Recently, VyatSU, the largest university in the Kirov region, completed a project of studying trends in the development of volunteer activities in the region, implemented by a team of the Department of Social Work and Youth Policy under the leadership of Professor Yekaterina Mityagina.
She talked about a new trend that has been gaining popularity lately.
- It is symbolic that in the Year of Science and Technology, we started talking about such a direction as scientific volunteering. In contrast to understanding it as the activity of non-professionals who want to help science, we have filled it with new meaning. Scientific volunteers, demanded by many research teams, are an elite: they are required to have specific competencies related to professional knowledge and skills, - explained Ekaterina Vladimirovna.
A striking example of such volunteering was the participation of students from VyatSU and other Russian universities in the work on a large-scale project "Monitoring the Higher Education System", implemented by the University Consortium of Big Data Researchers, as content analysts.
- Such specialists are of great value, while they are few. Through the university SSS, we found those who wanted to try themselves in a new capacity, after which the scientific volunteers underwent training at the site of Tomsk State University. Today they are full participants in the project, performing work that requires special knowledge, - commented Ekaterina Mityagina.
The scientific volunteer community today needs a wide range of specialists: mathematicians, physicists, chemists, programmers, psychologists, translators, sociologists. You can join research teams both with significant professional experience and as a student - there are many options! In any case, this activity is fruitful, it opens up new prospects for each specialist individually and for Russian science as a whole.
There is no doubt that the emerging trend will add to the list of habitual areas of volunteering, making this activity even more ambitious and significant.
