Vitebsk State University and a Chinese university plan to establish a Belarusian-Chinese University

February 1, Vitebsk / Sergey Kochetov - BELTA/. Vitebsk State University named after P. Masherov, in cooperation with Hohhot Professional Institute (China), plans to establish the Belarusian-Chinese University on the basis of the Chinese higher education institution, the international cooperation department of the Vitebsk university informed a BELTA correspondent.

This proposal was made during the visit of the Vitebsk university delegation to China in 2009 and received support from the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Republic of Belarus to the People's Republic of China Anatoly Tozik. Currently, Vitebsk specialists are providing methodological support to the Chinese higher education institution in the accreditation process to obtain university status. After a positive decision on this issue, the higher education institutions intend to proceed with the implementation of a large-scale educational project.

In addition, from 2010, partner higher education institutions plan to start joint student training under the "3+3" system. Chinese citizens will study at Hohhot Institute for 3 years in the specialties "Musical Art" and "Fine Arts", and then continue their studies at VSU in the 4th and 5th years, as well as in the master's program of the Belarusian higher education institution. Training will be conducted according to jointly developed curricula and programs. Among the promising areas of cooperation is also the organization of teaching by Belarusian specialists of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language at the Chinese institute. VSU is working on the possibility of opening a new specialty "Russian as a Foreign Language" at the Faculty of Philology, taking into account the high demand for learning the Russian language by Chinese specialists. The administration of the Chinese higher education institution has put forward an initiative to build a dormitory in Vitebsk for Chinese students. One of the promising areas of cooperation between the two higher education institutions could be tourism activities, including the organization of excursion tours around Belarus and China for tourists from both countries.

In accordance with the development concept for 2010-2015, Vitebsk University intends to increase the export of educational services, including by annually increasing the admission of foreign citizens for study. It is planned to organize advertising campaigns, with Syria, Turkey, China, India, Turkmenistan, and a number of other countries among the promising areas for finding new partners.

VSU has been training foreign citizens since 2000, and during this time, young people from 7 countries have been trained. Today, almost 170 people from Russia, Ukraine, China, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Estonia are studying at VSU. In 2009, for the first time at the university, a special course "Methods of Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language" was held, which allowed foreign students and undergraduates of non-philological specialties to receive a certificate of Russian language study.-0-