St Petersburg University Days Take Place at Tsinghua University
At one of China’s leading universities – and one of St Petersburg University’s partners – a series of events aimed at developing all-round cooperation and academic exchanges between the two universities has come to a close.
A delegation of representatives from St Petersburg University, headed by Assistant Vice-Rector for Research Sergey Mikushev, Tsinghua University has just returned from a visit to Tsinghua University, where the two parties discussed the existing possibilities for international and academic cooperation and also promising areas in which they can do joint research.
The representatives of St Petersburg University visited the Chemistry Department and the Institute of Marxism, and they also gave a talk at the Centre for International Exchange, where they acquainted the listeners with the wide range of educational programmes at St Petersburg University and told them about programmes of student mobility and extra-curricular activities at Russia’s oldest university.
“Our two universities, Tsinghua and St Petersburg University, have been cooperating rather productively, but it is clear that there is great potential for developing our relations, and realizing that potential is one of the strategic goals of St Petersburg University,” Mikushev pointed out. “In 2019, we are going to intensify our cooperation in the fields of Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics, and we will see joint publications in top-rated journals.”
Yet another member of the delegation, Senior Lecturer at St Petersburg University Pyotr Tolstoy, noted that Tsinghua University and St Petersburg University have a high potential to extend their cooperation in quite diverse fields – student exchanges, guest lectureships, presentation of joint applications for grants, and also organization of academic internships and specialist conferences. “There are mechanisms of support for such cooperation at both universities. Potential areas of common interest already exist in the study of languages and in the natural sciences – Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics,” as this scholar sees it. “But the fundamental, real collaboration should become “horizontal communication” between concrete work groups. It seems to me that as we continue to work together we should seek out two-way interaction.”
During their visit, the delegation from St Petersburg presented their Chinese counterparts with an anthology of contemporary Russian prose in a Chinese translation. They gave first-edition copies of this literary treasury to the most active students at their partner university. In a speech during
St Petersburg University Days at Tsinghua University, Assistant Rector Peng Gang underscored that such events are essential for the development of mutual understanding and the intensification of student and teacher exchanges between the Russian and Chinese universities.