Economy of technologies is popular among future engineers

Samara National Research University provides the students of the leading world universities with an opportunity to learn about “the Russian ways in economics” and study the experience of promotion on the market production of high technology enterprises for the third time. And management school of high technologies is interesting for students studying engineering first of all. It is especially important for them to understand how the product will be represented on the market. 

 “We set the task of academic mobility development, attraction of foreign students to Samara University for this school”, - Vladimir Bogatyrev, director of school and Vice-rector for Educational and Foreign Affairs mentioned. 

We managed to attract 130 people, exactly this amount of candidates applied to participate in the school. In the course of the face-to-face stage 42 students from the leading universities of Great Britain, Canada, Spain, India, China, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru and Brazil enrolled. For two weeks they were getting acquainted with Samara University, Samara and Russia. In parallel with this they were studying marketing, project management, risk-management, the basis of the theory of intellectual property and electronic commerce, were learning how to make business in Russia.

“One of the main advantages of our university lies in the fact that we not only give knowledge on economics, but are very closely connected with the real production”, - Olga Esipova, one of the school organizers, said. “We emphasize the practice. So, this year we managed to show the students real enterprise, plant of auto parts of the joint enterprise “Robert Bosch Samara”. This day our participants studied management of the production, communicated with the directors of the workshops, studied the cases of the real tasks”.

Predominantly the bachelors of engineering specialties came to Samara as well as several managers. They visited the innovation laboratories of Samara University, studied how nano-satellites are being assembled in Samara, magnet-impulse technologies are being developed, characteristics of photonics are being applied for creation of biomedical devices. Due to the maximum approach of the education to reality the students in teams worked over concrete projects. The task was either to promote the already existing products on the world market or to invent a highly profitable technological product. Engineers and managers were united in the teams. The students presented and defended 7 projects. One of them, for example, was devoted to the selling of the free space in a suitcase. This problem becomes very urgent in the time of vacations: why pay more to aviation companies, when with the help of an application one can find a fellow-traveller who travels light?

Fiorella Gambaro is studying to become an engineer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. At Samara University she was amazed apart from the laboratories by the Aviation Engines History Centre: “I was on cloud nine: I have never seen such amount of engines in one and the same place. It is a real treasure for an engineer”.

Jose de Los Llanos is acquiring bachelor’s degree at Technical University of Madrid, is specialized in aerospace engineering, is planning to study master programme in Munich (Germany) and dreams to work in the aerospace sector, to participate in preparation and launch of missions in the outer space. “I was impressed by the infrastructure of the university: apart from lecture classes it has several museums. The collection of engine museum amazed me as there is no anything like this in Spain or Germany, - Jose made the point. – If we speak about the school programme it was very useful for me as an engineer: in my university we are not taught the subjects that would help to promote technologies on the market. And it is important for an engineer to understand how his idea will be perceived, how economically efficient it will be. From the very beginning I wanted to join this summer school because of the set of lectures on marketing, running of a business in Russia”.

One more task of this school which was set by the organisers became the dethroning of myths. So Fiorella confessed to the following: “Russia is a mysterious country for us, the closed one. For example, I was amazed learning that here are enterprises of such famous firms as Bosch. Most of all in Samara I was impressed by the fact that this is the place where space industry was born!”

Jose told: “Most of all in Samara I was struck by the openness of people. I thought that Russians are ready for foreign guests only in Moscow and St. Petersburg as these are metropolitan cities. And I was amased that people in the street were ready to communicate, they were interested where I was from, what I was doing, they were ready to help. I also liked the embankment, the Volga; I haven’t expected that I would swim so much”.

The organisers tried to cover the work of the school in social nets as fully as they could. They posted the photographs from studies and excursions, made clips. “It is very difficult for us to compete with the universities in the capitals because of prejudices, - Vladimir Bogatyrev said. – That is why the school also had an educational task. We had to introduce Samara University not only as a modern, technological university with the developed infrastructure, but also to show the beauties and sights of Samara, our nature. Probably these guys will decide to get their master or postgraduate degree with us or will tell their course-mates and acquaintances about our university”. 

Thus, after the summer school in Russia Fiorella is going to enter “space” master programme. Now she is choosing where she will study: “In Chile, unfortunately, there are no such educational institutions. That is why I am going to continue education either in Russia or the USA”. 

Photo: Natalia Orlova (photo club “Illuminator”)