1st day at RSSIA 2011
The first day of RSSIA started with the speech by Maria Yudkevich, RSSIA academic director, covering the history of the summer school and some basic rules. RSSIA is unique both in the way it’s organized and the people it brings together. It began 5 years ago as a local workshop addressed mainly to Russian researchers, and now RSSIA welcomes the participants from different countries and has strong team of experts, who also came to Russia (and RSSIA) from abroad.
The first day of RSSIA started with the speech by Maria Yudkevich, RSSIA academic director, covering the history of the summer school and some basic rules. RSSIA is unique both in the way it’s organized and the people it brings together. It began 5 years ago as a local workshop addressed mainly to Russian researchers, and now RSSIA welcomes the participants from different countries and has strong team of experts, who also came to Russia (and RSSIA) from abroad. In fact, one of the main rules of RSSIA is to speak only English during the summer school to give everyone opportunity to join any conversation whatever it is about at any moment. And what are the other rules? They are rather reasonable: not to use any gadgets during the presentations and to discuss the research projects with the experts at any free minute, certainly, besides nighttime.
The first lecturer of RSSIA 2011 was Sergey Popov, HSE professor. In the beginning of his presentation he told the participants the recipe of writing a new paper in the field of economics of education. Meanwhile his talk was not only about it. Is it only student who cares about his educational strategy or it is somebody else? May difference in grading systems result into different incentives of students’ behavior? Why the top US universities famous for the highest educational level don’t hire their own graduates? These topics were covered by the first two lectures of RSSIA 2011.
The first day also witnessed a first lecture by John Nye, professor from George Mason University. He will lecture a short course, giving a lecture each working day of RSSIA. His presentation was full not only of funny jokes and but also of various pieces of advice of how to make presentations that may be crucial to young researchers. What are you doing? To whom you are addressing? Why should you care? – clear answers to these basic questions, that sound too simple to be significant, do actually matter.
In the evening the researchers might take part in volleyball organized by the local energizer Dasha Zubareva or join informal conversation with the glass of wine or juice in the company of experts and members of organizing committee.