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PROJECT PARTNER A project of this scope demands a variety of partners that can work towards the main goal of strengthening the collaboration between Technical Universities in Russia and international companies. In detail, this implies: - Technical Universites in Eastern Russian regions with a strong motivation to modify current subject-specific curricula and integrate subject-specific language courses at various levels, - Several international companies in those regions that have a strong interest in a multilingual workforce and are able to provide a variety of internships for students in that region, - University-level language centres in English- and German-language contexts that can provide language training and teacher training workshops both in Russia and Europe, as well as subject-specific courses in English and German that are relevant to the Russian partner universities, In the first group, we have three Technical Universities in Russia: Irkutsk, Omsk, and Tyumen. All three universities have a strong orientation towards disciplines that are highly relevant for the regional industry. Due to the long co-operation between Tyumen and Hanover (mentioned in III.1a) Tyumen State Oil and Gas University takes on a co-ordinating function. At present about 40000 students study 72 courses in 66 departments. The University supports contractually agreed cooperation both with foreign higher educational institutions and advanced transcontinental companies of oil and gas sector such as BP. In some subjects such as "Development and operation of oil and gas fields"; "Automatization and management"; and "Informatics and computers" Tyumen has recently introduced more comprehensive language support of five hours per week, for the whole duration of the courses (five years). In order to improve international co-operation, Tyumen has also decided to introduce subject seminars in English for "Petroleum Engineering" and "Transport Systems". At the Technical University of Irkutsk there are at present 13 departments which specialize in engineering, economics and humanities. The Technical University of Irkutsk enjoys a high reputation for its excellent teaching staff, which now number 1150. In Omsk, the adaption to the Bologna process is under way.A system of quality-assurance is developing and a credit system will be implemented as an experiment under the Order of the Ministry of commercial language teaching operations in Russia. It is adequately experienced in target group identification, curricula planning and financial management. All three Russian project partners agreed to pre-conditions for the project, including the extension of subject-specific language courses in English or German; the extension of subject-specific courses in English or German in various subjects; and the organisation of extensive internship programmes with regional companies. TNK-BP is Russia's third largest oil company and operates in nearly all of Russia's major hydrocarbon regions, including West Siberia; Volga-Urals; and East Siberia. The corporate language in most fields is English. At Siberian universities TNK-BP is running several departments, including teaching centres, which will participate in the project by consulting, co-teaching, providing internships and participating in workshops for evaluation and planning. The Irkutsk branch of TNK-BP is our project partner. FESTO is one of the world leaders in automatization equipment for industrial plants. As an international company with more than 11000 employees, it has a great interest in foreign language skills development and will support Irkutsk University in the development of language and subject-specific courses and by providing internships for the most qualified students. KCA DEUTAG is a leading provider of drilling, well intervention and engineering services. It has its operational centre for Russia in Tyumen. The corporate language in general is English. KCA will participate in the project by supporting the English provided courses in the faculty "Oil and Gas Engineering " and by co- teaching, providing internships and participating in workshops for evaluation and planning. The GehtSoft Group is a Russian outsourcing software development company. All documentation and communication by the company are performed in English. GehtSoft provides the project with its experience in international communication in the field of IT and software development. The third group of partners comprises the Centre for Languages for Specific Purposes at the Leibniz Universit?t Hannover, lead by Dr Schwienhorst, and the Centre for English Language Teacher Education (CELTE) at the University of Warwick, England, lead by P. Jewel. Project leader Dr Schwienhorst spent eleven years abroad, teaching and organising foreign language programmes at Trinity College Dublin. As the Leibniz Universit?t Hannover has a strong interest in engineering and electronics, this is also a strong focus in the Centre's languages for specific purposes courses. P. Jewel is the Assistant Director of CELTE at the University of Warwick and the Head of its Short Course Unit. He has wide ranging experience of teaching and administration in a variety of tertiary institutions in the UK. Poznan University of Technology (PUT) provides an additional partner with expertise and experienced staff in the teaching of foreign languages. It represents an institution deeply involved in the Bologna process and highly instrumental in the dissemination of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. It can provide valuable insights and experiences into the teaching of languages for specific purposes in a foreign-language environment, as opposed to the second-language environment of Warwick (English) and Hanover (German). The Centre for East-West-Cooperation (ZOWK) was established in 1997 by the district government, the chamber of trade, the city of Lueneburg, and the two universities of Lueneburg. The centre is a registered non-profit organisation. Since its inception, it has been a service provider for eastern European programmes and people. Its main expertise lies in the organisation of projects: detailed administration and financing of travel arrangements; conference schedules; visa arrangements; and individual communication with participants. Mr Gross as one of the ZOWK staff members has supported a number of international projects, first for the University of Lueneburg, then for the Leibniz Universitaet Hannover. Three of these have been TEMPUS projects with Tyumen (CD-JEP-22066-2001, M-JEP-22096-2001, JEP-23148 - 20002). External experts: Prof. Dr. Peter Colliander, Head of German Department at the University for Economics in Copenhagen (DK), Chairman of the Danish Association for Germanistics. He is an expert of Foreign Laguage didactics and will join the project as external Expert. Prof. Dr. Bernd Rueschoff, Head of the didactics section of the Englisch Department at the University of Essen, Germany, and President of the German Association for Applied Linguistics. He has been involved in a variety of EU Lingua, Socrates, and Tempus projects. Both will be participating in the semi annual workshops, will have open access to all activities and documents of the project and will deliver an annual evaluation report. 
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