Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Muenchen
Fakultat fuer Physik - Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Julius
Wess, Theresienstrasse 37- 80333 Muenchen


To whom it may concern

Class for students with special abilities in Natural Sciences
in Nis, Serbien and Montenegro
With this letter I would like to express my support for the project of
the university of Nis and the grammar school "9th of May" to
found a class for for students with special abilities in Natural
Sciences. In the countries of former Yugoslavia, classes for students
with special abiliies have a long and successful tradition. Especially
in mathematical special classes, this concept has been very successful
for a long time to bring gifted pupils close to a corresponding
university study. However, this concept has deteriorated in its
qualitative execution similar to the teaching at general schools.
Today three fundamental problems characterize the teaching at schools
in Serbia and Montenegro (similarly in other Balkan countries):
-Obsolete equipment (lack of demonstration and exercise laboratories,
lack of PCs) -Obsolete education concepts (ex-cathedra teaching, lack
of problem-solving competence) -Minimal motivation of the teachers
(unsufficient payroll, parallel jobs) The result of this situation is
a very sm all number of students in the natural sciences and
engineering sciences at the university. The improvement of the
education system country-wide, especially in material intensive
subjects such as natural sciences, is unforeseeable today.

Therefore colleagues from the department for Physics of the university
of Nis have drafted a project to establish a model class for students
with special abilities (22 students per year). The goal of this
project is to offer a high-qualitiy education to give them a
perspective for continuing with qualitiative education and to convey
initiative and enthusiasm.

This goal is to be reached by the following measures:
-Focus on the natural science subjects (cf. the attached syllabus),
concentrating mainly on physics -Provision of fundamental laboratory
equipment and PCs (virtual experiments and Internet access) -Close
collaboration iwth the university (Host teaching by docents and
project guests, mentors from the university) -Continuous measurement
of education success against reference classes -Close collaboration
with similar projects in EU and Eastern Europe -More intensive
language teaching in English ^M^MThe decisive hurdles for establishing
such a model class
 have been taken, especially the approval by the Serbian minister for
education. Financial support has been indicated in a
 concrete way by means of the World Bank, local authorities in Nis and
private sponsors from Serbia. An application for financing the
reforming the syllabi and the teaching aids (new books) is drafted to
be handed in at UNESCO (ROSTE).

During recent years I have collaborated successfully in several
project with colleagues from the university of Nis (e.g. two
summerschools in mathematical physics). Persistently, I have made very
good experiences concerning their motivation and professionalsm.

Therefore I am confident that this new initiative will
show ist expected success and will support it according to my
possibilitis. I would like to ask you to examine the attached material
and to support this project accordingly, either in a direct way or by
brokering useful contacts.

Prof. Dr. Julius Wess