MEETING WITH DEPUTY ASSISTANT OF THE USA STATE SECRETARY FOR EDUCATIONAL AND SCIENTIFIC ISSUES IN BAKU AMERICAN CENTRE
The meeting was held with Tomas Farelli, the deputy assistant of USA State Secretary for educational and scientific issues on February 07, 2008 in Baku American Centre. The aim Tomas Farelli is visit to Azerbaijan is to widen the relations in education field between Azerbaijan and USA and to discuss this issue with state officers. Mr. Farelli met the State leader I.Aliyev, the Minister of Education M.Mardanov, chief of SCSA M.Abbaszade, the Minister of Economical Development H.Babayev, Ministry of Finance S.Sharifov and the other officials within the visit. Azerbaijan-the USA exchange programs and perspective plans in educational field were discussed during the meetings.
The representatives of Mass Media, the agents of IREX, leader of ACCELS upon Azerbaijan Shane Ostin and the collaborators of the embassy of USA to Azerbaijan participated in the meetings held in Baku American Centre.
Mr. Farelli notified in his speech that he had been in AUL during his first visit to Azerbaijan in 1991 and was glad for being here again. He brought to attention that he had met with the rector of AUL, MP, professor S.Seyidov and the activities of American Centre established jointly by AUL and USA Embassy was gratifying. Mr. Farelli thanked for being met kindly here and brought to attention that the meeting was very fruitful by emphasizing that the visit of the students of AUL to USA and the procedure of student exchange was double grateful.
The guest notified that 2000 student and scientists exchange has been held since 1991 up to present between Azerbaijan and the USA and millions of allocations have been spent on it. The USA president and state secretary pays a great attention to exchange in the education field. The aim of negotiations held with the leaders of Azerbaijan is to make acquaintance with the priorities in education field in Azerbaijan and to assist in their realization. The USA government has the trend to keep the scholarship assigned for Azerbaijani students. The main issue in student exchange which requires attention is to fill the emptiness available in the field of engineering, science, health, information technologies and language teaching and establishment of citizen society and information society. For this purpose it is necessary to develop the information technologies. The second matter is language matter. It is difficult to achieve success without being able to speak the same language and to understand each other.
Moreover, Mr. Farelli answered to the questions asked by the representatives of media.
