Roundtable of the Council of Rectors of Universities of Moscow and the Moscow Region "Engineering Education and Professional Self-Determination"

The training of young teachers at technical universities needs to be changed by introducing mandatory pedagogical professional development programs. This was stated by Viktor Martynov, Rector of the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas (National Research University) and Academician of the Russian Academy of Education, at the roundtable of the Council of Rectors of Universities of Moscow and the Moscow Region "Engineering Education and Professional Self-Determination" on March 24, 2026.

To ensure the country's technological leadership, it is necessary to cultivate specialists capable of engineering and technical creativity, developing new solutions, and implementing them in practice, noted Viktor Martynov.

"Of course, the most important thing is to involve leading scientists and practitioners in the training, who, through their own example, share the industry's pressing challenges. However, at the current stage of development of engineering and technical education, this is not enough." "It is necessary to increase the requirements for teaching staff training at universities," the rector stated. In Russian education, mandatory advanced teaching training for higher education staff existed.

"We must draw on the effective experience of the previous academic tradition and infuse it with modern content. We need pedagogical professional development programs for young teachers that will help them develop students' engineering and technical creativity skills, and pedagogical modules for students who qualify as teachers," Viktor Martynov emphasized.

Gubkin University, together with Moscow City Pedagogical University, will implement a professional retraining program called "Higher Education Teacher" in 2026. An agreement to this effect was signed during a roundtable discussion.

"The program was developed taking into account the challenges relevant to modern engineering education. This experience can subsequently be replicated at other universities," noted Elena Gevorkyan, rector of Moscow City Pedagogical University and a member of the Russian Academy of Education.

In 2026, Gubkin University also launched a professional development program for young teachers, "Energy, Science, and National Priorities: The Role of Young Teachers and Scientists." Furthermore, it is planned to introduce a pedagogical module for the first two cohorts of students, leading to the qualification of "teacher."

A roundtable discussion, "Engineering Education and Professional Self-Determination," was organized by the Department of Professional Education of the Russian Academy of Education and focused on the quality of education and the transition to a new national higher education system.