OREANDA-NEWS. February 01, 2011. An opening ceremony of the joint IBA-Belarusian State University (BSU) IT Competence Center was held in Minsk, Belarus, reported the press-centre of IBA.

The IT Competence Center was established in line with the agreement on cooperation between the Belarusian State University and IBA Group development centers.

The center was created on the basis of the IBA’s computer laboratory established in BSU. Built on the client-server architecture, the laboratory is equipped with 22 up-to-date workstations connected to the Internet and will be soon equipped with a fiber optic connection to the IBA servers.

Creation of the IBA-BSU IT Competence Center is aimed at raising the level of IT education at the Belarusian State University.

Providing education in state-of-the-art IT technologies for the BSU lecturers and students, the center will contribute to the implementation of the following programs:

IBM university programs, including IBM Academic Initiative launched in BSU

Microsoft Education Program that includes numerous courses in innovation in the education process (IT Academy, Innovation Centers, MLG, MDAA, E-Learning), licensing programs for lecturers and students (CASA, MSDN Academic Alliance, Faculty Connection), and support for students and young specialists at contests and conferences (Imagine Cup, Microsoft technologies in programming theory and practice)

Education programs using the SAP landscape, deployed at the IBA servers

Education programs for lecturers and students in information technologies to meet the IBA demands in human resources.

The IT Competence Center will help the BSU students and teachers to obtain consistent competencies in IT, economy, finance, and accounting.

Participating in the education programs of the world IT leaders, BSU will be able to improve its reputation, exchange knowledge and experience with world-known universities and IT experts in specific knowledge domains, provide training and certification for its lecturers and students, and conduct scientific research.

Sergei Ablameiko, BSU rector, and Sergei Levteev, IBA CEO, participated in the opening ceremony. In addition, representatives of Infopark, IBM EE/A, SAP CIS, and Belarusian office of Microsoft attended the event.

Sergei Ablameiko spoke on the positive results of long-term cooperation with IBA and highly evaluated the IBA contribution to the development of IT education in Belarus.

Addressing the participants, Sergei Levteev said: “Since the very moment of its foundation, IBA has been closely cooperating with a number of higher educational institutions, including BSU, BSUIR, and Gomel and Grodno Universities. Today we are opening the IBA-BSU IT Competence Center and I believe it will contribute to the intellectual and creative development of the new generation of Belarusian programmers.”