| Danial Norjidi |
UNIVERSITI Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and St Petersburg University signed an agreement to promote exchange of students and faculty members as well as to cement mutual cooperation.
Vladlen Semivolos, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Brunei Darussalam, announced this in an interview with the Bulletin yesterday.
“In the context of mutual relations between Brunei and Russia, education is of high priority for us. Just recently, in the second week of April, an agreement was signed between UBD and St Petersburg University on the cooperation,” he said.
“I would like to specify that this agreement in particular will promote exchange of undergraduate and postgraduate students. It will also promote the exchange of faculty members, for such purposes as visits, discussions, research, teaching, training and also the exchange of academic, scientific, historical and research publication literature.
“And the two universities, as specified by the agreement, could also explore possibilities of developing joint or collaborative research. So this is a very wide document covering specific areas of cooperation and possible areas of cooperation in the future.”
He shared that St Petersburg University is the first university in Russia, which was established in 1724.
He noted that it is listed among the world’s top 100 universities in the Times Higher Education rankings, and it is rated 64 in the Financial Times European Business School ranking 2016. In Russia, it is in the top five.
The envoy said that the agreement brings an opportunity for Bruneians to study various subjects like applied mathematics, biology, chemistry, economics, earth sciences, history, international relations, law, mathematics and mechanics, medicine, arts, philology, physics, and a lot more.
“We have a number of bachelor and master programmes that are being taught in English, so there won’t be any language barriers for foreign students.”
Vladlen Semivolos, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Brunei Darussalam. – SYAHMI HASSAN
The university has altogether around 38,000 students and 6,000 staff members.
It has 263 doctoral programmes, and annually it accepts more than 3,000 international students.
The ambassador said that UBD has joined a list of renowned foreign universities to have direct links and contacts cooperation with St Petersburg University, since the university has established 400 partner universities in 70 countries. The university also has 1,200 cooperation agreements with employers, not just from Russia but also from other countries, like IBM, Carl Zeiss, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Adobe and others, he said.
“In November 2009 it was awarded the special status of unique scientific and educational complex in Russia. This is one of the biggest now in our country. It has a research park, laboratories, museums and even a publishing house. So it is a great complex which can be used by foreign students, and I invite Bruneian students to be part of activities of the St Petersburg University.”
He went on to highlight that St Petersburg is a very unique city, and that a person studying at St Petersburg has an opportunity also not just to study, but also has an opportunity to visit very well-known places including theatres and museums such as the Hermitage Museum.
St Petersburg also has a very well-known mosque called the Blue Mosque, he said, sharing that it was founded in 1910 and is one of the oldest mosques in the northern area of Russia.
He noted that Russia has a large Muslim community, and finding halal food is not a problem, with a lot of halal food available there.
“We very much value this first step of having bilateral documents between our two very renowned institutions,” he said. “I would like to say that we very much appreciate having this agreement because we see it as a way to expand people-to-people contact, a way to increase mutual understanding between our two nations, and this is not the only document we are looking into this year.
“We are now also in the process of discussing an agreement on cooperation between UBD and MGIMO University in Moscow. It is an academic institution under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia,” he shared.
“We also have in mind an agreement with another very renowned institute in Moscow – the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
“So we have in mind three documents altogether with UBD.”
Highlighting the agreement between UBD and St Petersburg University, the ambassador said, “We consider this document to be a single step in the context of developing very strong ties between the institutions of Brunei and Russia, because we can see that this will be a major step.
“We haven’t done this before, and this will be very much important in the context of developing bilateral cooperation on the whole, very important for the creation of friendly relations, of building up mutual understanding between our two countries, and of course people-to-people contact,” he added.
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