UK universities are diversifying their cooperation with Ukrainian educational institutions as part of a twinning initiative to offer support to academics, students and university administrations during the conflict. The project is coordinated by the Cormack Consultancy Group with the support of UK universities.
The project is at an early stage and about 30 universities from across the UK have already expressed interest in the twinning initiative. Negotiations between universities began this week to ensure long-term collaboration in a variety of areas, including curriculum content, online resources, research collaboration, and student and staff relocation.
The partner of Sumy National Agrarian University in this project is the Royal Agrarian University of Great Britain. OlenaMelnyk, the Head of the SNAU Research Department and Head of the Project Sector, held a working meeting with representatives of this university.
In addition to long-term cooperation, it is possible to implement other initiatives, in particular:
- enabling Ukrainian researchers to work at UK universities so that they can continue to educate Ukrainian students through online courses; access to IT infrastructure and accommodation;
- providing access to libraries and other online academic resources that can be accessed by staff of British universities (for example, providing staff with the e-mail address of the British University ac.uk).
- providing Ukrainian English-speaking students with the opportunity to take online modules from British universities with credits recognized by their Ukrainian universities;
- assistance in the protection of Ukrainian resources, in particular collections of rare books;
- holding summer schools at UK campuses to help students catch up on their studies;
- cooperation between student unions of Great Britain and Ukraine to raise funds for new equipment needed to support education;
- exchange of experience in psychological support of students.
