Two KFU students to join Ministry of Science and Higher Education’s Student Council

The consulting body was founded in 2024.

There were two stages of qualification for council candidates: the first including a CV with a list of personal achievements and a video presentation, and the second – an interview with ministry officials. One of the main selection criteria was experience of participation in student self-governance.

“My main motivation was to represent KFU and other provincial students and become a voice of the student community of Tatarstan on a federal level,” comments one of the winners of the selection process, chairwoman of the cultural committee of the Student Council of the Institute of Social and Philosophical Sciences and Mass Communications Albina Zinatullina.

She has amassed a significant portfolio of activism in student self-governance, cultural events, volunteering, and student union organizing. In the Ministry’s new body, she plans to join several workgroups, including one set to work out methodological recommendations for class presidents at Russian universities.

Another winner, chairwoman of the social commission of the Student Union of KFU Diana Durnovtseva, explains, “I always wanted for student voices to tangibly influence the changes at universities. Often decisions are made for us, but without us. In this new Student Council I see an opportunity to relay students’ concerns at a federal level and to partake in creating more effective and just mechanisms in education.”

Diana wants to contribute to the digitization of education and the issues of the quality of life in student dormitories.