OREANDA-NEWS. June 21, 2011. The kick-off meeting of the "BCBU+" project took place in the University of Lapland (Rovaniemi, Finland) on the 3-4 June 2011. The project continues long-term Barents Crossborder University plan. Thanks to the new project financed by the Kolarctic ENPI CBC programme the BCBU international cooperation will get a new development impulse.

At present North-Western Russian universities and universities of Northern Finland are developing joint master's programmes and introducing them into the regular curriculum within the Barents Crossborder University. MSTU contributes to the developement of the following programmes: Comparative Social Work, Barents Ecological Engineering and Informational Technologies. The changes that take place in Russian and European higher education systems prove the necessity of further cooperation.

The official start of the "BCBU+" project was in April 2011. In the course of the kick-off meeting Russian (MSTU, NArFU, PetrSU, Karelian State Pedagogical Academy), Finnish (University of Lapland, University of Oulu), Norwegian (Narvik University college) and Swedish (Lulea University of Technology) partners discussed the budget and Partnership Agreement, which is soon to be signed in its final version, coordinated the activity plan. MSTU was represented by the Head of International Cooperation Department Natalia Anikeeva.

The specific project objectives are creating virtual campus (which means introducing new information technologies – video conferences and online studies into the educational process) and creating a virual library that will enable students to use other university information (which is expected to be partially translated into English). In addition, Intensive English and Informational Technologies courses for the project target groups will be organized and the CBC education guide will be worked out.