Data Analysis

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.

The present section begins with a description of the context and the international positioning of UrIH’s predecessors before Project 5-100, then draws a picture of the academic units’ positioning during the excellence initiative after the merger of both its predecessors and concludes with a portrayal of the elaborated international positioning at the end of 5-100.

5.2.1.1 Prior to the Start of Project 5-100: No International Positioning,

Ambitious Planning. Section 5.2.1.1 describes the first steps of UrIH’s predecessors towards the elaboration of their international positioning before the start of Project 5-100. The

analysis in the present section is based on the strategic plans of the academic unit predecessors, as of 2011.

Forced Positioning of Institute of Social and Political Sciences (ISPS). The Strategic Plan of the Institute for Social and Political Sciences contained a section, International Positioning, where the unit clearly defined its self-positioning within the university: “In the field of international activities, ISPS is currently the undisputed leader in UrFU” (Ural Federal University, 2011d, p. 6). A collection of ISPS’ speech acts related to internationalization and international positioning is presented in Table 13. In accordance with the definition given in section 3.3, speech acts are understood within the framework of Positioning Theory as excerpts of a speech which are socially significant in a given situation for communicators (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999, p.18). In the present chapter, the speech acts have been extracted from the documents listed at the beginning of section 5.2.1. These and subsequent speech acts are examined within the framework of positioning theory as part of the triad “position-speech act-storyline” (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999).

Table 13

Speech Acts of ISPS Related to the International Dimension (as of 2011)

Existing positioning: speech acts of achievements Desired positioning: speech acts of goals

Education Research Development Education Research Development

1. UrFU became the founding higher education institution of SCO University in

“Regional Studies”.

2. ISPS became a resource center for RESET HESP (Hungary) and a partner of short-term programs with the University of Southern Denmark.

3. ISPS has been

attracting international professors from DELE, Russian- Embassy of Japan in Russia, the Embassy of Iran in Moscow, Goethe-Institut Russland, DAAD, Fulbright and others.

4. The Ministry of International and Foreign Economic Relations of the Sverdlovsk Region constantly provides internship positions for ISPS’ students.

1. An international research grant was received for Fp7 program in terms of cooperation with 13 large world research centers in 2009.

2. ISPS is part of the international program

"Interregional Research in the Social Sciences", whose donors, along with the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, are the Carnegie Corporation (New York) and the MacArthur

Foundation (USA).

1. There are 36 agreements on cooperation with foreign universities and research centers.

3. International funding attracted around 30,000,000 RUB in 2010.

4. Partner

Organizations of ISPS include: New Eurasia, Carnegie Corporation of New York, MacArthur Foundation, European Commission,

Fulbright, UNESCO, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Open Society Institute-Budapest, Società Dante Alighieri, Consulates of the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Hungary, China and others.

1. Modernization of education:

А) Modernization of curriculum, creation of interdisciplinary master programs,

B) Modernization of methodology, study approaches and educational technologies.

Actions:

1. Advanced training for faculty members in foreign universities and centers for the

development of pedagogical technologies.

2. Familiarization of faculty members with Scholarship in Teaching and Learning (Carnegie Foundation), Problem-based Learning и Project Learning (Maastricht University and several universities in Finland).

1. Modernization of research: development of policy aimed at increasing citation indices of faculty members.

2. Increasing the amount of funding received through research projects. Participation in projects Fp7, Fulbright, Humboldt Foundation, Friedrich Naumann Foundation and others.

Modernization of innovations: ISPS could become a think-tank for the university and for the region.

Note. Adapted from 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.

Table 13 illustrates that ISPS’ internationalization, as of 2011, was mainly positioned as cooperation with international partner universities and organizations. Previous experience of research internationalization was scarce and did not result in publications in peer reviewed journals indexed in international databases. Altogether, ISPS’ faculty members produced only two such papers in 2011, while another array of publications was published in Russian

journals or were not indexed in international databases. Therefore, the self-positioning of ISPS as a leader in terms of internationalization referred to the educational dimension only.

The ISPS Strategic Plan (Ural Federal University, 2011d, p. 38) also contained the section Positioning of the unit at UrFU where the Institute proclaimed two more positions (my emphasis):

ISPS plays the role of an expert and analytical center in the field of social problems and technologies at UrFU, providing sociological, psychological and political-technological support to projects and programs of the university as a whole. ISPS develops […] initiative projects aimed at strengthening the importance of the university in the regional community. Thanks to the implementation of these projects, UrFU will be able to position itself as a center of not only technological, but also more broadly – social –

innovations.

Here ISPS assumed the position of a think-tank for social issues in UrFU and forced the university to take the position of a center for social innovations. The second position came from the expertise in international cooperation (my emphasis):

ISPS, as a leader in the field of academic international relations in the region, plays the role of a resource center for international cooperation in UrFU, carrying out advanced training of employees of UrFU and other federal universities in various fields of international cooperation. For this purpose, a special project group is being created at ISPS – the Center of Advanced Training in the Area of International Cooperation. (Ural Federal University, 2011d, p.19)

This idea subsequently and successfully translated into the Unit for Retraining and Advanced Studies at UrIH. This became one of the leading centers for supplementary

education in the University. Therefore, in 2011 ISPS had already experienced the positions of active player and agent of change within the university in the following areas:

• international cooperation for educational purposes

• expert center for social issues

• educator (“resource center”) for international cooperation

ISPS also sustained a new primary task of research repositioning: to become “the leading R&D center in the field of social and political sciences in the Ural region” (Ural Federal University, 2011d, p. 22) and achieve meaningful research positions internationally.

The academic unit noted that human and informational resources were required to start addressing this task and suggested a possible solution: “serious work needs to be done to

create a system of motivation for teachers and research faculty in order to publish results of their studies in foreign English-language journals” (Ural Federal University, 2011d, p. 21).

Therefore, in 2011 ISPS positioned itself as an UrFU academic unit with leading positions in terms of international cooperation in the area of education. The academic units also stated its goals of repositioning and development of internationally recognized research.

ISPS was created with the assumption that most faculty members’ efforts should be made to teach in accordance with the Soviet model of higher education. At the same time, the creation of UrFU in 2009 prompted a clash between the teaching-oriented model and the new era when research competences were as much important as teaching. This forced its desired positioning as a leading R&D center.

Repositioning Goals of the Institute of Humanities and Arts (IHA). IHA presented its self-positioning in the Strategic Plan (Ural Federal University, 2011c, p. 18) as “the leading center for liberal arts education in the Ural region and one of the leading centers for liberal arts education in Russia”. The Strategic Plan also outlined the desirable positioning of the academic unit (Ural Federal University, 2011c, p. 46) which was constructed on the idea of competitiveness and did not articulate specific areas of competences:

[…] to properly compete with national universities in Moscow and St.

Petersburg and the largest educational centers of neighboring Eurasian countries by such criteria as quality of teaching, demand for graduates on the labour market, level of research and socially oriented projects.

One more task of international repositioning was outlined in IHA’s Strategic Plan (Ural Federal University, 2011c, p. 44): “[One of IHA’s tasks in the area of education is] to

achieve leadership as an international center for advanced training of young teachers and researchers from Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, CIS countries”.

The excerpt illustrates that, firstly, IHA positioned itself as a regional center of expertise at national level, and secondly, its international ambition was to achieve visibility among neighboring countries. IHA’s self-positioning in the research area was different from ISPS: the latter sustained that the current level of research demanded serious actions for development. In contrast, IHA declared the high level of its research capacities (Ural Federal University, 2011c, p. 25): “The research potential of IHA’s subdivisions is objectively high and makes it possible to achieve the necessary synergetic effect both in research activities and the educational process”. The research capacity of IHA is described in Table 14 and gathers the speech acts of the document in reference to the international dimension of the academic unit in terms of education, research and other areas of development.

Table 14

Speech Acts of IHA Related to the International Dimension (as of 2011)