Rector Visits Banja Luka

The Rector and his team arrived in the capital of the Republika Srpska, an autonomous region of Bosnia Herzegovina, on the second day of their whistle-stop tour of the Balkans. They were shown round the campus of UBL, and stopped in at the Political Science Faculty for a meeting with its Dean, Professor Zdravko Zlokapa. Despite its name, the Faculty has a lot in common with our own Institute of Social Sciences and Mass Communication, with courses in journalism, social work and sociology, as well as Political Science. Professor Zlokapa and the Rector shared views on how well the exchanges were going, and the Rector invited his host to participate in BNRU's Centre for Slavic Studies, which aims to uncover the problems of self-identification in the post-socialist era. They also discussed joint educational programs, with the ultimate goal of awarding double diplomas.

The next meeting was with Professor Petar Penda, Dean of the Philology Faculty, where Professor Penda spoke of his concern at UBL's lack of qualified teachers of Russian language and literature. The Rector was able to assure the Professor, that BNRU is uniquely equipped to provide him with what he needs, and furthermore, it may well be possible to run a summer school in Belgorod exclusively for UBL students.

The main event was a meeting with Professor Radoslav Gajanin, Rector of UBL. In a productive meeting, both men considered the cooperation to be a success, and agreed to extend and deepen ties with the Political Science and Philology Faculties. They hoped that other departments of both universities might find mutual areas of research in the near future. They then signed a formal agreement on UBL's participation in the work of the Centre for Slavic Studies.