As part of the Youth Day of Russian Energy Week 2018, a meeting entitled «Promoting Careers in Engineering, Technical and Engineering Education, and the Development of New Technologies» was held. The event was attended by representatives of the leading technical institutions and top managers responsible for Human Resources at fuel and energy sector companies. The moderator was Artem Korolev, Director of the Nadezhnaya Smena Charity Foundation.
In his opening remarks, Deputy Energy Minister of the Russian Federation Anton Inyutsyn noted that raising the prestige of engineering professions, promotion of engineering and technical education as a key driver for the technological and innovative development of the fuel and energy sector was an important area of joint activity by government bodies, energy companies, leading universities, scientific entities and NGOs. With support from the Energy Ministry of Russia, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, and the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, a whole number of youth-focused measures are being implemented to promote the engineering and technical education and ensure an advanced development of the fuel and energy sector. Among key events having the greatest scale and highest effect, Inyutsyn named the Youth Day of the Russian Energy Week, the Brighter Together All-Russian Energy Saving Festival, open door days at the facilities of the fuel and energy sector, competitions aimed at finding engineering solutions held as part of the CASE-IN International Engineering Championship, the Youth All-Russian Production Conference, and some others. «Efforts to promote the fuel and energy sector, energy saving and engineering and technical education are becoming more and more systemic and consolidated,» the Deputy Minister underlined.
For his part, Alexander Bugayev, head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, said: «Engineering staff is the basis of our future, our technological breakthrough. Therefore, we thoroughly support measures aimed at promoting engineering professions. For six years already we have been holding All-Russia Working Youth Forums. This year it was held in Nizhny Tagil, and it was attended by the President of Russia. We are prepared to continue working together to this end.» «Cooperation with the real sector, including as part of the Russian Energy Week, is an important area for us,» explained Artemy Rozhkov, Head of the Department of State Policy in the Sphere of Higher Education and Youth Policy at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation. «Present here today are representatives of the leading companies in the fuel and energy sector. Their cooperation will effectively help enhance the quality of engineering education,» he noted.
The conference went on to discuss the best practices and projects followed by an interested exchange of opinions.
In particular, Dmitry Bobkov, Director of the Department for Information Policy and Public Relations at PAO Rosseti, stressed that today, no other industry could boast such an event as the Brighter Together All-Russian Festival in terms of scale and involvement of regions, different companies and target audiences. What distinguishes this festival is that its driving force is youth itself. Indeed, the young generate ideas and implement them. Over 3 million schoolchildren, tens of thousands of pre-school children across the whole of Russia took part in thematic events, hundreds of secondary specialized colleges and higher education institutions joined the festival. PAO Rosseti alone held almost 600 events in all regions where it operates. Dmitry Bobkov proposed to promote the Brighter Together All-Russian Festival to an international level: «The problems of energy efficiency are urgent for all countries, therefore, the expansion of our festival framework looks quite logical.»
As a result of the meeting, the All-Russian List of Youth Events was prepared for 2019, aimed at promoting the engineering and technical education and motivated involvement of the youth engineering and technical elite to the technological development of the Russian fuel and energy sector.
In conclusion, a number of companies and higher education institutions were awarded special diplomas for their significant contribution to the promotion of engineering professions and engineering and technical education.