News

Good teaching is of great importance at the University of Tartu. As proof of this, the University of Tartu will compose a document on the best practice in teaching, being the first Estonian university to do so.

On January 16, the University of Tartu Natural History Museum unveils its new permanent exhibition 'Earth. Life. Story' that weaves together geology, zoology, botany and mycology. On the first two days, January 16 and 17, the doors of the Museum are open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The renovation costs amounted to more than two million euros, most of which was provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) via the Environmental Investment Centre (EIC).

In January, the semi-finals for the robotics contest FIRST LEGO League, which this season brings together more than 290 000 children from all over the world, will take place in Tartu, Tallinn and Jõhvi. The topic of the contest is Trash Trek and so, from Estonia 74 teams of more than 500 students will explore trash related problems and design innovative solutions as teams.

The first Estonian national atlas will be compiled by the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia at the initiative of the University of Tartu Department of Geography. On the one hand, the unique atlas, first of its kind, is a representative work of the country and, on the other hand, it is a reference book where Estonia’s 100 years of development is presented on old and new maps.

As of 29 December, the UT Library website https://utlib.ut.ee/en has a new content and look. According to the project manager of the new website, UT Web Administrator Valmar Evert and Head of UT Library Department of Information Systems Anneli Sepp, there were substantial and technical reasons for the changes: “The structure of the new website is based on the needs of external users for whom finding information has been made as easy and logical as possible.”

The renewal of the National Programme “Values Development in Estonian Society” for the years 2015–2020 was announced at the eighth annual Values Education Conference that took place on the 10th and 11th of December 2015 in Tartu. Since 2009 when the programme began, fifteen books have been published as a part of the Values Development Programme and various methodology resources have been developed; the values game has become the best-known among these resources.

The 9th CEECOM conference ”Media and communication studies: bridging disciplines, bridging countries”, taking place at the University of Tartu Institute of Social Studies on 15–18 June 2016, calls the participants for abstracts until 8 January 2016. The conference will provide a forum to exchange ideas and experience on inter- and transdisciplinary approaches in media and communication studies.

The project Võta kraanist! (or Take it from the Tap), which was initiated this spring with the help of the University of Tartu and the Estonian Environmental Investment Centre, celebrates installing 34 high water taps in the University of Tartu buildings. The last water tap will be officially opened on 18 December at 14:00.

The fifth business and project idea competition for students Kaleidoskoop, led by the University of Tartu Idea Lab, took place on 11 December. 19 teams presented their business and project ideas at the competition which was also the final event of the Idea Lab’s autumn semester.

Now that all partners from five countries—Estonia, France, Austria, Belgium and Czech Republic—have filled their part in building the Mars house, constructed for extreme living conditions, the self-erecting house with a unique design is complete. It is very likely that it will be used in future space related experiments.

Tartu University Centre for Ethics organizes its 8th values-based education conference on the 10th-11th of December in Dorpat Conference Centre, Tartu. This year's conference centers on the development of entrepreneurial mindset in kindergartens, schools, universities and society as whole. The conference sets focus of different key points. Does our society value entrepreneurship? How does our educational system support the development of entrepreneurial student? What kind of entrepreneurial skills does an employer value?

Swedbank will support the University of Tartu Faculty of Economics and Business Administration’s English-taught programme Quantitative Economics. A 1000-euro grant will be awarded each year to the author of the best master’s thesis. The aim is to motivate students to work in a field with good career potentials at institutions that conduct economic analysis and research, including banks.

The European Commission has announced that the University of Tartu’s historic architectural ensemble has been selected as a candidate for the European Heritage Label. The Commission’s final decision on the objects that will receive the label will be announced in February 2016 and the award ceremony will take place in Brussels in April next year.

The 4th symposium of Old Norse Folklorists Network is dedicated to the question of the ontology of supernatural encounters in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, myth and legend, as well as in later Scandinavian folklore. The symposium takes place on 10-12 December in the main building of Tartu University (Ülikooli 18), room 139 and 140.

The University of Tartu and SEB Vega fund divided 20 100 euros between four teams for developing knowledge-intensive ideas. The funding helps to develop, for example, an automatic system for measuring blood pressure in real-time and a security system which makes keys and smart cards a thing of the past.

Opening ceremony of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) student branch takes place on Friday, 4 December from 14-16 at the Institute of Technology (Nooruse 1), room 121.

UT Professor of History and Dialects of Estonian Language Academician Karl Pajusalu was elected a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. This makes him the fifth Estonian foreign member in the 300-member academy.

On 2 December, British journal Times Higher Education published their ranking The Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings, where the University of Tartu placed 31st. This is the third annual ranking of universities of emerging economies compiled by THE. The previous two ranked the 100 best, this year there are 200 universities on the list. UT is in the ranking for the first time this year.

The professional qualifications committee of health care and social work gave the University of Tartu the right to award the professions of physiotherapist and speech therapist and thereby recognised the correspondence of the curricula to the needs of the labour market.

On 1 December at the ceremony of the 96th anniversary of the national university, the University of Tartu award for contribution to Estonian national identity was presented to writer and poet, screenwriter and playwright, translator and publisher, inspired nationalist and keeper of the tribal peoples Arvo Valton.