Curriculum and courses

Lately it seems that I won't be that able to update weekly this blog, but I'll try my best! Now I've finally settled down in Rovaniemi, where I will help researching on the Arctic Council. One week has past brainstorming on the topic, and from tomorrow we'll discuss the first findings and next steps.

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What could I tell about CBU this time? I'll describe shortly our study plan and courses, so that, after the "boring" educational part, I'll move next time to Students' life in Tampere!

In our curriculum there are several compulsory courses which comprehend IR Theories, European and Russian Media, Introduction to Russian Studies and Russian Language. Together they form circa 20ECTS, plus the MA Thesis seminars, methodology courses and thesis itself almost 3/4 of the curriculum is covered. For the rest 20/25 or more we can choose between many courses related with IR and Russia and most of them are actually part of the CBU school we have in the participants universities. Some titles are "Politics of Putinism", "Foreign Policy Analysis", "EU-Russian relations. Interpreting Conflict" etc. (you can find more information from the CBU website).

Moreover, what I find very appealing, especially about Tampere University, is that every student can actually choose freely also many other courses from the other faculties, which may interest them. Thanks to this "freedom of study" I took more courses of Russian Language, and other colleagues took also some economics and law courses. All the successfully passed exams will be registered in the academic transcript as part of the degree.

Most of the exams are either book exams or essays, which force you to study actively the subject. Book exams make you reading the essential Books of the subjects which usually no-one would open voluntarily and the essays need to have a sound bibliography behind. This is what I mean with active studying: reading and elaborate by yourself the subject, and not just relying on what the professor said during the lessons. Some course entails also seminars or some oral presentation, where, in a lapse of several week or even some days, we have to present a research topic or essay concerning the course.

All this require a good command of both spoken and written English, but that is a mastery which will come also with the continuous exercise.

So far for the curriculum in general, next time Student's Life in Tampere :)