TOMSK, Jan 5 – RIA Tomsk. Tomsk State University (TSU) employees plan to launch an English-language online service for psychological support for students in February 2021; within its framework foreigners will have access to various services, including trainings on working with procrastination and "Homesickness", one of the project’s authors Azamat Naiman told RIA Tomsk.
Earlier it was reported that in 2020 universities of Tomsk accepted 3,3 thousand citizens of foreign countries, 2,4 thousand of which were from the near abroad, 863 people were from far abroad. The leader in foreign students recruiting is TSU, where 1,1 thousand residents of the near and far abroad entered.
As specified on the university website, the project is aimed at improving the adaptation and integration of foreigners - students and staff - into the university community of TSU. It is assumed that after the implementation of the project at TSU it will be possible to scale it up to other universities of the "Big University" of Tomsk.
"The idea arose after foreign students began to contact the existing student psychological support service. There are no services for them in English, so the process of adaptation and "infusion" of foreigners into the community is not going as well as it could. It is important to have an English-language service for TSU, as the number of foreign students is growing every year", - Naiman said.
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According to Naiman, in addition to him, employees of the psychological service of TSU and the department for international relations are involved in the project. Together they received a grant of the university competition "Vector of Initiative" in the amount of 280 thousand rubles to implement their idea.
"Currently, the project is under development. The result we are striving for is systematic psychological activities for foreign students, their training in self-help skills, a set of guidelines for providing psychological support to foreigners", - the agency's interlocutor commented.
The project can start as early as February 2021, if the epidemiological situation in the region allows. At the same time, the developed service will be focused on working online. As specified on the university's website, among the project's English-language activities are training on working with procrastination, art therapy training "Homesickness", role-playing game "Coping with stress".