Buffalo State University Vice-President Receives the Title of Honorary Memeber of RTU

12th of June, 2012

The Riga Technical University Senate has elected the Buffalo State University vice-president Voldemārs A. Innus (USA) for Honorary Member of RTU in acknowledgement of his significant contribution to RTU and his support of the development of Latvian higher education.

The ceremonial awarding of the RTU Honorary Member Diploma took placeon 2 June during the ceremonial RTU Senate meeting and the RTU Riga Business School (RBS) graduation ceremony. The RTU Honorary Member Diploma, which serves as an acknowledgement of significant personal contribution to the development of Latvian education, was awarded by theRTU rector academician Leonīds Ribickis. Voldemārds A. Innus has made an invaluable contribution to the founding and development of RBS. Already during his first visit to Latvia he went to discuss the creation of an internationally recognized study programme with several higher educational establishments, and succeeded – such a programme was introduced within a year. Parallel to working in the high position of vice-president for finance at the Buffalo State University he is still taking part in international projects, lecturing and officiating as chairman of the RBS Councillor convention in Latvia. Apart from being active in the field of education V.A. Innus is also a Baltic-independence activist at the New York State government and is creating a Latvian community in the western part of the New York State. In his speech at the ceremonial awarding Voldemārs A. Innus said: «Many thought that in 1990 I should have had started with short businesscourses and working out a bachelor degree programme in Latvia. I, however, chose the opposite strategy - I decided to create a high-quality business administration master degree program as soon as possible. It must be noted that I was doing this path at a time, when a master-level professional business programme was not recognized in Latvia. But why did we do it then? Because we believed that an MBA programme in English is the best contribution that we could have given Latvia at that time; by offering the state top business professionals capable of working efficiently on the international level and for the benefit of Latvian enterprises.» Riga Business School is the first Western-style business high school in the Baltics, which was founded owing to the persistence, selfless work and vision of Voldemārs Innus on the significance of international-level education in the development of Latvia. During 21 year since its foundation RBS has successfully grown together with strong international collaboration partners - the State University of New York at Buffalo in the USA and the Ottawa University in Canada. «We are very satisfied and grateful to Mr. Innus for the fact that since 1991 almost 1000 entrepreneurs have graduated from RBS and have gone on to take high-ranking positions in Latvia and such companies as Statoil, Latvenergo, AirBaltic, Lattelecom, Valmieras Piens, DnB Bank, Swedbank, SEB, Siemens, MTG Group, etc.» said RBS Director Jānis Grēviņšin his speech. At present there are 14 eminent people in the RTU Honorary Members list, among these are Nobel Prize laureates Wilhelm Ostwald and Svante Arrhenius, chemist Jānis Stradiņš and other representatives of Latvian and international science and entrepreneurship. RTU Riga Business School