History rarely follows a single plan – it's composed of a wide variety of events, sometimes completely unrelated. This April week in the annals of BNTU was just such a remarkable one.
April 7
This day commemorates one of the students of the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute who gave his life for their country. In the final weeks of the Great Patriotic War, on April 7, 1945, Alexander Kokhanovsky, a student of the Mechanical Engineering Department, was mortally wounded during the liberation of Austria. He is buried in Vienna.
His fate is one of many on the long list of Polytechnic students who never returned from the war. More than 700 BPI faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates stood up to defend the Fatherland. More than 250 of them were awarded orders and medals. The heroism of those who perished is immortalized in a memorial stele erected in the BPI square in 1967, designed by students of the architecture faculty.
April 9
In April 2021, an agreement was signed between the Belarusian National Technical University and AMKODOR, the holding's management company, to open a branch of the Department of Economics and Management of Innovative Projects in Industry of the Faculty of Marketing, Management, and Entrepreneurship. BNTU was represented at the ceremony by Rector Sergei Kharitonchik, Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, Mechanics, and Mechanics, Alexei Danilchenko, and Head of the Department of Economics and Management of Innovative Projects in Industry, Natalia Ponomareva. AMKODOR was represented by CEO Alexander Efimov, Deputy CEO for HR and Corporate Culture Irina Vezitskaya, Deputy Head of HR Anastasia Solodkaya, and Head of HR Svetlana Chaikovskaya.
The opening of the branch has elevated the university-company collaboration to a new level: some courses are now taught directly at the holding's facilities, and students now have the opportunity to complete coursework and graduation projects focused on real-world production challenges. Sergey Kharitonchik emphasized that working with industry-specific companies is an important part of a modern university's activities, opening up new opportunities for students' professional and academic growth. Alexander Efimov, in turn, noted that early student involvement in production processes makes future collaboration more effective.
In addition to practical training, the agreement provided for joint research, the development of educational publications, and the exchange of experience between university and company specialists.
April 12
From March 10 to April 12, 2022, the project-based educational intensive course "Big Library Upgrade – 2022" was held online, organized by IPR MEDIA in partnership with Tomsk State University. Over 100 participants from 23 universities in Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and the Donetsk People's Republic participated. Over five weeks, participants covered 19 topics, completed nine group workshops, and heard from 25 speakers—a total of 72 academic hours.
On April 11, the BNTU Scientific Library team presented their project, "BNTU CRIS System: A Software and Analytical Complex for Collecting and Analyzing Data on Scientific Publications." The results were announced on April 12: BNTU's project took first place, ahead of teams from Moscow State Pedagogical University and T. F. Gorbachev Kuzbass State Technical University. Winning the competition served not only as recognition of their work but also as an incentive to implement the developed system at the university.
The history of the university is not only made up of celebratory dates and high-profile achievements—it lives on in the lives of individuals, in work contracts, and in team victories. All these moments, so different at first glance, ultimately fit into one common chronicle of the Polytechnic.
