Matriculation to the students is an established tradition for many high schools. At SSAU the ceremony pursues two objectives. On the one hand, this is a special occasion for the new members of the Samara State Aerospace University’s crew. On the other hand, it provides a great chance for the first-year students to get to know with all the riches of student life.

And this year, before the formal event started, freshers learnt that SSAU has its own orchestra, the tourist club “Gorizont” that includes the sections of speleology, mountain climbing, cycling tourism and water touring, as well as a friendly, though a little noisy, team of student pedagogical units’ members.

During the ceremony, which took an hour and a half, the freshers found out that they could join the university’s clubs, sections and associations. First of all, the audience was greatly impressed by the choristers of the SSAU’s academic choir. But, unfortunately, the younger generation is not aware that Gaudeamus is the students’ anthem and people are expected to stand up to listen to it.

The ceremony proceeded with greetings from Rector and M.V.Khardin, the dean of the industrial engineering faculty, who spoke on behalf of the deans of all faculties. Rector handed in the symbolic student card to the first-year students and wished them to stay on the students’ community after the near and next exam sessions.

The first-year students found out about the military-patriotic association “Sokol” that contains five clubs, listened to the students of the vocal studio and enjoyed the show by the members of the dancing studio “Gratsiya”.

The audience was informed about the university sports life that involves twelve sports sections and about the opportunity to make a successful sports career, to get the rank of a master of sports and participate in the world championships. The freshers were captivated by the performance of the hip hop aerobics team “Black President”. This team together with another SSAU’s team “Just Black” (the two-time world champion in hip hop aerobics) is going to the world championship to Serbia.

The presentation made by the representatives of the council of young scientists was also a success. Aleksandra Danilenko and Grigoriy Popov tried to do their best to debunk the image of the scientist as an absent-minded loser. The modern scientist, according to them, is a self-confident young person who makes decent money even being a student (since the scholarship could attain 50 000 roubles), travels around the country and the world, is prepared to start or already runs his own business.

Then volunteers took the floor and talked about their activity. They also advertised the forthcoming action – the SSAU’s Donor Day and encouraged students to take part in this event on 18th October.
Between the presentations the students were entertained by the faculties’ student theaters of variety miniatures and the team of the Club of the cheerful and sharp-witted “ Is not all-Samara team”.



















Photos by Anna Linnik and Sergey Kondraykov