HN: Ostrava's technical university launches talent search

Prague, Aug 20 (CTK) - The Technical University (VSB) in the Czech industrial town of Ostrava, north Moravia, has launched a project aimed at finding talents for technical branches among pupils and students, the daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes yesterday.

Within the project, the VSB has organised summer camps where children from primary and secondary schools learn physics, chemistry and biology, HN says.

The camps are part of extensive recruitment projects of the VSB that suffers from the lack of talented and motivated students who complete the studies and start working in the field, HN writes.

It adds that up to 30 percent of students abandon the university in the first two years.

The VSB has received 120 million crowns from the EU funds for its recruitment campaign.

The project offers seminars, scientific workshops and lectures at primary and secondary schools as well as universities in the following three years, along with visits to laboratories where children can get acquainted with researchers' work, HN writes.

"We are trying to introduce an entertaining face of science to children," VSN Rector Ivo Vondrak said.

Moreover, two recruitment centres are being established in the Ostrava area, HN notes.

A unique educational facility is being built in the former industrial factories in the middle of brownfields in Ostrava-Vitkovice.

The heads of big industrial companies in the region personally support recruitment camps. One of them is Jan Svetlik, head of the Vitkovice Machinery Group.

A modern science-learning centre is to be opened in the middle of this industrial area in 2015, HN writes.

"We want to provoke interest in science in young people who have predispositions to it. We focus on young people of all age groups, from primary and secondary schools in big as well as small towns," Klara Janouskova, coordinator of the projects from the VSB, told HN.

"This concept has proved successful in the Netherlands, for instance," she added.

HN writes that similar projects to bring more talented children to technical branches are underway not only in Ostrava, but all over the Czech Republic.

The Czech Technical University in Prague (CVUT) and the Technical University in Brno (VUT) have similar problems. They have a sufficient number of applicants, much more then in the past, but a high number of them are not able to complete the demanding studies.

Industrial companies in the Czech Republic are therefore still short of experts, HN notes.

The paper writes that some technical universities are even trying to look for talented kids in kindergartens.

"In connection with the firms of our previous graduates, we have been running the project of a technical kindergarten in Brno for two years," VUT Rector Karel Ries told HN.

($1=20.280 crowns)