Each year Komsomolskaya Pravda grants awards to artists, athletes, scientists, businessmen and other subjects of the most resounding news stories. This year, Andrey Stankevich, coach of ITMO University’s programming team, was given the award for “helping achieve worldwide recognition for ITMO University and for bringing up the world’s champions in programming”.
Mr. Stankevich couldn’t attend the award ceremony himself, as he is currently busy training the students of the IT Summer School, but was represented by his colleagues: Vladimir Parfenov, dean of Information Technologies and Programming Faculty and Anatoly Shalyto, head of Programming Technology Department. At the ceremony, Prof. Parfenov told the audience about the Kotlin programming language developed by the St. Petersburg company JetBrains led by ITMO University alum Andrey Breslav. As he explained, in a year or two the St.Petersburg-made Kotlin will become the primary language for development of all mobile applications for Android.
“In 2013 ITMO University hosted the final stage of world championship in programming – a massive and complex event. The university’s team had won and their coach Andrey Stankevich was already gone the next day to work at the youth summer school in IT. The total attention that Andrey provides to his students is common in many well-known coaches; for instance, Irina Viner, whose students gather acclaim in rhythmic gymnastics or Tatyana Prokrovskaya whose protégés show top results in synchronized swimming. The success of students always depends on the dedication of their mentor” – said Anatoly Shalyto.
Vladimir Parfenov and Anatoly Shalyto. Credit: Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Another challenge that Mr. Stankevich has to face is one that is unfamiliar to coaches in many other trades – according to the rules of ACM ICPC, none of the athletes can be world champions more than twice. Thus, ITMO University’s coach has to “raise” new champions each time, which makes his achievement that much more unique.
It is of note that it was Andrey Stankevich who championed the initiative of introducing the subjects “Programming” and “Computer Science” into the core educational program of the Sirius camp for gifted children in Sochi. He voiced his opinion on the importance of introducing such subjects into the educational process during the last year’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This prompted a change in the program and the subjects are already present in this year’s curriculum. Mr. Stankevich and his students went there to teach classes to the winners and runner-ups of the National Olympiad in Computer Science and Programming.
To find out more about why Andrey Stankevich is so loved and respected in the world of IT, click here.
We remind you that Mr. Stankevich has been a subject of Komsomolskaya Pravda’s stories several times. The newspaper has covered all of the university team’s wins at ACM ICPC and the successes of the school students’ teams at the World Olympiad in Computer Science.
