Continuing professional education plays a special role in the educational work of the university. For over twenty years it has been focused on three main areas of development.
First of all, it ensures the appropriate professional level of the SSU teaching staff. In fact, this was the direction in which continuing professional education at the university began to go forward. And it is our priority, because it is aimed at fulfilling the most important accreditation requirement – the timely improvement of their qualifications by professors.
Another direction is continuing professional education of students. Carried out with their studying at the basic educational courses their professional retraining allows graduates to obtain additional qualifications and raises possibilities for their effective employment.
One more area is related to the implementation of continuing professional education courses under educational service contracts with legal entities and individuals. Working with external customers we solve a wide range of social and economic problems. The Federal Ministry has been constantly paying attention to its importance, especially in terms of retraining personnel for digital economy. It is also significant for the university that this work is a promising source of extra-budgetary income.
That is why at the end of 2020, the SSU Academic Council made a decision to establish a Centre for Professional Development and Business Strategy at the Institute of Continuing Professional Education (ICPE). It will primarily be focused on large-scale acquisition of external customers to SSU.
The centre began its work on January 11. It is staffed with qualified specialists, including candidates of science, who have extensive and successful experience in this sphere. The approved Regulation on the Centre indicates that its purpose is to meet the needs of citizens in intellectual and professional development by their training in continuing professional education courses under contracts with legal entities and individuals. To achieve this goal, the Centre has to solve a number of priority tasks.
It is necessary to form a set of continuing professional courses in demand on the educational services market, including the courses in management, economics, IT-technologies, aimed at acquiring new knowledge and skills, developing professional and personal qualities that meet the requirements of the modern labour market. In turn, this involves marketing activities, including an analysis of the educational services market in order to identify the demand for certain courses, primarily in economics and management.
Also we have to organise training in continuing professional courses for state and municipal employees, specialists in economy and the social sphere, laid off workers, unemployed people, unemployed specialists and other categories of citizens relying on the powerful potential of the university and specialised third-party organisations. It presupposes that we will moderate active information and advertising campaigns and participate in competitions targeted at state assignment fulfilment and acquire grants within federal, departmental, regional, international, and other programmes.
As for another important aspect of the Centre, with its help the teaching staff of the university will be involved in educational activities within the ongoing projects.
Also we would like to mark such a direction of the Center as business education. Currently, there are about 120-130 established business schools and corresponding institutions of higher education in Russia. Now Saratov University is joining them. Since February, ICPE begins training a group of students who will get MBA diplomas. The course focuses on the most popular disciplines aimed to develop an anti-crisis and effective strategy of companies, implement modern digital technologies, use modern market research tools, and shape an effective policy for attracting consumers.
Trainings and some disciplines divided into parts play a significant role in the course, and due to it entrepreneurs will be able to increase their managerial competence on-the-job. As you know, business and management education is a synthetic discipline that combines management psychology with sociology, law, and economics. And SSU has qualified specialists working at specialised faculties.
The near-term plans of the Centre for Professional Development and Business Strategy include an event called the Business Meeting – Partnership Dialogue. It will take place on February 12. There we will organise master classes on topics relevant to the regional business community, according to the survey. The best experts with unique experience in business development are invited to lead those master classes.
Potential students can take a wide range of continuing professional education courses in the Centre. They will have flexible opportunities in terms of studies (full-time, part-time, and off-site) and lesson formats (online, offline). Modern information technologies allow you to obtain new competencies remotely, as well as provide a flexible training schedule and make it possible to harmoniously combine work with study.
If you are interested in further professional growth, personal development, and successful employment, welcome to the ICPE Centre for Professional Development and Business Strategy.
