, but also the development of social sciences, which are based on the value approach. I would like to stress again that this is the cutting edge of the world social sciences,’ said Valery Fadeev.
Earlier, St Petersburg University was an organiser of the advanced training programme "Methods of teaching the fundamentals of Russian statehood". More than 600 higher education lecturers from St Petersburg, the Leningrad Region, Vologda, Murmansk, Veliky Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Arkhangelsk, Syktyvkar, Ukhta, Cherepovets, and Vorkuta took part in the programme at the University. Among them are more than 60 University employees.