LUTSK – The idea to use not only the advantageous geographical location but the opportunities of the neighboring EU and close contacts with the European universities has been in the air for a long time now. Back in 2008, when giving the interview to The Day, the chancellor of Lesia Ukrainka Volyn National University professor Ihor Kotsan voiced his dream to see among his students at least our neighbors from Poland. Later the representatives of this university expressed their desire to turn it into the Ukrainian Sorbonne since large universities are often situated in small towns that live owing to them. This university has also received over eight hectares of land on the territory of the former presidio which means that now they have the basis for building the modern university campus. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych supported the initiative of the Volyn oblast authorities to create the East European University based on the Volyn National University by giving a corresponding commission.
“It is a great chance and opportunity for Volyn to enter the market of teaching in Ukraine and abroad. We will learn how to teach at a higher level and give our students better knowledge. Your university is hors concours in the region and the president’s commission gives you a chance to reach an absolutely different level,” this is what the head of the Volyn Oblast State Administration Borys Klimchuk told the university staff at a conference.
The university authorities are going to present the first draft of what the East European University will be in the near future. According to the head of the Volyn Oblast State Administration, it will be the concept of development that will allow being funded by both the European Union and the state budget. Actually, the concept has to dramatically change and improve the competitiveness of the university and will certainly improve the conditions of studies and students’ everyday life. However, Klimchuk opines that the private business has to be involved in the development of the infrastructure, too. The vice-chancellor for research of the Volyn National University Anatolii Tsos noted that reorganizing their university into the one of the European level will allow holding grant researches, commercializing scientific developments, creating laboratories for inventions, patenting, selling, and spreading the ideas of the Volyn scientists to Europe. Research institutes, institution of doctoral candidacy, language centers, a library equipped with the newest information technologies, recreation centers for students that, we hope, will appear one day in Lutsk at the place of the former presidio will not only provide the students with better conditions but will allow better using, as the member of the supervisory board of Lesia Ukrainka Volyn National University and the editor-in-chief of Den Larysa Ivshyna said, the “Volynian perks” which are the intellect and technology.
