The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy elected a new president on Nov. 17. US-educated Andriy Meleshevych, became the third president of this historical school, replacing Serhiy Kvit, who was appointed education minister earlier this year.
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is one of the nation’s top universities, and is highly regarded by employers. It’s relatively small, with 3,200 students in total, but its curriculum is modeled on those of western universities.
The president of the school is elected by 504 voters, including professors, representatives of the student community and staff members. Meleshevych received nearly 66 percent of the vote.
The new president says his priority is to ensure financial independence though effective fundraising at school.
Meleshevych received two degrees at the Syracuse University in USA, and says that his studies there demonstrated the importance of material resources for quality education of every student. He said his mission will be to get investors involved, including the school alumni, to fix the finances.
Meleshevych also said he was planning to reform the curriculum to give teachers more freedom in taking most decisions, related to both administration and curriculum planning. He will encourage more research at school, as well as student self-governance, he says, to make the university more competitive and attractive for secondary school graduates.
He said this strategy will be the best for long-term future of the Academy.
“It’s logical for students to choose better universities to get a higher-paid job in the future, and after graduation to give some money to his or her university. But first of all, the university has to provide students with appropriate qualifications, some patriotism and professional ethics,” Meleshevych says.
Meleshevych is 52 years old, and headed the legal department of the university until his election. He graduated from the Shevchenko university in Ukraine before moving to the Syracuse University for his MA, followed by PhD, in political sciences. He has teaching experience in USA and Germany.
He competed against two other candidates.
His predecessor Kvit, who attended the election, said that he expects the new president of the university to have strong leadership skills “to preserve Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s atmosphere and values.”
He says he expects the new president to increase the number of students at the university, but only after launching a number of new, planned programs that are backed by “quality materials and technical basis.”
“We know education systems of foreign countries, and, compared to that, we know we should develop a lot. For instance, it’s easier to be expelled from our Academy than from Cambridge. But at the same time, Cambridge has a better tuned education tutorial-based education system. Every student has a tutor who controls his or her studying process. We have to increase our financing to create at least something similar,” Kvit said.
He also said the Academy has to work to increase its fund-raising effort.
A small sample of students from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy polled by the Kyiv Post seemed happy with their new school president.
Maria Kriuchok, a journalism student, says that “now the most important thing is to immediately begin to ‘reload’ (the university): to increase the quality of student dorms, make a new fund-raising effort, create new departments with leading teachers and administrative staff, and much more.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Julia Kukoba can be reached at [email protected].
