The May meeting of the Academic Board was dedicated to the study of the English language at the university and the implementation of international educational programs. To some extent, these issues are intertwined, as a person can apply for participation in international programs only when he/she knows a foreign language at the appropriate level. Mostly it is English. After all, according to the requirements of the standards of higher education by specialties, graduates of bachelor’s degree programs must communicate freely in a foreign language. Also, a few months ago, the Verkhovna Rada in the first reading adopted a draft law on English as one of the languages of international communication. So, in Ukraine, applicants for some positions will be required to know English.
Foreign language at the university: possibilities, level and scope for improvement
So the Academic Board listened to the issues related to the teaching of the English language and the level of its proficiency among students. Oleh Davydchak, Vice-Rector for Graduate Education, carefully studied and presented his report «Analysis and improvement of the concept of teaching, learning and use of the English language at Lviv Polytechnic», analyzing the main principles of the concept of learning foreign languages, approved by the Academic Board in 2019. He also focused on the peculiarities of studying foreign languages at the bachelor’s and postgraduate degree programs, and published the statistics of English-language educational programs at each Institute.
It should be noted that Lviv Polytechnic offers English-language disciplinary courses at all educational levels. In general, students are interested in them and are ready to attend them, especially master’s students. An important indicator is that more and more bachelor’s and master’s students from all Institutes defend their theses in English.
Participation in international educational programs opens up many opportunities
Another, no less important issue on the agenda is the implementation of international educational programs at Lviv Polytechnic. Nataliya Chukhray, Vice-Rector for Education and International Relations, presented her report, stressing that participation in international educational programs is a priority area of work of every university, as it promotes international cooperation and exchange of experience, increases the level of internationalization of education at the university, which opens up opportunities to improve the quality of education of students and postgraduates, as well as increases the ranking of higher education institutions on the domestic and international market of educational services.
Indicators of international academic mobility of academic staff and students are among the mandatory key performance indicators of the Department, Institute, and the University in general. Among Polytechnicians, the most popular international educational programs are Erasmus+ KA1, NAWA, DAAD, Baltic University Program, and Twinning.
In the last five years, under the Erasmus+ KA1 program, the academic mobility of Lviv Polytechnic employees has doubled, and the number of inter-institutional agreements has tripled. This made it possible for 112 employees and 61 female students (due to the war in Ukraine, male students only recently acquired the right to go abroad for exchange studies) study under academic mobility programs.
Over the past two years, Lviv Polytechnic has become a member of nine European alliances and is currently the leader in Ukraine by this indicator. This is a relatively new phenomenon of cooperation. For the fuller integration of Ukrainian universities into the work of alliances, these initiatives are financed by the Polish Agency for Academic Exchange within the framework of the NAWA program – «Solidarity with Ukraine». Lviv Polytechnic was involved in such cooperation by nine Polish universities, which finance the participation of both employees and students in trainings, seminars, studies, summer schools and conferences, implementation of project works, etc.
Under the program of the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD, Lviv Polytechnicians not only get scholarships and individual grants, but also carry out team projects. Also, over the past five years, 17 Polytechnicians have won educational scholarships and individual grants from the Baltic University Programme.
The Twinning programme of the British government is relatively new, since it was launched in 2022. And in a year after that, the Department of Theoretical and Applied Psychology, ILPIE, won a grant for the creation and implementation of dual master’s degree program. This is how the new educational and scientific dual master’s degree program at Lviv Polytechnic and Nottingham Trent University in Great Britain has started, and 14 our students are already studying under this program, albeit online.
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