First University Department Branch Opened at HTP in Brest Region

30 October 2013

The HTP resident-company EPAM Systems signed a cooperation agreement with Pushkin Brest State University, envisioning the opening of a branch of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Programming Technologies at the production facilities of the company.

The new form of cooperation is intended for bringing together educational process and production, and improving the training of Belarusian IT specialists. Company employees will conduct special courses, supervise courseworks and theses. Department meetings will be held on the territory of the branch. Besides, students will receive practical training in EPAM Systems, gaining their first professional experience.

"We solve thus a critical problem of a practice-oriented approach in teaching our students. I cannot say that there was no cooperation before. Every year we used to send 5-7 students to the company for completing practical training. Now the cooperation will be build on a new basis and at an entirely different level. We agreed that our students will participate in project development and implementation. Moreover, trainees will be paid for performing certain tasks. It is also of great importance that every student will be supervised by a companys employee," commented Mechyslau Chasnouski, Rector of the University.

          

Opening of the BrSU department branch in the HTP resident-company is the first example of such a cooperation in the Brest region. In all, over 15 department branches of Belarusian universities was opened at the HTP. According to Alexander Martinkevich, Deputy Director of the HTP administration, even more work will be done.

"Such activity is motivated by the desire to prepare our students for practice after graduation. We lack qualified IT professionals, the demand exceeds the supply. The Hi-Tech Park opened more than 60 joint laboratories in all technical universities in the country. And since last year, such laboratories were opened also in universities with other specializations - in the Linguistic , Economic Universities. It is said that the country has too many economists. But if they study information technology, they will turn into good business analysts who are highly demanded by our companies, too," - said Alexander Martinkevich.