Service-Learning as a Tool of Social Mission: Results of the II All-Russian Conference
The Second All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference "Service Learning: Managing Social Projects in the Educational Environment for the Implementation of Socially Significant Tasks in the Region" was held at I.S. Turgenev Oryol State University. The event was organized with the participation of the HSE University in St. Petersburg. Magdalena Gaete and Varvara Kulkova served on the conference organizing committee.
Olga Petrova, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, participated in the plenary session, emphasizing the program's importance for institutionalizing the social mission of universities and scaling it up across the education system.
Varvara Kulkova, chief expert at the Project-Based Learning Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education at HSE St. Petersburg, delivered a plenary presentation entitled "Service-Learning: A Tool for the Third, or Social, Mission of a University." In her presentation, she presented "Service-Learning" as a mechanism for intersectoral social partnership between NGOs, universities, and the state, and as an element of regional policy. Using examples from the Republic of Tatarstan from 2021 to 2025, she demonstrated management tools for implementing the model: consulting and training formats, strategic sessions, social fairs, conferences, and workshops as forms of public recognition of university teams' contributions to regional development.
Varvara Kulkova: "Faculty members, with varying degrees of immersion, are integrated into social project management and service-learning, but are far from being genuinely engaged in the social and third mission of the university. Within the framework of the scientifically grounded approach of the human-centered university, developed by Magdalena Gaete, head of the Project-based Learning Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education at HSE University in St. Petersburg, recommendations are proposed for integrating faculty-actors into social mission through the practice of "service-learning."
The section "Service-Learning as a Tool for Universities' Social Mission: Approaches and Practices" was held at the Project-based Learning Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education at HSE University in St. Petersburg. In her paper "The Human-Centered University," Magdalena Gaete, head of the Project-based Learning Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education at HSE University in St. Petersburg, presented the concept of a university focused on developing student agency and integrating socially oriented projects into educational programs.
The conference also included sections on "Service Learning: An Educational and Pedagogical Approach" and "Youth Project Activities in the Implementation of Socially-Oriented Regional Tasks," where mechanisms for university interaction with social partners and tools for assessing social impact were discussed. Following the conference, a collection of materials indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) is planned for publication.
