HSE Faculty of Philology: the Official Birthday
On March 25th a meeting of the HSE Academic Council took place, where a new Faculty of Philology was officially established, and other organizational solutions were approved.
The presentation of the new undergraduate programme in Philology took place on February 20th at the HSE Welcome Day. Then prospective students had the opportunity to listen to leading experts in Philology and Fundamental and Applied Linguistics who were attracted to the HSE to develop the appropriate courses. After some refinement, the concept of the undergraduate programme in Philology was brought to discussion in the HSE Academic Council. Elena Penskaya, who will be Dean of the Faculty of Philology, told her colleagues about the organization of educational and research work in the programme.
The philological programme of the faculty will be headed by a prominent expert in literature, Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Alexander Ospovat. The linguistic programme will be headed by a leading research fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language, Ekaterina Rakhilina, who is known as one of the founders of the Russian National Corpus. The laboratory of linguosemiotic research will be headed by Boris Uspenskiy, Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities and foreign member of Austrian and Norwegian Academies of sciences.
Plans for the faculty development involve the creation of other research laboratories, as well as the launch of master’s and aspirantura programmes. In 2011 the undergraduate programme will enroll 20 students in each department – philological and linguistic.
Another recently created undergraduate programme – a joint programme between the Higher School of Economics and the Russian Economic School – received a new organizational form – it is now a special department within the HSE Faculty of Economics. Mark Levin, tenured professor of the HSE, Head of the HSE Department of Microeconomic Analysis, was appointed Head of the new Department.
The Academic Council also agreed to create one more department of the university – the HSE Higher School of Urban Studies, which will be headed by Alexander Vysokovsky, member of the Russian Union of Architects. In 2011 the School, together with the HSE Faculty of Public Administration, will begin enrolment in the master’s programme on Urban Spatial Development Administration.
The members of the Academic Council also approved the lists of expert councils of two international laboratories which have been created at the HSE – the Laboratory of Comparative Social Studies and the Laboratory of Algebraic Geometry and Its Applications.
The Academic Council appointed Leszek Balcerowicz, a prominent Polish economist, former Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Poland, the title of Honorary Professor of the HSE. In 1989-1990 he carried out ‘shock therapy’ – one of the most successful reforms of the transition to a market economy on Post-Soviet territory. Leszek Balcerowicz will be one of the key speakers at the XII April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development which will start on April 5th in the building of the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow.
Oleg Seregin, HSE News Service