On 15 June, the Head of DAAD in Moscow, Peter Hiller, paid a visit to Voronezh State University. The Rector of VSU, professor Dmitry Endovitsky, welcomed the guest:
“VSU has a very long history of cooperation with DAAD and Germany. It goes back to Derpt University. Now, our university in involved in cooperation with the largest German universities: Münster University, Freiburg University, and Humboldt University (Berlin). Thanks to the support of the German Academic Exchange Service we have held over ten summer schools for German humanities students. Over 15 years ago, the German Alumni Association of Voronezh State University (DAWU) was founded. You have come to a university that can contribute a lot to the development of the relationships between Russia and Germany”.
In his response, the honourable guest said that Russian students had been coming to Germany since 16th century, including the famous Russian scientists Mikhail Lomonosov, Dmitry Mendeleev, and Nikolay Pirogov.
“Many German scientists came to Russia too. Their number considerably increased when Moscow State University and the Academy of Sciences were created. Russia takes first place for the number of foreign scientists and lecturers in Germany. We also have over 11,000 Russian students,” said Dr Hiller.
Peter Hiller gave a presentation about the exchange service. The main goal for DAAD are to provide scholarships for international and German students and researchers, to internationalise universities, to support German studies and the German language, and to develop cooperation in education with developing countries.
“DAAD is an organisation with 450 German universities among its members. Its headquarters is in Bonn with 1,000 employees. Annually, Moscow office receives about 2,000 applications for individual scholarships, including scholarships for undergraduate and postgraduate students and for institutional programmes. Annually, DAAD provides 110,000 scholarships. It is the largest scholarship fund. Our representative offices can be found in almost every country. The Moscow office has been in action since 1993,” said Dr Peter Hiller.
Then, representatives of university faculties and coordinators of agreements between VSU and German universities talked about their experiences of cooperation with DAAD. The Head of the Department of German Philology at the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology, Ludmila Velichkova, talked about projects implemented by the department and supported by DAAD and the Head of the Department of Russian Literature of the Faculty of Philology, Andrei Faustov told the audience about the joint master’s programme “Russian Literature in the European Context” implemented in partnership with Georg August University (Göttingen, Germany). This year, the first group of students completed the programme. Associate Professor of the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry and DAAD scholarship holder, Sergey Karpov, shared his experience of internships in Germany. The Head of the Department of Recreational Geography, Country Studies, and Tourism at the Faculty of Geography, Geoecology, and Tourism, Sergey Fedotov, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of International Relations, Veronika Morozova, and the Head of the Centre for German Political Studies of the Faculty of International Relations, Sofia Dmitrieva, talked about their cooperation experience.
After the meeting. Peter Hiller and his colleagues visited VSU History Museum and the exhibition commemorating the international relations specialist, Igor Zornikov.
