Dear colleagues!

I congratulate you on your professional holiday – Higher School Professor's Day! Recently established, this holiday underlines the importance of our profession, its relevance in society, its significance for modern Russia. The date – November 19 – was not chosen by chance: this is Mikhail Lomonosov’s birthday, the first Russian academician, the founder of Moscow University, a great scientist, philologist and poet, thinker and educator. Pushkin wrote, ‘He created the first university. It would be better to say that he himself was our first university’.

We are working in one of the oldest and best Russian universities. Realising our profession not only as the need to transfer knowledge and form competencies but also as the most important mission to educate and train those for whom the future of the country and the world depends on, we ourselves are eternal students. Our working day never ends: lectures, seminars, workshops, colloquia, then a research laboratory, a desk, a computer, books, formulas, programmes...

And every day, year by year, we prepare anew for lectures, meeting new students, a professional conversation with young people, communication with colleagues.

I would like to wish you, our dear teachers, health, strength, overcoming difficulties, good luck, and prosperity. May High School Prfoessor’s Day last for many years!

Rector of Saratov State University

Aleksei Chumachenko