A patriarch of journalistic science at KFU was honored today.

Rector Ilshat Gafurov, other executives, and many former students and present colleagues showed up at the Higher School of Journalism to congratulate Dr. Root and partake in a special conference “Polemic traditions of Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev in a contemporary critical media discourse”.

Andrey Root graduated from Kazan State Pedagogical Institute in 1958. After working at a secondary school for five years, he moved to teach at Kazan State University in 1963 and held various positions here until his retirement in 2011. He presented a PhD dissertation in 1973 and a DSci dissertation in 1995. His main research interests are media of Russian emigrant community, history of Russian journalism, and mutual influence of media and literature.

Professor Root is one of the patriarchs of journalistic education in Kazan and the Volga region. He was a long-time vice-chairman of a dissertation council on Russian literature and journalism. He created a specialist journal at the then Faculty of Journalism and Sociology and was on the editorial board of Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta (Scholarly Notes of Kazan University). He was also among the champions of opening PhD and DSci programs in journalism at KFU.

After congratulating the hero of the day and handing over a money gift, Rector Gafurov noted, “This tradition started when we celebrated Professor Zheleznov's 90th anniversary. At that time, I said that we have an idea about honorary professors. After they have reached a certain age, we now give them a cash prize in the sum of the number of years they have lived. For 90 years – 90 thousand rubles. And Dr. Zheleznov then quipped – why is this not a round number? 100 thousand would be better. I told him – that's for you to have a motivation to live to 100 years. So I wish you the same, dear Andrey Aleksandrovich.”

Dr. Root is now retired, but that doesn't deter him from keeping track of and being involved in the work of the Higher School of Journalism and Media Communications. He is an active teaching methodology consultant and peer reviewer.