On 5 March, the rector of Voronezh State University, Dmitry Endovitsky, and the chairman of the Central Black Earth Branch of PAO Sberbank of Russia, Vladimir Salmin, signed a partnership roadmap. The signing ceremony was held at VSU and attended by staff and students of the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Computer Sciences, the Faculty of Applied Mathematics, Informatics, and Mechanics, and the representatives of Sberbank.
“This is the beginning of our close collaboration with the main financial institution in the country, Sberbank of Russia. With assistance from Vladimir Salmin, we developed a partnership roadmap describing our joint projects and their duration. This roadmap is of strategic importance to our university”, said Dmitry Endovitsky.
Vladimir Salmin said that VSU has always been a source of employees for the bank. 10% of the bank's employees (over 1,500 people) are VSU graduates.
The partnership roadmap includes a number of joint projects in various spheres. It is planned to train specialists for specific departments of the bank, to hold open lectures and master classes on developing soft skills, university open days, and joint research projects. The bank will award personal scholarships. VSU's students will also get an opportunity to participate in an internship programme Sberseasons. This year, Sberbank is to open an artificial intelligence centre at the university.
Anyone working in banking should be qualified both in their professional sphere and in IT. According to Vladimir Salmin, lawyer and economist training must include a special course in information technologies and artificial intelligence. It is also important to develop soft skills, i.e. communicative skills, teamwork, critical thinking, responsibility, and universal human values.
“The values I always try to develop in my employees is love of people, love of your team, and love of your job. You can develop professional skills, but you can’t learn honesty and decency. If you are honest and decent, you will find a job in any sphere”, said Vladimir Salmin.
The chairman of the Central Black Earth Branch of PAO Sberbank also said that following the roadmap, the bank's experts will organise master classes at VSU dedicated to the development of soft skills. Sberbank is also eager to assists VSU in building up a group of volunteers to increase the financial awareness of the public.
