EVRAZ Career Academy: great opportunities for students

The project involves preparing high school students for admission to the technical faculties of the country's universities, and then further employment at the holding's enterprises.

In Novokuznetsk, the students study at the Siberian State Industrial University. Fifty schoolchildren have already started classes this year.

EVRAZ admits that the training program was launched largely due to the shortage of technical specialists and engineers. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, according to the production staff, there are fewer candidates in principle.

Secondly, engineering fields have lost popularity, few people choose them, and the quality of student training has changed dramatically, and not for the better.

At the same time, metallurgy is one of the technological industries. There are professions here that require physical labor, but there is also space for engineering solutions, inventions, and patents.

Many production technologies have advanced far, but the guys don't know anything about it. Therefore, the task of the Career Academy is not only to find motivated and enthusiastic future engineers and help them prepare for the Unified State Exam, but also to show modern metallurgy and the range of main professions in order to make the choice more conscious.

The EVRAZ Career Academy is a program for preparing for the Unified State Exam. There is a subject part here — a curriculum on the main topics of the Unified State Exam, consisting of lectures and practical exercises, there is a career guidance track — master classes with EVRAZ experts in the main areas (technologists, power engineers, mechanics).

In addition, the students undergo intensive face—to-face training - this is a three-day event where they get to know the city, visit production facilities, participate in Olympiads and receive additional points for this, and also, thanks to professional tests, they can touch a particular profession.

— As part of the group, we toured the rolling mills at EVRAZ ZSMK, and also visited the EVRAZ personnel training center. I got the impression that this is a very large production mechanism, with a powerful team behind it, which I hope to become a part of in the near future," Ilya Mozhny, a first—year student at Siberian State Industrial University and a participant in the EVRAZ Career Academy program, shared his plans. — Next semester, we will practice here and prepare projects on the topic: "Workplace optimization".

The role of experts and coaches at the Evraz Career Academy is played not only by practitioners, but also by teachers of physics and mathematics who have extensive experience in preparing students for the Unified State Exam and work in specialized (engineering and technological) classes in the city's schools. Tutoring in exact subjects looks like this.

— Before each online lesson, the students receive a link to access the platform. Therefore, students from anywhere in the country can join our lesson, which is very convenient," says Elena Sarakhanova, Senior lecturer at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at SibGIU. — In the process of solving a problem, each student can ask a question, clarify if something is unclear. Online lessons take place once a week and last four academic hours. During this time, we manage to solve a lot of exercises and consolidate the result.

No special documents are required to become a member of the EVRAZ Career Academy project. All you need to do is fill out an introductory questionnaire, where you can provide information about yourself, your academic performance and hobbies, take tests in physics and mathematics, as well as a short interview. For the authors of the project, a genuine interest in engineering professions is important, as well as a willingness to consider basic universities as promising for admission.

"I started studying for exams in the eleventh grade," says Arina Lukyanets, a first—year student at SibGIU. — At school, teachers talked about the opportunities to become a university student through the EVRAZ Career Academy project. — Exact sciences have always been closer to me, and in general, I wanted to become a mechanical engineer, so I immediately realized that this was my chance. Studying online was very convenient. We have dismantled a large number of materials. By the way, on the Unified State Exam in mathematics, I came across one of the tasks that we solved with the teacher.

The result was seventy points in mathematics and sixty-seven in computer science. And subsequently, I easily became a student at the university I aspired to. And in the future, I also hope to be a promising employee of an industrial holding company.

EVRAZ has been working with SibGIU for quite a long time. It equips classrooms and laboratories, supports students with corporate scholarships, and employees of the holding are experts in project sessions and conduct classes. In 2023, several important joint projects were launched in conjunction with EVRAZ.

This is an engineering class based on Lyceum No. 84, in which part of the curriculum is implemented on the basis of SibGIU. As well as the Bachelor of Engineering, a network dual education program developed jointly with Siberian State University and Ural Federal University.

Since 2015, EVRAZ has been a partner of the Reliable Shift Foundation in projects for industry youth and has been working with the foundation to develop the engineering competencies of current and future specialists, as well as popularize engineering and technical professions.

"We have been friends with EVRAZ for a long time and together we contribute to the education of the future generation of specialists for the company and the industry as a whole," said Artem Korolev, director of the Reliable Change Foundation. — We have been focusing on personnel training since school, so we felt it our duty to attract a large young audience of our projects to participate in the EVRAZ Career Academy. Within its framework, high school students will take preparation courses for the Unified State Exam in physics and mathematics, career guidance seminars and tests, field trips to production and case-solving competitions. All this will strengthen their character and contribute to the development of important professional skills that key employers value today. In addition, thanks to high-quality preparation for the Unified State Exam, students will receive additional opportunities for admission to engineering specialties, and after successful graduation, graduates of the Academy will be able to find jobs at EVRAZ enterprises in different regions of Russia.

The company is also an annual partner of the International Engineering CASE-IN Championship, which has been held since 2019 with the support of the presidential platform "Russia — the Land of Opportunities". EVRAZ traditionally evaluates the solutions of the cases of the participants of the Student League — future specialists in the field of metallurgy, and offers the winners and prize-winners to complete an internship at the Group's enterprises with the possibility of further employment.

According to the survey data on students' expectations from industry companies, which is conducted annually by the organizers of the CASE-IN, EVRAZ has a high popularity among the participants of the championship. Over the past few years, the company has consistently been among the top 10 employers where engineering competition participants would like to complete an internship or internship.

The Organizing Committee of the International Engineering CASE-IN Championship helped to gather participants for the free online educational program EVRAZ Career Academy. The program operates within the framework of the Academy of the International Engineering Championship "CASE–IN", which is supported by the presidential platform of the Autonomous Non—Governmental Organization "Russia - the land of Opportunities".

A source