On 7 September, our university held a master's dissertations defence in a video conference format for students of the double degree programme "International Tourism Management" conducted jointly by VSU and the University of Marne-la-Vallée. The programme is one of the most successful and oldest programmes created as a result of cooperation between the universities. It indicates the high level of VSU's academic reputation in the world.
The examining committee was comprised of professors of the University of Marne-la-Vallée – Natalie Fabry (the head of the master’s programme) and Sylvain Zegni – and representatives of Voronezh State University – Oleg Belenov (Head of the International Cooperation Department), Professor Elena Alexeeva (coordinator of the cooperation programme and head of the Department of French Philology at VSU’s Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology), and Irina Foret (Associate professor at the Faculty of International Relations).
This year the dissertations were presented in an e-portfolio format. The students were Sergei Burdakin (“Transportation facilities in Russia – problems and progress”), Vladlen Bakhtin (“Turkish direction – Russian tourists returning”), and Marina Taranzhina (“The effect of the 2014 crisis on tourism in Crimea”). Sergei Burdakin and Vladlen Bakhtin were defending their dissertations in France, and Marina Taranzhina – at VSU.
As of tradition, the defence was conducted in French and Russian.
The committee noted the high level of the dissertations and the importance of the investigated problems that are of interest for both Russia and France. The French colleagues praised the students’ high level of the French language proficiency.
The video conference also involved discussion of further cooperation between VSU and the University of Marne-la-Vallée, including ERASMUS+ joint projects.
