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The key factor of modern National Research University development is its international activity. With the aim to integrate into international research and educational community, and enhance their global competitiveness, Russian universities have started to make substantial changes in the requirements for faculty and staff. Among such requirements is a high level of language proficiency. Priority is given to English because of its international importance. However, the majority of research and teaching staff in Russian universities do not possess an accepted level of English language proficiency. The aim of this article is to describe the development of the Strategic Programme for 2013-2020 regarding the performance of faculty and staff members of Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia. In addition to this, the article shares best practices of the university in solving the problem of language proficiency for its academic and administrative staff. The professional language enhancement courses implemented at the department of Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages are, thus, described. It is suggested that such an approach can be successfully adopted by other universities in order to help their academic staff gain high-level professionally-oriented language communicative competence and, consequently, meet the new challenges and requirements of a global workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]