For a hundred years, Belarusian State University (BSU) concluded more than 500 agreements with universities from 59 countries, BelTA learned from the press service of the university.

Belarusian State University will celebrate its centennial anniversary on 30 October. This event is included in the UNESCO list of ‘International Days', which gives the event an international status, confirms the significant contribution of the Belarusian university to world education and science. In the build-up to the 100th anniversary, the university has renewed the board of the university partners. It is located on the 2nd floor of the university administration near the hall of the BSU Council. The hall hosts important events, award ceremonies, meetings with honorary guests and workshops. The board shows diverse international activities of BSU and commendations to partners for effective cooperation in education and science.

“In total, the university has more than 500 agreements with universities from 59 countries, including Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Germany, Poland, Japan, Israel, Indonesia, Switzerland, Egypt, Oman and Kazakhstan. The oldest existing document of international cooperation is the 1967 agreement on scientific and cultural cooperation with the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany),” the press service said.

By the way, the university started building international academic and educational contacts back in the 1920s. When the university was run by its first rector Vladimir Picheta, university employees traveled to Germany, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Poland and other countries to share best practices. In the post-war period, BSU resumed international contacts in August 1955. Back then 10 students from Poland came to study at the Belarusian university. The following year, a student from Canada was sent to study on an individual program at the Faculty of Philology. In the first half of the 1960s, the university started running student exchange programs. In addition, on 1 September 1961, BSU became the first in Belarus and one of the four universities in the Soviet Union to train foreign citizens at the preparatory faculty.

BSU entered the 1% of the best universities in the world. The university is listed on 12 global and 7 subject rankings out of 20 existing international ranking. The university ranks 295th in QS Global University Rankings and 367th in the ranking of U.S. News. The BSU electronic library is one of the world's best three university repositories.

For almost a century, BSU has trained about 185,000 students, 4,700 candidates of sciences, 700 doctors of sciences, more than 15,000 foreign nationals. Among the graduates are well-known scientists, academicians, professors, laureates of state awards of the USSR, BSSR and Belarus, top managers of large companies, famous poets, honored workers, and Olympic medalists.

Written by belta.by