<Title language-id="en_US">Leading American universities have become partners in the implementation of FEFU international educational programs

In mid-November, the FEFU delegation headed by President Vladimir Miklushevskii visited the leading American universities: University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Southern California, University of California, Los Angeles, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Maryland University College. FEFU representatives also participated in the activities of APEC summit in Honolulu.

The result of this visit is not only acquaintance with the leaders and professors of the universities, but also the definition of topics for future joint projects. The main result of the work in the U.S. is two agreements on joint development projects and implementation of international educational programs in FEFU with the University of California, Berkeley and University of Maryland University College.

University of California, Berkeley and FEFU have a long history of relationships: the faculties of the FEFU School of the Regional and International Studies (Artyom Lukin, Tamara Troyakova, Kirill Kolesnichenko, Alexey Starichkov) and colleagues from Berkeley work on international conferences and seminars, participate in exchange programs and internships. This year, FEFU scientists took part in scientific conference "Russians and Russian Civilization in the North Pacific." It was the second conference held jointly by FEFU and University of California, Berkeley — the first was held in May of 2009 in Vladivostok. Both conferences were devoted to issues on collaboration between the Russians, Russian culture and the countries of the northern part of the "Pacific Rim" — North-East Asia and North America.

The agreement, signed during the November visit, provides joint development of Master's international program on political science "Russia in Pacific Rim: economy, politics, security" beginning within 2012/13 academic year on the basis of the University of California, Berkeley. In February 2012 representatives of the FEFU School of the Regional and International Studies will leave for an internship for Berkeley in order to share with their American counterparts and develop English language courses for the new program. From the November 2012 Vinod K. Aggarwal Affiliated Professor in the Haas School of Business University of California, Berkeley will give a course of lectures on the issues of international political economy, the relationships between politics and business, as well as integration into the Asia-Pacific region for the FEFU students.

Another joint international master's program starts the next academic year — "Archaeology of the North Pacific." The program will be based on the FEFU School of Humanities in partnership with two other foreign universities: Leiden University (The Netherlands) and Princeton University (USA).

Another agreement was signed with the University of Maryland University College to open a new dual-degree program "Project Management" at the FEFU School of Economics and Management. One part of the course of this program will be taught in FEFU, the second part students will learn through distance technologies. The University of Maryland University College is the world leader in the use of distance technologies in the sphere of education.

At the University of Southern California the FEFU delegation also made major efforts and at the beginning of December, representatives of the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California (Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito, Professor Vladimir Zelman) will visit FEFU to discuss plans for collaboration with the FEFU School of Biomedicine and development of the FEFU Medical Center.

Members of the delegation noted that each of the American universities is interested in the opportunity of collaboration with FEFU. The acquaintance with the administration and professors of leading American universities is an important step in partnerships in the sphere of education, research, student exchange and faculty internship.