Today, on January 27, Oleksandr Yaroslavsky has signed a Memorandum of Strategic Partnership with V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University on behalf of his DCH Group and Kharkiv Tractor Plant. As reported by DCH Press-service, “our cooperation with this respectable educational establishment has been documented and codified”.
The businessman and the university’s president Vil Bakirov signed the document during the meeting of Kharkiv University’s supervisory board, whose member Mr. Yaroslavsky has been for many years now.
“In my opinion, the university is to become primarily a “human resources foundry” for Kharkiv Tractor Plant. The students will do their traineeship here and we will hold our lectures, events. I have a dream that one day the students will invent a tractor for the Plant that will plough the soil on the Moon or Mars”, said Oleksandr Yaroslavsky.
Cooperation on research and development (including on the Ukrainian Tractor National Program developed by the businessman’s groups), on professional training, and on the students’ internship will be secured under the auspices of Kharkiv Tractor Plant and DCH belonging to Yaroslavsky.
“We do realize that modern industry needs science, modern technologies, cooperation and mutual understanding with science. That is why by signing the document we testify our willingness to cooperate, join forces and help each other until Kharkiv Tractor Plant has produced several million powerful and reliable machines”, said the University’s President in his turn.
Oleksandr Yaroslavsky stressed that the experience of cooperation between research centers and industrial ones has already existed for several centuries; thus the best world practices will be employed while implementing the Kharkiv Tractor Plant / DCH and Kharkiv National University Memorandum.
Moreover, at the meeting of the supervisory board Oleksandr Yaroslavsky expressed his willingness, on behalf of Kharkiv Tractor Plant, to finance putting up a monument to a famous Kharkiv citizen – Petro Hulak-Artemovsky, a writer, a historian, a linguist, who was also a professor of Kharkiv University. Some time ago, the businessman allocated more than half a million hryvnias for the university to put up at its main building the monument to three Nobel Prize winners connected with the educational establishment – Élie Metchnikoff, Lev Landau, and Simon Kuznets.
President Vil Bakirov pointed out that “there would be no monuments but for Yaroslavsky, however they are here and they work for the authority and the image of science, including the authority and the image of Kharkiv University”. He also pointed out that when a student he used to work at the construction site of one of Kharkiv Tractor Plant buildings and then he used to do sociological research there. “Mr. Yaroslavsky, you and your company are doing a great job; you are reviving and restoring the pride of Kharkiv industry. Thank you very much!” said the scientist.
Kharkiv National University is known to have been founded in 1805, it is the oldest university in Eastern Ukraine. In 2016-2017, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University was recognized a leader of Ukrainian educational establishments in the top 916 universities in the world by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), one of the most influential international university rankings.
