South-West Unversity “Neofit Rilski”, Faculty of Economics
Location: Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
Website: http://www.swu.bg/
Contact person: Ilinka Terziyska
e-mail:lynnterziyska@gmail.com
The South-West University is a state institution that offers training in Bulgarian and English in 71 Bachelor’s, 100 Master’s and 74 specialized PhD programmes.
Located in Blagoevgrad, the economic, cultural and educational centre of South-Western Bulgaria, it is situated only 90 kilometers southwards from Sofia, 20 kilometers from the border with FYROM and 80 kilometers from the Greek border. This strategic location naturally facilitates the academic cooperation with a number of Universities in the Balkan region. It also allows a direct and easy access to numerous attractive destinations among which Bansko, Sandanski, the Medieval Rilsky Monastery, Melnik, the Rila and Pirin National parks, Thessaloniki, Serres, Shtip, Bitola are only a few worth mentioning.
The basic structures of the University:
- The Faculty of Law and History
- The Faculty of Natural Science and Mathematics
- The Faculty of Economics
- Faculty of Public health, health care and sport
- The Faculty of Pedagogy
- The Philological Faculty
- The Faculty of Philosophy
- The Faculty of Arts
- The Faculty of Engineering
employ over 800 lecturers. They provide modern modes of training following the Bulgarian traditions in education and research on the one hand, and meeting the contemporary European standards in the fields of science, arts and sports, on the other.
The South -West University provides training in different scientific fields for about 14 000 students of whom 700 are international students coming from various countries such as Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Serbia, Albania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Japan, Pakistan, Yemen etc. The University provides board and accommodation in three canteens and two renovated dormitories. Its library possesses over 200 000 volumes, an e-reading room with free access to the data bases of EBSCO Publishing, Science Direct, SCOPUS, Benham Sciece and ProQuest Central.
Тhe Faculty of Economics at the South-West University is the Lead Beneficiary of the BatsConserve project and is responsible for the overall management and coordination of project activities. The specific tasks of include collection of data on bats populations in the project area (including field work, identification of threats, elaboration of three guidebooks, and three trainings in Bulgaria. The University is also responsible for the delivery of an interactive webmap (SDI), which will make data on wetlands accessible to all stakeholders.