1. Read and translate the text.

OUR UNIVERSITY

Bryansk State Technical University was founded in December 1929 according to the decision of the USSR’s Higher Soviet of National economy on the basis of the Bezhitsa workers’ faculty as a higher technical institution of a new type. “Krasni Profintern”, a large machine-building plant in Bezhitsa, the Bryansk region, served as a technical foundation for its organisation.

The training of the engineers on the initial stage was carried out at the mechanical faculty with the two subdepartments – technological and mechanical engineering departments. These faculties trained specialists on hot and cold working of metals and foundry, locomotive building, machine-tool manufacture, mechanical installations.

Within recently BSTU has become a technical University well-known in the whole country, over thirty thousand engineers and scientific workers for machine-building, transport, power-engineering and other branches of industry have been trained within its walls. Now BSTU is a multiprofile technical higher school with a developed academic and laboratory basis, equipped with up-to-date devices. It has got four buildings, a computer and laboratory centre, a Sports House, two students’ hostels.

More than five thousand students study at the economics and management departments, at the information technology department, at the mechanical-technological department, at the power engineering and electronics department, at the educational-scientific technological institute and at the educational-scientific transport institute. There is a correspondence department at the University too. It has 2 branches in Novozybkov and Luydinovo, 1 polytechnic college. It trains bachelors and engineers in the directions of economics and management, machine-building and metal-treatment, power engineering and energetics, ground vehicles, electrical engineering and industrial electronics, automation, safety of vital activity, computer technologies and systems.

Annually over 1000 applicants are enrolled into the University. More than 400 highly qualified scientific and pedagogical workers take part in training future specialists. The teaching staff of BSTU is highly qualified, 65% of the teachers have academic degrees and status. Among the teachers there are 6 honoured scientists of the Russian Federation, 15 honoured workers of Higher School and branches of science, 20 Full Members and Corresponding members of different international and branch academies, 30 Doctors of Philosophy, professors, about 260 Candidates of Science, assistant-professors.

The activity of the scientific schools being developed by BSTU is well known in the country and abroad. During the last decades the scientists and the teachers of the University have published more than 500 monographs, textbooks and educational supplies and have received 100 patents and authors’ certificates for the inventions. The innovative activity is devoted to designing and producing essentially new kinds of vehicles.

Over 100 postgraduate students and competitors on various scientific specialities study here. The University has councils on defending theses for the degree of Ph.D. and for the degree of Candidate of Science on 14 scientific specialities.

The present stage in the development of the University comprises the integration of education, science and production. To provide high-quality training of specialists the University is continuously improving its laboratory and information basis. Unique technological and experimental equipment is used in the process of studies; over 300 different PCs are installed at the University, which are united into a single computer network.

The University scientific library is one of the largest technical libraries in the region. Its bookstock counts more than 500 thousand volumes of academic, scientific, sociological, political and fiction literature.

The university has business and creative contacts with more than 60 industrial enterprises, research organizations and higher schools of the country. BSTU is developing international cooperation with Universities and outstanding scientists of the Western countries: the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Italy, Austria, Holland, the Czech Republic and also with the traditional partners from Belorussia, the Ukraine, etc.