Context of The Case

5.1.1 A History of Transformations: The Biggest Academic Unit in UrFU

UrIH in its current structure was created in 2017 via a merger of two academic units (the Institute of Humanities and Arts and the Institute of Social and Political Sciences; hereon IHA and ISPS respectively) in order to create the university’s largest institute in terms of students and faculty members. These two institutes had been established in 2011 after the creation of UrFU on the base of two other regional universities. The sequence of mergers is shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12

History of Transformations of UrIH and Its Predecessors

Note. Adapted from (1) Strategic plan of Institute of Humanities and Arts (IHA) of Ural Federal University up to 2020, by Ural Federal University, 2011c,

(https://urfu.ru/fileadmin/user_upload/common_files/Official%20docs/program%20develope ment/UrFU-IHA-Concept.pdf). In the public domain;

(2) Strategic plan of Institute of Social and Political Studies (ISPS) of Ural Federal University up to 2020, by Ural Federal University, 2011d,

(https://urfu.ru/fileadmin/user_upload/common_files/Official%20docs/program%20develope ment/UrFU-ISPN-Concept.pdf). In the public domain.

Ural Institute of Humanities (UrIH)

Institute of Humanities and Arts Institute of Social and Political Sciences

The Strategic Academic Unit was formed in 2017 as part of the «University 2.0 » transformation.

The institutes were created in 2011 within the framework of the transformations taking place in the newly formed UrFU.

USU Faculty of History

USU Faculty of Philology

USU Faculty of Journalism

USU Faculty of Arts and Cultural Studies USU Center for Innovative Humanitarian Technologies

USU Faculty of Philosophy

USU Faculty of Psychology

USU Faculty of Political Science and Sociology USU Faculty of International

Relations

USU Institute for Retraining and Advanced Studies USU Centre for Advanced

Studies and Education

After the merger of two state universities in 2011 into one federal university, both institutes were formed on the basis of faculties that belonged to Ural State University (USU). This was explained by the fact that there had been no units dedicated to social or humanitarian sciences in Ural State Technical University.

The newly formed UrIH collected approximately 7,500 students and 1,000 faculty members. The institute provided 81 educational programs in humanities, social and political sciences.

In accordance with the following steps of transformations named «University 2.0», the academic unit was divided into two schools in 2019: the School of Bachelor Studies (for undergraduate programs) and the School of Academic and Project Development (for master and postgraduate programs). Each school had a common Dean’s office, while the offices of the deputy directors in education, research and general affairs did not belong to any school within UrIH and reported directly to the director. UrIH’s structure is shown in Appendix J.

5.1.2 Internationalization of Education: the Leader in Terms of International Students One of the key initial goals of Project 5-100 was to increase the number of

international students, and thus UrIH strived to achieve this. The recruiting of international students in the university had been centralized and provided for by UrFU services. At the same time, it was the academic units that decided which programs would attract more students, who would teach them and whether word-of-mouth marketing could start working based on alumni’s testimonials. Before the launch of Project 5-100, there were no English-taught programs at UrIH, but several courses (eight in 2011) were available in English. As of 2020/2021 academic year, there were 81 degree programs across all degree levels at UrIH, and five of them were offered in English. All the English-taught programs were provided at the master level and included the following:

• Cognitive Neurosciences

• International Human Resource Management

• Neoindustrial Design

• Political Philosophy

• Real Studies in Real Russia

In 2013, there were more than 360 international students at UrIH who came mostly from CIS countries and were studying Russian-taught programs. The number of international students increased to 728 in 2018, as Figure 13 shows. The indicators for 2013-2016

summarize the numbers of both UrIH’s predecessors.

Figure 13

Number of UrIH’s International Students, Persons

Note. Adapted from data of UrFU’s Department for Academic Development (private communication).

As the chart illustrates, UrIH had become the leader in terms of absolute number of international full-time students, their percentage in the academic unit (10%) and among all the international students of the university. This is a result of the fact that specific degree programs, both in English and Russian, became very popular among international applicants.

For example, the educational program Real Studies in Real Russia (taught in English) attracted more than 400 students after its launch. The unit also developed two double degree

368

261 318

504

603

728 35,8

20,6 19,3

22,9 21,9

19,7

0,0 5,0 10,0 15,0 20,0 25,0 30,0 35,0 40,0

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

International students, persons

Percentage of UrIH international students among UrFU international students body

programs within the Shanghai Cooperation University with the Dalian University of Foreign Languages (China) and NARXOZ University (Kazakhstan).

Furthermore, as an integral part of its academic unit internationalization, UrIH has been actively attracting international faculty members since 2013. Indeed, since the launch of Project 5-100, UrIH has increased the percentage of international faculty members up to 11.5% (75 academics in 2019, the leading absolute number of international faculty members among all UrFU’s academic units).

5.1.3 Internationalization of Research: from a Lack of Belief to Self-confidence

UrIH had dramatically low indicators in terms of research productivity by the start of Project 5-100. Modernization of research was defined as a “complex task”, “one of the most difficult and most urgent tasks” (Ural Federal University, 2011d, p. 20). The ISPS Strategic Plan explained research modernization from a Russian historical perspective:

Historically, Russian research developments in the field of social and political sciences had been not in great demand abroad. […] In terms of increasing the amount of funds from research grants, it is difficult to compete with the natural sciences and UrFU’s technical academic units. Firstly, representatives of both the humanities and socio-political sciences cannot count on the number of grants comparable to technical disciplines. Secondly, the amount of natural sciences funding is usually much higher than grants for social and political disciplines. (2011d, p. 20-21).

In addition, the ISPS’ Strategic Plan informed about the difficulties of hiring

international faculty members (2011d, p. 21) and noted that the low representation of social sciences research in the international research agenda had generally characterized the entire

Russian social sciences field (2011d, p. 32). Another UrIH’s predecessor mentioned

significant research output and the existence of ten scholar schools (Ural Federal University, 2011c, p. 25-34). However, the research results were almost entirely published in national and local journals. Since the excellence initiative launch, the research dimension had strongly been developed, and the storyline changed. Recent research productivity of the academic unit is displayed in Table 12.

Table 12

Research Performance of UrIH

Indicator 2011 2018

Publications indexed in Scopus/Web of Science

4 287 (#4 in UrFU)

Publications indexed in Scopus/Web of Science per faculty

0,01 0,3

Total number of citations N/A 249

Citations without selfciting N/A 153

R&D funding,

THOUSANDS RUB

40 000 108 000

Research units headed by world-class researchers

- • Laboratory of Primary Sources

Research

• Center for Comparative Studies of Toleration and Recognition

• International Demographic Unit Journals indexed in

Scopus/Web of Science

- • Quaestio Rossica (Q1 in Literature and

Literary Studies, History, Cultural Studies),

• Problems of Onomastics (Q2 in Linguistics and Language, Q3 in Communications),

• Changing Societies & Personalities (Q3 in Cultural Studies)

Note. Adapted from (1) Scientific results of Ural Federal University in 2012 [Power Point Slides], by V. Kruzhaev, 2013, (https://urfu.ru/ru/about/council/info-session/20122013-uchebnyi-god/). In the public domain, (2) Data issued by UrFU’s Center for Monitoring of

Research and Education. Private communication, (3) website of Ural Federal University, 2022c, (https://urfu.ru/en/). In the public domain.

UrIH had not become the absolute leader in terms of international research productivity in the university, but it was no longer included among the lagging academic units since it had now consolidated its leading position in terms of international education and achieved repositioning in terms of research reputation in the university. Further data analysis in section 5.2 showed which strategy had helped the unit to achieve such results, how the internationalization of research and education was implemented and repositioned in the academic unit.