DDOR signed cooperation agreements with three prominent faculties of the University of Novi Sad
Today’s generations of students are living in an environment and circumstances that change from day to day. The knowledge they acquire at their faculties provides them with an excellent foundation for the challenges that await them in a real business environment. Also, companies, such as DDOR, which follow the development of society and technology, but also bring fresh business practices from developed markets and from significant European financial groups, such as the Unipol Group, need young experts who will be ready to further develop and acquire quality experience. This is precisely the reason why cooperation agreements were signed today between DDOR insurance and three eminent faculties of the University of Novi Sad – Faculty of Economics from Subotica, the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Technical Sciences from Novi Sad.
This will create the basis for partnerships that primarily provide students with the opportunity for a comprehensive educational cycle, but also opens the possibility for the realization of various joint scientific and practical projects.
Expressing his great satisfaction that the company has taken the next step in creating a better environment for cooperation between science and business, the president of the Executive Board of DDOR osiguranje, Francesco Masci, said:
“It is a great honor for me to represent DDOR, one of the leading insurance companies in the market and our Group, Unipol, as we are strengthening further the cooperation between DDOR, and such remarkable and well-respected scientific and educational institutions, and namely the Faculty of Economics from Subotica, the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Technical Sciences from Novi Sad. We share the same values by supporting and encouraging life-long learning and development. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world and it is the very thing no one can take away from you, like your passion and your heart. Education lays the groundwork to teach us the courage to think out of the box as we must always have to ambition to change our ideas, our attitude, our point of view and to improve, because when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too. And anything you can do well, you can certainly do it even better,” and added: “Today I’m particularly proud because, together with such important scientific and educational institutions, we mark the beginning of, I’m fully convinced, a new journey for the preparation of future generations of experts in our industry, for the benefit of the whole country and of the entire community, keeping in mind the final goal to remove all the obstacles to the economic and social convergence.”
The attendees were addressed first by prof. PhD Nebojša Gvozdenović, Dean of the Faculty of Economics in Subotica and said:
“It is a great pleasure to be here today. Our cooperation is certainly long-standing and is reflected in the fact that a large number of alumni from the Faculty of Economics in Subotica work at DDOR. I would like to point out a few things. First, our faculty directs students and graduates to DDOR, from regular studies and study programs where we directly study insurance, financial and actuarial mathematics, which I personally studied mathematical models of personal insurance. At one time, together with the National Bank of Serbia, we organized courses where we prepared future actuaries for exams. From this we can conclude that the Faculty of Economics certainly refers to insurance business and opens up perspectives on the business that an insurance company deals with. Apart from that, our cooperation is additionally encouraged by accredited programs, for which already this year at the Master’s studies, we had a mandatory student internship and thus obliged all students to spend two weeks in the companies and earn points for it. In the same way, undergraduate students for whom internships will be mandatory will arrive in two years, and we will need to find as many as 500 internships, and I sincerely hope that DDOR will be interested in them.”
The Dean of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics in Novi Sad, prof. Dr. Milica Pavkov Hrvojević in the following words:
“I am very glad that today I am representing our house, the Faculty of Science and Mathematics of the University of Novi Sad, and that I am attending this solemn signing of the cooperation agreement. I would highlight the way in which this act came about, because usually two institutions first try to find common goals and interests for which they would cooperate, however, the signing of the agreement came as a result of already existing cooperation, at the initiative of Mr. Dejan Botić and Mr. Filip Grujić from DDOR whom I met at the presentation of internships and professional training at our faculty and who showed initiative for further and more intensive cooperation with our house. Of course, the Faculty of Science, as a multidisciplinary faculty with its five departments, nurtures various basic sciences. First of all, there is the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, which primarily covers the basic target group of an insurance company like DDOR. I was particularly interested in the alumni base, which showed that the largest number of employees in DDOR come from that department and student programs such as a graduate in mathematics and a graduate in computer science, as well as from the master’s degree in Data science, applied mathematics, and what is it was particularly interesting for me that there were also a graduate biologist and a graduate geographer and geoinformatics student, a graduate tourism professional and a graduate environmental protection analyst, which testifies to something that I am very proud of as someone who heads the Faculty of Science and Mathematics, which is that we, above all, teach our students to think, especially at a time when old professions are disappearing and speed is needed in adapting to new conditions of life and work. This contract should also provide additional opportunities for professional practice for students of the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, assistance in the preparation of seminar, master’s papers, graduate and final theses and, of course, opportunities for lectures by experts from DDOR with us and vice versa. I hope that this is the beginning of even deeper, greater and wider cooperation and that we will discover new opportunities for cooperation through joint work and partnership.”
With gratitude for this initiative of DDOR insurance, prof. dr Srđan Kolaković, dean of the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad said:
“It is a great honor for me that today I am in this prestigious company with which the Faculty of Technical Sciences has a ten-year cooperation that has accelerated and expanded over the last few years. We are fully confident that we are preparing students for you because we have modules on “Risk and Insurance Management” in the Engineering Management degree program, and we also have an entire “Disaster and Fire Risk Management” degree program, however I believe that all of our 16,000 students can be your employees and who will help you prosper. Civil engineers, architects, machine engineers, can immediately get involved in damage assessments, for example. It is normal that this agreement will further enhance cooperation, and it is our desire to have even more successful joint projects through student internships that are extremely important for our engineers, as well as through the transfer of knowledge from the Faculty of Technical Sciences to DDOR, as well as DDOR experts to students of the Faculty of Technical Sciences. It is our desire to cooperate even more and to jointly develop the profession and your company, and therefore the Faculty of Technical Sciences. I am sure that we will succeed in that.”
DDOR osiguranje, as a socially responsible company, in its strategy of cooperation with scientific and educational institutions is connected with both high school and university level education institutions. As one of the founders, the company, on the initiative of the highest level scientific and educational institution of Novi Sad – the University of Novi Sad, participated in the formation of the Fund for scholarships and encouraging the advancement of gifted students and young scientists and artists, which has been successfully supporting students for thirty years. Also, since last year, the company has initiated cooperation with secondary schools throughout Serbia and through direct additional classes brings interested students closer to topics from both insurance and the operations of large companies and international financial groups.