Campus news at HSE University

The Higher School of Economics has signed a cooperation agreement on exchange programmes for students and lecturers at the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Mathematics with the University of Groningen.

Alexander Bespalov, a first-year student in the HSE and University of London Parallel Degree Programme in International Relations, was born in Israel to parents who had emigrated from Russia. He recently sat down with the HSE News Service to talk about why he chose to come to Russia for study, the challenges he has overcome, and what he is looking to achieve during his time at HSE.

Winners of Iron Egg, the biggest student award, have received their prizes. This year, 33 student associations competed in 11 nominations in the contest finals.

Every year, the HSE family welcomes representatives of new countries and becomes more interesting and diverse. On June 4, 2017, international students will talk to visitors about their home countries and introduce them to their cultures at The Whole World at HSE festival. To give you a quick pre-festival snapshot of how international HSE is, we’ve brought together ten facts about the university international life for you.

The first official fun-run organized by HSE as part of events to mark the 25^th anniversary of its founding has taken place in Gorky Park. It drew 290 participants.

From May 29 to June 18 students can vote for HSE’s best teachers of the academic year. This year there is no need to come to the university to vote. Students can submit their scores online via LMS. 

The concrete block in the courtyard of the HSE Institute of Education has been a lasting image of the WW2 era. However, last summer, the institute’s staff came up with the idea of turning it into a piece of art. The idea was put forth by Igor Chirikov, Director of theCentre of Sociology of Higher Education, whereby this useless piece of concrete would be transformed into a monument to the ‘anonymous peer reviewer’. Moreover, this idea ended up garnering the most support as a result of an internal vote.

May 26 marks the birthday of HSE Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov. Although not the same age, both he and HSE are celebrating birthdays this year! At the start of 2017, IFMO Rector Vladimir Vasiliev, when presenting at the Gaidar Forum, congratulated Yaroslav Kuzminov on HSE’s 25^th anniversary, saying that he was the exact same age as the University. ‘I would ask the young ladies to make note of this,’ Prof. Kuzminov quipped.