On October 11, Governor V.V. Radayev chaired the Meeting on Development Strategy of Distanced Areas of Saratov Region. There also participated deputies and representatives of municipal districts, regional universities, and public. Saratov University was represented by Rector A.N. Chumachenko and Vice-Rector for Educational Work Ye.G. Yelina.

At first, the governor highlighted that regional project was initiated by Chairman of the State Duma V.V. Volodin.  On October 3, he met with the population of Perelyubskiy and Ivanteyevskiy Districts and discussed such issues as personnel training, especially in social welfare and education.

‘The situation has been changing rapidly. Vyacheslav Radayev is an experienced strategist who uses systematical methods to solve tasks. He paid his attention to the shortage of personnel in education and social welfare, equipage and salaries of those spheres, and efficiency of targeted recruitment. Universities play the key role in the last issue, therefore, we will develop complex development programs of distanced areas. Their goal is to improve living standards up to modern city ones,’ underlined V.V. Radayev.

As the governor marked, 7 following regional districts will participate in the project – Turkovskiy, Romanovskiy, Samojlovskiy, Ozinskiy, Perelyubskiy, Algajskiy, and Ivanteyevskiy. The most important issue for all of them is the deficiency of pedagogues.

SSU Rector A.N. Chumachenko reported on perspectives of solving that problem and focused on 3 tools mentioned by V.V. Volodin at the meeting in Perelyub: students should be motivated to work at school, pedagogical internships should be held in district schools, and targeted recruitment should be developed.

A.N. Chumachenko said that, annually, many events are organized in Saratov University in order to motivate students-pedagogues to work as teachers, e.g. the Pedagogy Education Week, the All-Russian Contest “Step into the Career”, etc. The rector suggested that district pedagogical representatives should attend those events to invite students to work in their schools. In addition, he pointed out that quite many SSU students come from those districts, therefore, the university administration and heads of district administration should convince them to return to the districts and work in schools there.

Besides, SSU Rector noted there are a few types of pedagogical internships at university in Pedagogical Education courses. Thus, students-pedagogues can have their pedagogical internships in distanced areas of the region. However, the university and district administration should closely cooperate with each other in that case.

The third tool – targeted recruitment – is used only in 2 out of 7 districts, and this motivation method can appear to be the most effective. A.N. Chumachenko suggested that district administration members should think about not only state-funded but fee-paying education of students.

Due to the importance of that issue the SSU administration cooperates with representatives of regional ministries of education. Thus, they find candidates among graduates-pedagogues who would work in the districts, university professors will give popular science lectures there, and there will be organized meetings for the district administrations and students who come from those districts.

After that A.N. Chumachenko headed a couple of meetings, where the members discussed measures of student preparation to work in distanced area of the region. Thus, to solve the task the Event Map is developed by a university group in the lead of Vice-Rector for Secondary Professional Education and Social Work O.Ye. Nesterova.