ICEF Academia has welcomed its new class
It’s a fact that ICEF BSc students are awarded two degrees when they graduate. There is, however, a third school many of them attend along with HSE and The University of London – ICEF Academia. Offering a programme of advanced courses, research opportunities, discussion venues and academic career guidance, ICEF Academia traditionally hosts welcome meetings and the year 2020 was not an exception. This year’s event was held online and here is how it went.
ICEF Academia is a programme of additional training and research for students who successfully cope with their core coursework and would like to go further by doing courses that are more in-depth and aimed also at enhancing personal development skills. ICEF Academia ultimately seeks to expand the community of its gifted students and link them with some of the leading research teams.
The training process is two-stage. It starts in year one and has two of its parts – academic studies and research – running in parallel in the second year. The academic part of ICEF Academia is called Advanced Training Programme (ATP) and unfolds through sets of advanced courses and electives, the grades in which are included in diploma. These sets offer advanced levels of ICEF’s core courses; cross-cutting courses that deliver both practical skills and research-based knowledge; and courses bringing knowledge in domains other than or related to Economics and Finance.
The research part of ICEF Academia unfolds through the Advanced Research Programme (ARP) and is undertaken mostly by senior students. Delivered by an in-house team of PhD holders, ARP offers seminars and workshops designed to enhance students’ researcher skills, ranging from research-reading to software operation skills that are key for data analytics.
Udara Peiris, ICEF Associate Professor, ICEF Academia Coordination Committee member
Our goal is to create an environment where students can push themselves to learn and discover really what they find interesting and start to look at the world deeply and in an abstract way. We really want students to benefit from this ‘push themselves’ and for this programme to be valuable regardless of what you do. We believe that the skills you will get are going to be very valuable even if you go on to an industry career. We are doing this because we’re really excited to be able to work with exceptionally gifted students and we want this community of ICEF students to know each other. Welcome to this new exciting programme!
Presenting ICEF Academia itself was the programme’s recently appointed supervisor Steven Kivinen. This new academic year 2020/21 will bring students even more opportunities, one being the grant support for best-performing 3-year students who wish to participate in international scientific conferences abroad. The 4-year students will be able to compete for special prizes, while the 3-year ones will have their work as part of Reading groups counted as work experience internship and those intending to enter PhD programmes will continue to be supported. The Reading groups involve, among other things, reading and debriefing of research papers under the guidance of the ICEF academics.
The use of Reading groups as a good learning format was particularly underlined by Emiliano Catonini, ICEF Associate Professor and ICEF Academia Coordination Committee member: “Differently from us, you don’t have to specialize yet, and this is a great opportunity for you because you, in the Reading group that we have in mind, will get a feeling of where the research frontier of Finance or Economics is.” Prof. Catonini also referred to Reading groups as an excellent way for students to meet different types of professors and see with whom they would get along better in terms of interest, and to choose a supervisor. “It’s also a great opportunity for us, professors, to listen to you, students and, from your perspective, present papers that are key to our profession and to learn from that,” added Prof. Catonini.
The other members on ICEF Academia’s team have contributed to the event as well. Associate professors Sergey Stepanov and Dmitry Makarov and Professor Olga Kuzina talked about their research interests and encouraged students by their own example and the opportunities ICEF Academia offers career-wise and in terms of personal growth. They gave details also about classes, further prospects and how ICEF Academia can benefit students who intend to do a PhD.
Sharing their academic experience were also some of ICEF graduates who are now Professors at world’s leading schools – Vladimir Mukharlyamov of Georgetown University (USA) and Svetlana Bryzgalova of London Business School (UK). “Now as a professor of London Business School, I see students from all over the world and I know that ICEF graduates are always among the best,” said Svetlana Bryzgalova.
Vladimir Mukharlyamov, Assistant Professor in Finance department at Georgetown University (USA)
“As long as you get committed to pursuing a certain task with diligence, you can cultivate interests in whatever area you want. As such, I encourage you to think about not what you're passionate about right now, but about what you want to be passionate about in the future.
What is a fulfilling life? I would say, this is the most important question that exists out there. The sooner you start asking yourself this question, the sooner you'll have a shot at getting to a fulfilling life. At this stage of your life, a good rule of thumb toward living well is to acquire as many skills as possible – skills that will be useful for you later in life – and those could be learning econometrics, learning coding, learning structural estimation, becoming a good writer, becoming a good public speaker. I see ICEF Academia as a fantastic platform where you can start learning those skills and continue this education throughout your life. I wish you good luck.”
The event welcomed ICEF Academia’s current class of students. Traditionally, the best of them have been awarded winner’s certificates granting them places on The London School of Economics’ Summer School.