Georgian Polytechnical Institute

(full name, V. I. Lenin Georgian Polytechnical Institute), founded in 1928 from the polytechnical department of the University of Tbilisi, which was organized in 1922. After a number of reforms in the 1930’s, the institute functioned as the S. M. Kirov Georgian Industrial Institute (beginning in 1947, the S. M. Kirov Georgian Polytechnical Institute). In 1959 it was united with the Tbilisi Institute for Railroad Transportation Engineers, and since then it has been called the V. I. Lenin Georgian Polytechnical Institute.

The institute trains engineers in specialties for the various sectors of the national economy. As of 1971 the institute included 14 departments in the day program—construction, power engineering, mining, chemical and food technology, mechanical and machine construction, metallurgy, light industry, automation and computer technology, transportation, physical engineering, geology, architecture, hydraulic engineering and sanitation technology, and communications and electronics; seven departments in the evening division (Tbilisi, Rustavi, Poti, Gori, Batumi, Chiatura, and Tkibuli); five departments in the correspondence division, with four in Tbilisi and three in Sukhumi; the Kutaisi Department, which has day, evening, and correspondence divisions; a preparatory division; study centers in Tkvarcheli, Zugdidi, and Telavi; a graduate school; 93 subdepartments, 190 training laboratories, and eight scientific research and problem laboratories; three museums (mineralogy, geology and paleontology, and history of the institute); and a library of more than 1.2 million volumes. Instruction is conducted in Georgian and Russian.

In the 1970–71 academic year, the institute had more than 26,000 students and 1,400 instructors, including 103 professors and doctors of science and 460 assistant professors and candidates of science.

The institute is authorized to accept for defense dissertations for the degrees of doctor of science and candidate of science. It has trained nearly 43,000 specialists. It publishes Transactions (from 1934 to 1943, Proceedings) and literature in the methodology of instruction. In 1947 the institute was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.