The department of highways, geodesy, land management and rural buildings is one of the oldest in the university. It was created in 1938 as the department of agricultural buildings and structures, in connection with the branching of the then Department of Architecture into three departments (Order of the All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs dated October 28, 1938 No. 980). For 80 years, the department has been managed by 6 heads: Associate Professor T.Ya. Hardasevych (1938 - 1952), Professor, Doctor of Technical Sciences D.M. Topchiy (1952 – 1980), Associate Professor, Candidate of Technical Sciences V.O. Bondar (1980 – 1984), Professor, Candidate of Technical Sciences V.Y. Khazin (1984 – 2012), Associate Professor, Doctor of Technical Sciences D.A. Yermolenko (2015), Associate Professor, Doctor of Economics H.I. Sharyy (2012 – 2014, 2016 – 2019), Associate Professor, Candidate of Technical Sciences T.P. Lytvynenko (from 2019).
The first head of the department , T.Ya. Hardasevych, a nobleman by birth (according to some data from the count family), was a specialist with vast experience in architectural, construction, scientific and pedagogical work. He received his higher education at the St. Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineers, which he graduated in 1897. Until 1902, he worked as an architect and engineer in the customs district of Moscow, in the management of the Southern Railway (Kyiv, Odesa). From 1902 to 1917 he worked as a provincial architect in Poltava. For 55 years of professional activity, T.Ya. Gardasevich developed numerous projects of civil and industrial buildings, restoration and strengthening of structures. In 1914, the first prize was awarded to his project of a music school, which was built in Poltava in 1916 (later the Palace of Pioneers, now the Palace of Children's and Youth Creativity, 30 Pushkin St.). The three-story building, with a useful area of 3134 m2, has more than 20 classrooms and a magnificent concert hall for 1200 (500) seats with proper sound insulation and acoustics of the premises, and is an architectural monument.
Under the leadership of Professor D.M. Topchiy department (of Agricultural Buildings and Structures Architecture) became recognized not only in Ukraine, but also throughout the Soviet Union as a scientific and scientific-methodical center in the field of agricultural buildings and training of construction engineers for the countryside. All-Union and republican conferences and meetings were held on its base, by order of the Ministry of Higher Education, the department was approved as the base in the republic for the specialty "Agricultural construction", the leading teachers of the department were members of the scientific and methodical commission of the Ministry of Higher Education in republic. Teachers of the department D.M. Topchiy, M.P. Konchukov, V.S. Boychuk, V.O. Bondar, O.B. Koshlatyy, V.Y. Khazin are the authors of standard educational programs approved by the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR for four academic disciplines. In the 60s and 80s of the 20th century scientific and pedagogical workers from almost all regions of the USSR and Poland underwent internships at the department, and leading teachers of the department shared their experience and gave lectures in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, and Poland.
The first foreign students from Hungary studied in our university in the 1960s and 1970s, specializing in agricultural construction.
In 1954, D.M. Topchiy published his fundamental work "Agricultural Buildings and Structures", which was originally a textbook, and the next three editions in 1962, 1973, and 1985 were textbooks for higher education institutions. This monograph textbook has been used for more than half a century to train future engineers in the field of agricultural construction, and is also a useful guide for design engineers, architects and researchers, and is widely known in countries near and far abroad. For more than 15 years, D.M. Topchiy was the only Doctor of Sciences in the field of Agricultural Buildings in the Soviet Union.
In the 1960s and 1990s worked fruitfully at the department teachers B.A. Mylashenko, M.I. Haretsʹ, YU.E. Balamovsʹkyy, T.M. Faleyeva, N.P. Oliynyk, V.O. Bondar, N.M. Butsʹka and others.
For twenty-eight years the department was headed by Candidate of Technical Sciences, Professor, V.Y. Khazin, who came to the department in 1978. A graduate of our university, by that time he had come a long way in life and gained significant industrial experience. He worked as a construction foreman, deputy chief, chief engineer and chief of the construction organization BU-113 of the "Pivdentransbud" trust. From 1976 to 1978, as an experienced specialist in the field of transport construction, he was on a foreign assignment and worked as the chief engineer of the Department of Transport Construction in Syria.
In 1990, the department was merged with the department of engineering geodesy and was called the Department of Rural Buildings and Agro-Industrial Complex Objects Architecture. It received its current name in 2010.
When in the early 1990s, under the leadership of rector Oleksandr Hryhorovych Onyshchenko, the then Poltava Engineering and Construction Institute was being reformed into a multidisciplinary technical university of a modern type, the staff of the department was actively involved in this process.
Thus, the department significantly expanded its profile and began to provide teaching of professional disciplines not only for the specialization "Agricultural construction", but also for the new specialty "Highways and airfields", opened in 1995. The development of the department has gained significant dynamism in recent years with the assistance of the university management and personally the rector Volodymyr Oleksandrovich Onyshchenko. In 2013 students were recruited to study in the direction 6.080101 "Geodesy, cartography and land management" (specialty 193 "Geodesy and land management"). Accordingly, the department's material and technical base and scientific and methodological support continue to be updated and expanded.
The department has trained more than six thousand rural civil engineers, near 500 road engineers and more than 200 land engineers, who earned a good reputation for the native university in various parts of the former Union and Ukraine. A significant part of the former Faculty of Agricultural Construction graduates traditionally continued their studies in graduate school and engaged in scientific and pedagogical work. Many of them became candidates and doctors of technical and even economic sciences. Worked or are working in the positions of vice-chancellors, deans, heads of departments in various universities and research institutions.
At different times famous scientists worked at the department - doctors of science and professors I.H. Krasovsʹkyy, V.S. Boychuk, V.O. Bondar, A.H. Hryhorenko, H.P. Khokhlov, V.Y. Khazin; candidates of sciences and associate professors P.S. Korba, I.Yu. Bohdan, O.B. Koshlatyy. The department has a post-graduate program, and since 2000, master's degrees have been taught.
Recently, scientists of the department have developed project proposals for cooperative livestock buildings and transforming structures for farms, etc.
Recommendations based on the results of research into the technical condition of the buildings and structures of the Poltava Poultry Factory, a number of schools in the Poltava, Kremenchuk, Shyshaky, Myrhorod districts were implemented during their reconstruction. The development "Frame-tent transforming shelter for multifunctional purpose" was exhibited in Kyiv at the national exhibition "Ukrtechnologiya" and was awarded a diploma.
Currently, the department research activity is carried out in the following directions:
- Improvement of rural buildings’ types (head - Doctor of Technical Sciences, Associate Professor Yermolenko D.A.);
- Improvement of highways and street-road network - state register No. 0114 U 000354 (head - Candidate of Technical Sciences, Associate Professor T.P. Lytvynenko);
- Institutional development and improvement of land and cadastral design and research works (head - Doctor of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor G.I. Shariy).
8 monographs, 4 textbooks with the seal of the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR and the Ministry of Education and Culture of Ukraine were published: "Agricultural buildings and constructions" (1954, 1962, 1973, 1985), "Planning and construction of rural settlements" (1972, 1979, 1986), "Agricultural roads and sites" (2000), "Artificial structures on highways" (2004); more than 30 training manuals, among them: "Fundamentals of architectural design of rural buildings and structures" (1989), "Reconstruction of buildings and structures of the agricultural sector" (1994), "Rural residential and public buildings" (1995), "Fundamentals of construction physics of rural structures" (1995), "Workshop on engineering preparation and improvement of the territory for development" (1996), "Buildings and structures of the agro-industrial complex" (1988, 2006), "Architectural landscape and engineering improvement of highways" ( 2010); "Designing objects of the production base for road construction" (2010); "General course of communication routes" (2012); "Temperature effects on the enclosing structures of buildings" (2012); "State Land Cadastre. Part I. Land valuation" (2014); "State Land Cadastre. Part II. Land registration. Quantitative and qualitative land accounting. Application of the land cadastre" (2015); "Institutional support for the development of land relations in the agricultural sector of Ukraine: monograph" (2016); "Principles of highways and street-road network improvement: monograph" (2017); "Licensing and patenting of scientific products" (2017); "Legislative provision of the real estate cadastre" (2017); "Land cadastral mapping" (2017); "GIS in cadastral systems" (2017); "Monitoring and land protection" (2017); "Scientific foundations of land management" (2017); "Territory Development Planning" (2017); "Land relations as a Factor of Food Security: collective monograph" (2017); "General Course of Communication Paths: Study Guide" (2018); "Legal regulatory aspects of land monitoring in Ukraine: collective monograph" (2018); "Land and Market: Monograph" (2019); "Principles of planning street and road environment to the needs of persons with disabilities: collective monograph" (2019); "Economic and mathematical methods and modeling in land management" (2019); 5 handbooks, 8 normative documents and technical conditions, more than 600 articles; received 35 patents and copyright certificates for inventions.
The department staff does not rest on its laurels and is able to successfully solve new tasks.
Т.Я. Гардасевич