On the morning of April 3, three representatives from Perm State University visited Jiangsu Normal University. The delegation was led by Vice Rector of PSU, Professor Igor A. Germanov. Professor Zhou Ruguang, President of JSNU received the delegation courteously.
President Zhou welcomed the delegation and introduced the current condition, discipline construction and international cooperationof JSNU. He said that cooperating with Russian universities was an importantwork of JSNU, which had an early start in enrolling undergraduate students majoring in Russian. On the basis of establishing Sino-Russian Institute, JSNU founded JSNU-SPbPU Institute of Engineering, the first non-separate legalentity institute domestically, working at cultivating talents good at their ownmajors and Russian and made it our distinct characteristics. He expressed thatin 2017, JSNU had already signed cooperative agreement with PSU. Now, therewere two Russian teachers came from PSU and two students studying at PSU. Agood start had already shown itself. JSNU would like to have a further cooperation with PSU and collaborate in broader fields like joint programs andtalents cultivation.
Vice Rector Germanov expressed his gratitude for JSNU’s warm reception and gave a brief introduction of PSU’s key disciplines, current development and the cooperation with Chinese universities.He noted that JSNU had a great comprehensive strength and the cultivation mode had an obvious advantage. Therefore, he hoped that two sides could cooperate in scientific research and students’ joint cultivation.
Then, the delegation visited School of Foreign Studies and met with related teachers from the School of Foreign Studies and the Sino-Russian Institute. Through discussion, two sides made some consensus among academic, students exchange and double-degree program.
The History of PSU
Perm State University was founded on October 14, 1916. It originated on the dividing line of two epochs of Russian history. That decade was marked by the so called silver age of Russian culture, ingenious scientific achievements, rapid economic growth andby the crisis of political system and also by a catastrophic war, which brought Russia to the brink of social and political revolution. All these factors shaped the history of the University.
It is worth mentioning that the University was initially set up as a branch of the St. Petersburg University - one of the leading European centers of higher education. Young and ambitious professorsand tutors from the capital of Russia formed the backbone of the new universitystaff. It was a galaxy of brilliant academics overwhelmed with new ideas andzeal: B.D. Grekov, S.P. Obnorsky, N.P. Ottokar, A.A. Zavarzin, A.S. Yaschenko,K.K. Buga, Yu.N. Verkhovsky, A.G. Genkel, A.A.Fridman, N.P. Gerasimov, A.A.Rikhter, A.I. Bukirev, O.N. Bader, I.M.Vinogradov and some others. Very quicklythe University began to develop into the center of intellectual and spirituallife of the Perm region, producing a special atmosphere of creative work, andintroducing the town to the centers of European culture and education. AnEnglish traveler J. Greenwald managed to reflect objectively this process whiledescribing Perm: The center of the whole cultural life is the University.Its students give the air of academic campus to Perm, where the University isthe hub of life. This circumstance shapes the town, which has become one of theregional academic centers, sort of Ural Cambridge.
The University was born in the atmosphere of aspirations. For many Founding Fathers Perm was not supposed to be just a short episode in their academic careers. Alexander Genkel's life is the proof of it. He was not only an outstanding botanist, who laid the cornerstone of the University Botanical Garden, but also a brilliant lecturer,polyglot and erudite, who embodied the characteristic feature of his time -universalism. Besides his professional articles on biology he offered his ownversions of translation of Utopia by Thomas Moore and SunCity by Tomazo Campanella. He was in the mainstream of poetry andpublished critical essays in it.
At all stages of its development Perm StateUniversity remained the center of scientific research in the Urals. Manyestablished academic schools, which have brought international recognition tothe University, grew on the basis of research of natural, historical andcultural peculiarities of Perm region and the Urals.