Living with Volcanoes and Tsunamis

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It is not easy to get university graduates and students interested in living and working in Kamchatka, a remote region with harsh natural conditions and an extreme climate. Mirror Laboratories, a joint project of the HSE Institute of Education and Kamchatka State University (KamGU), encourages the development of ‘explorer’ competencies and the modernisation of the region’s education system. The HSE News Service discussed the project with Taras Pashchenko, Chief Expert of the HSE Laboratory for Curriculum Design.

— How was the Mirror Laboratories project created together with Kamchatka University?

— The project, initiated by HSE University, aims to spread leadership research practices to other universities. We use such projects to share our experience, study the work of other universities, and adopt their best practices.

Kamchatka University was no exception. We had contacts with our colleagues there, and after Olga Rebkovets assumed the position of Vice Rector for Strategic Development (in August 2023 she became Rector of KamGU), they joined the Mirror Laboratories project.

In 2025, the first three-year cycle was completed. Our university supported the new application, and we have been meeting regularly with colleagues in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Moscow.

— What is special about Kamchatka University?

— First of all, it is probably worth remembering that Kamchatka has a population of under 300,000 people, about half of whom live in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the region’s capital. The economic situation is challenging, and the climate and natural conditions are quite extreme. Finally, the region is connected to the rest of Russia—and even other parts of the Far East—only by sea and air (locals call the rest ‘the mainland’). There are two universities in the regional centre: KamGU (a former pedagogical institute), and a technical university focused on training specialists for the fish-processing industry. Most of Kamchatka University’s students are studying pedagogical, humanities, and natural science subjects. It is a small, almost ‘chamber’ university with only 80 teachers and 200 first-year students. Nevertheless, it is the region’s key university. It actively takes part in the life of the region and organises many expeditions.

Taras Pashchenko

— How appealing is Kamchatka University for applicants? 

— There are few applicants from outside, and gifted local applicants tend to focus on universities on the mainland. This, together with the ongoing out-migration from the region, is a problem that the regional government is trying to solve. Together with KamGU's leadership, it is working to make higher education in Kamchatka more attractive, including for the top graduates of local schools.

The university is operating under difficult conditions, including staff shortages. We believe that our colleagues are working hard to make the university modern and interesting for applicants from other regions, and to carry out not only educational but also scientific work (we help boost their research).

KamGU aims to retain its students and graduates, and to create conditions that encourage people to stay in their homeland.

— How do they try to attract gifted applicants?

— This is one of Mirror Laboratories’ objectives. During the first cycle, colleagues came up with the concept of an ‘explorer’—a person who, according to the authors, has the qualities needed to stay and work in Kamchatka.

— What qualities does the concept imply?

— Developing explorer competencies is an idea from our Kamchatka colleagues, and it has been included in the development programme. The first year was devoted to discovering what qualities we would like to cultivate. To prepare the concept, we identified the qualities important to people living in extreme regions. We talked a lot with local residents, reached out to people working in tourism, fishing, and education, and identified several significant qualities.

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— Which ones do you find most important?

— Based on the results of a survey of KamGU students and its analysis compared with a survey of university students from regions with more typical natural and climatic conditions, we identified stress tolerance, adaptability, self-regulation, communication, a desire for professional development, and love for the region.

— How do you plan to develop the project?

— It is important that we modify higher education to facilitate the development of these qualities.

In the future, we will reach out to schools. In cooperation with the Regional Institute for Educational Development, we are working on new learning models aimed at developing explorer qualities at different levels of the school curriculum.

The work is structured as follows: together with colleagues from Kamchatka and the Centre for Psychometrics, we have identified the explorer qualities and developed a set of evaluation tools. The methodology has been tested and validated, and we use it to evaluate explorer qualities. We have conducted the survey at KamGU twice, and now we would like to see how these qualities manifest themselves and develop during the transition from school to university. We hold Explorer Schools every year and help redesign existing courses.

Next, we plan to modify student educational programmes and help teachers develop explorer competencies.

— How did your colleagues perceive your research? Was there any wariness, especially at the beginning of the project?

— There were no miracles. We work with teams from different universities, and we cannot say that everyone was immediately happy to see us. At first, it was not easy: there was a prejudice against know-it-alls from the capital who did not understand the realities of living in the region. But we had the rector’s initiative and a team at KamGU—teachers we had known for a long time as part of the Mirror Laboratories project—who helped us build mutual trust. In addition, we always try to take the context into account as much as possible, to leverage local participants’ strengths, and to draw on their experience. By the end of the first programme (a three-day intensive course), colleagues said they were interested, even though initially they had been worried about receiving banal didactics.

The second time, the teachers who had taken part in the first meeting were willing to interact with us again and invited their colleagues to our events.

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— Why are the explorer qualities important to students from Kamchatka?

— This is a region with challenging natural conditions and poor links to the mainland. You need to love your region very much to stay there after graduation, or to go to a mainland university, defend your dissertation there, upgrade your qualifications, and then come back.

— How do they relate to the Big Five personality traits?

— According to our research, there is a certain correlation. Our tests identified three qualities: openness, conscientiousness, and optimism. These characteristics must be well developed in order to form strong explorer qualities. Following those came adaptability, sociability, stress tolerance, and a positive attitude towards the profession and one’s native region; we have included these as well.

— What personal and professional qualities do Kamchatka University students consider the most important for their careers and lives?

— It is too early to draw deep conclusions, but if you sketch a group portrait, they rate stress tolerance, adaptability, communication, environmental awareness, and innovative thinking very highly.

— Which interim results of the project would you call the most significant?

— Everyone has understood what explorers are and what qualities they need, and now the name ‘The University of Explorers’ can be seen on the KamGU homepage. This is a very important result: we and our colleagues share a common understanding of the project we are jointly promoting.

The university is small, which makes it difficult to produce rapid statistical calculations, but regular longitudinal research will allow us to draw deeper conclusions.

The research is now in its fourth year: we have launched and fine-tuned the monitoring system, and we can move forward by improving its tools. We have also launched the autumn Explorer School with the participation of secondary schools. This will be a landmark event, because we now plan to work with schools from the region’s remote areas.

The extension of the project has shown that it is perceived as significant both in Kamchatka and by the leadership of our own university.

— How do you envisage the continuation of the project?

— We will continue to collect data as part of the monitoring, but most importantly we plan to study the practices of university and school teachers that aim to develop explorer qualities, and we would like to create a bank of best practices. These will be available in Kamchatka, and we will share them with neighbouring regions.