PetrSU International Students in the Project “Learning to Live Together”
Within the project, PetrSU hosted a series of events.
In the framework of the project “Learning to Live Together” of Karelian Regional Public Organization “Commonwealth of Peoples of Karelia” the employees of the Charitable Foundation for support and development of educational and social projects “PSP-Fund” Andrey Yakimov and Daria Khlyzova held a lecture for teachers, residential assistants, representatives of Student Union and adapters of PetrSU. The lecture concerned the stereotypes and approaches to adapting migrants. The speakers introduced the audience to the state of migration in Russia, adaptation, and integration of foreign citizens.
Moreover, at the Youth Innopark PetrSU students played board games developed by the specialists of the PSP-Fund “Russia – a land of opportunity?” and “Let’s Get Acquainted” about challenges of labor migration and cultural and historical traditions of the countries of Central Asia.
Within the project, PetrSU conducts a social survey among international students in order to assess the level of their adaptation in the Republic of Karelia. The survey will involve 200 students of PetrSU who have come to study from foreign countries. The results will help outline special recommendations on integration of foreign students into social and educational environments.
The employees of the PSP-Fund held workshops on such topics as “Using game technologies in working with international students”, “Organization of social and cultural events”, “Opportunities for social integration of international students”, “Overcoming migration stereotypes”.
The project “Learning to Live Together” is one of the winners of the contest “Grant of the Head of the Republic of Karelia” in 2019 and is implemented with the support of the Ministry of National and Regional Policy of the Republic of Karelia.
The Vice-Rector for International Affairs Marina Gvozdeva said:
“PetrSU has 540 international students from more than 30 countries, such as Eritrea, Venezuela, Mozambique, Namibia etc.
The more students from different countries come to PetrSU the more meaningful is the intercultural dialogue that involves all students, teachers, and employees. International students are full members of the large and welcoming team of PetrSU. At the same time they have their own interests, needs, as they, of course, have it harder since they are far away from their homeland, home, culture, nature, weather. So we are developing more efficient programs of adapting international citizens in the Republic of Karelia by supporting a network of project activities of the university in cooperation with municipal and regional partners.
Within various projects, we collaborate with the Ministry of National and Regional Policy of Karelia, Karelian Regional Public Organization “Commonwealth of Peoples of Karelia” jointly with the Saint Petersburg Charitable foundation for support and development of educational and social projects PSP-Fund, volunteers of the SLOVO International Agency of PetrSU, and other partners.
We have several objectives. First of all, we survey our international students and ask them how they adapt, integrate into the culture, whether they have friends here, what they miss in the first years of studies, how comfortable they feel. We have started polling students of the Institute of Medicine that has over 250 international students. The first feedback is of particular interest to us. After the survey we will analyze the results and work out the details.
At the same time, we open several workshops for our employees, teachers, and students. Among the students we, first of all, determined the target group and invited residential assistants: they bear the responsibility of maintaining harmonious relations between all dormitory residents. In general, moving to a dormitory is a critical moment for any student leaving their home: each of them faces difficulties and has to adapt to new environment. It is challenging and even more so when you add intercultural issues. The residential assistants should be morally ready for these challenges while we should provide them with knowledge and techniques of building an intercultural dialogue with care and without offense. Besides that we work with curators of academic groups, employees of international units of PetrSU.
Within the project, we will work with experienced coaches, specialists in interethnic, intercultural, international relations. We will discuss stereotypes from both sides, the image of a Russian citizen in the opinion of our guests, images of foreigners who come to us. We will try to instigate a meaningful dialogue. We will also plan further events, workshops, meetings.
This endeavor is a different, new level of international involvement of teachers, administration, employees of each Institute and units of our university.
The Flagship University of the region continues to uphold the standards of a leading international university. We are now welcoming relatives and friends of our international students. Trust is essential in relations and we cannot disappoint our students’ expectations about studies and living conditions at PetrSU.
By building intercultural dialogue we do extensive, fascinating, hard work, learn a lot, and solve several critical tasks at the same time. Besides that, a meaningful intercultural dialogue helps students develop essential skills: tact, attention, acceptance, cooperation, communication that will be useful in future professional and everyday life.
