KPI Resumes In-Person Classes: Who Will Now Attend Classes On Campus
27 June 17:15
KPI’s goal today is to resume in-person classes to the greatest extent possible. However, simply “ordering” all students to attend classes is not enough to achieve this. Anatoliy Melnichenko, rector of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute,” spoke about this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine, as reported by "Komersant Ukrainian".
Who needs to attend in-person classes at KPI and when
“The first thing we’re focusing on is safety,” the rector said.
He explained that the university has quotas for the number of shelter spaces in its buildings and dormitories.
“Our current policy is to transition to in-person classes as much as possible. But we can’t simply issue a directive ordering everyone to come to campus without providing shelters,” the expert noted.
Given this situation, faculties are being offered alternatives.
“For example, dividing classes into shifts. For safety reasons, we are not holding large lecture sessions in the buildings, but students must complete their lab work exclusively in person,” Melnichenko explained.
Overall, he said, at KPI:
- 24 faculties and institutes;
- 106 departments.
“Local administrators are analyzing their programs and identifying priority courses,” noted the university’s president.
At the same time, most educational programs have between 30% and 50% of their courses taught in person.
“This blended format allows for a balance. For example, we schedule elective courses from the university-wide catalog—such as philosophy, rhetoric, personality psychology, and other subjects designed to develop soft skills—on a single specific day, which students take online — so they don’t have to travel back and forth,” Melnichenko explained.
He also noted that “there are faculties that are fundamentally committed to maximizing in-person instruction.”
“These include the Faculty of Electronics and the Institute of Aerospace Technologies,” the rector noted.
In addition, the university has encountered “an interesting phenomenon among IT students.”
“Many students, starting as early as their sophomore year, work part-time at IT companies, earn a decent income, and don’t want to waste time commuting,” the university president explained.
In other words , it was not the university but the students themselves who opposed in-person classes.
“But we stood our ground anyway. How could that be: KPI is the flagship of IT education, yet the students would be sitting at home,” Melnichenko said.
To bring students back to campus, the largest Faculty of Informatics and Computer Engineering (FIOT), which has 3,500 students (equivalent to an entire separate university), they prepared shelters for 300 people initially, and then for another 500 over the course of a year.
“Now that the faculty has a shelter with 800 spots, they can flexibly adjust their schedules and study in person,” concluded the KPI rector.
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