Alumni Association

For 215 years of its existence, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University has trained more than 150,000 specialists, and 150 University alumni have become members of various academies of sciences around the world.

Among the University graduates and faculty are a lot of bright personalities, who not only dedicated their lives and careers to science, art and literature, social work or military service, politics or church, but have also influenced the development of certain fields or economic sectors for all generations to come. They are Mykola Kostomarov, Petro Hulak-Artemovskyi, Mykola Lysenko, Mykola Beketov, Henryk Siemiradzki, Mykola Sumtsov, Oleksandr Potebnia, Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi, Oleksii Pohorielov, Mykola Barabashov, and many others. Karazin University is the only Ukraine’s university where three Nobel Prize winners studied and worked: biologist Ilya Mechnikov, economist Semen Kuznets, and physicist Lev Landau. The names of some Karazinites are immortalized in geographical names, names of space objects, plants and minerals, laws and formulae. They all worked in many fields of science and culture, but were all united by Karazin University.

That is how the famous Ukrainian writer Oles Honchar recalled his years of study at Kharkiv University: “When I stepped over the threshold of the University in 1938, I think, there was not a person happier than me in the whole city. My cherished dream came true: breathless with joy, I entered this sunny temple of science, where the spirit of glorious Potebnia and academician Bahalii seemed to be still there; where it felt like Oleksandr Biletskyi was about to mount the pulpit with his Voltairean smile to impress us with his brilliant improvisations. I was not disappointed. The University became my home for three years, gave the happiness of friendship; in its classrooms, in the silence of its libraries we felt the joy of connecting with the treasury of human knowledge, here we experienced the pleasure and delight of creative work.”
In 2007, the Association of Alumni, Faculty and Friends of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University was founded in order to strengthen ties between graduates, students, academic staff of the University, to implement scientific and educational programs, to promote the development of culture, health protection, to help scientists, instructors, talented creative youth, to meet and protect social, economic, creative, and other interests of the University alumni.

This is a public association of alumni and faculty of all years. Volodymyr Semynozhenko, Head of the State Agency for Science, Innovations and Informatization of Ukraine, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Karazin University alumnus, was elected President of the Association.

The Association works mainly in the following areas:

• strengthening partnerships between the Association members (establishing links between the University alumni and its academic staff and students);
• organizing and holding alumni reunions;
  supporting public, scientific projects and student initiatives;
  holding lectures, seminars, trainings, conferences and other scientific events with the participation of the University alumni;
• supporting competitions and grants, international educational programs;
  assisting in internships and employment of graduates, in particular abroad, etc.

It is important and honorable that today new generations of alumni, sometimes working far beyond our country, and even on other continents, demonstrate the quality of their education and depth of knowledge and spread a good reputation of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.