We must be more agile and efficient in innovating instructional methods

You have been Rector since January 2024. How was your first year in office?

Interesting, dynamic, full of investigating to see if established processes really are fulfilling their intended functions, and if so, whether these processes will help us stay competitive in the future as one of the traditionally best universities in the country.

What did you learn during your review of processes?

That we must not rest on our laurels. Many things work well here, but our competition is plunging full speed ahead; here we sometimes lack the agility to implement new approaches quickly. That is why I have paid great attention to—and will continue to pay as much attention as possible to—how project management for appropriate agendas is conducted, how people from different departments are brought together in a team with clear competencies, tasks, and deadlines.

I also believe fostering good internal communication is essential. I think that the model of involving Deans in UCT Prague’s strategic management is proving to be very successful. Czech Rectors Conference (CRC) national-level meetings are also effective, and finally, we conducted an analysis of activities performed by organizational units in the Rector’s Offices, which took place smoothly, even resulting in generating interesting ideas for 2025.

What kind of ideas for the Rector’s Offices in 2025?

First, it turned out that the vast majority of Rector’s Offices activities are received positively by faculties. Problems we identified often weren’t about quality but were rather about the speed of implementation. Optimizing the performance of activities is much easier than solving quality issues. Our analysis also clearly showed that we will have to improve information flow between university leadership and the faculties, because the faculties do not always get clear insight into some of the Rector’s agendas and thus do not always know how they may work out for them.

What there is general agreement about is the need to reform how the Project Centre works. Top priority is strengthening legal support, which is already happening. Other goals include creating a new concept for lifelong learning, clarifying Department of Quality Assessment functions, and clearly defining/separating the competencies of the Computing Centre and the Centre for Information Services. There are, of course, more things to improve. Each Head of a Rector’s Offices unit has received a detailed evaluation report, including comments. The Heads are now working with the Vice-Rectors and the Bursar on proposals for specific change measures, which I will then discuss in individual meetings. In any case, I would like to highlight the great openness from Rector’s Offices staff throughout this process. They did not only describe their activities formally, but also realistically, with informal comments. The management of all Faculties was similarly open to the analyses. This process, which had not been performed here for 20 years, was not perceived as a necessary evil, but rather as an opportunity to do an even better job at UCT Prague. I am really pleased with that.

What else did you achieve during your first year as Rector?

We were able to, at least partially, increase the salaries of our employees. Along with this, we increased doctoral scholarship amounts and started major work on the system of how doctoral studies will be financed at the national level starting in 2025, which will bring a fundamental change for UCT Prague as well. Thanks to Vice-Rector Rumlová and her team, the Office of Doctoral Studies was put in place. We will soon have the first ever meeting of UCT Prague’s Industry Council. I consider the launch of an external evaluation within the framework of the Institutional Evaluation Programme-European University Association (IEP-EUA) to be a fundamental step forward, the one that will help strengthen the UCT Prague’s reputation abroad and hopefully open up possibilities for more international university alliances. I am also pleased with the strong position of our (relatively small and specialized) university within the Czech Rectors Conference, where our institution is still perceived as an exemplifying standard for quality. I also feel that the smooth start of a relatively large number of Programme Johannes Amos Comenius (OP JAK) grant-funded projects and the acquisition of several additional grants for excellent research projects to be a success.

Are there any areas where things not going as well as you imagined?

The speed of implementing some changes and processes. But I know that setting up new things always takes longer than implementing them in practice. That is why I am optimistic that things will go even better this year. I am also worried that we have not yet found the appropriate balance between core courses and specializations within our study programmes. I am convinced that we must increase the share of specialized courses in order to make our programmes more attractive to potential applicants. At the same time, I am not happy to read in surveys that we are often perceived to be too demanding on students in the first semester, that students are unable to absorb the amount of information and requirements thrown at them. I am not calling for simplification of the curriculum, but rather advocate spreading coursework over a sufficiently long-time interval, gradually increasing complexity, and thus creating greater “friendliness” towards core study subjects including mathematics. It is not really easy to reach a general consensus on all this. We need to be more efficient and agile in innovating instructional methods so that a shift for the better will be perceived even next year. Innovations in teaching of core subjects are worth supporting with additional funding as well.

Is there anything that surprised you, a former, experienced Vice-Rector for Strategy, regarding the position of Rector?

The ever-increasing volume of all possible and impossible statutory and representative duties that need to be fulfilled as Rector and the associated pressure on my schedule. My calendar is booked from early morning until late at night almost every day and I am not completely my own master (the Rectors who came before me are certainly smiling at this). As a Vice-Rector, I had much more freedom in organizing my work.

In November, UCT Prague’s leadership met with experts from our International Advisory Board (IAB). What do you see as the most notable result of these meetings?

Since we already had the initial phase of getting used to the IAB behind us, our discussion this past year was completely open. University representatives came up with specific questions and people from the Advisory Board responded openly and shared experiences from their own top institutions. They helped us a lot, for example, with the content of the Code of Ethics as well as how to better-organize technology transfer, set up the Industry Council, and add soft skills directly into the curriculum. Next year, we will use their experience and opinions in preparing documents for the national evaluation of our scientific and research activities.

You’ve repeatedly mentioned UCT Prague’s Industry Council (IC). What will its functions be?

The Council will primarily serve as an advisory body to the Rector and Deans. Our goal is to use this prestigious body to better connect the commercial sphere with UCT Prague and to be in close contact with the industrial sector when formulating needs in the areas of education, research, technology transfer, and raising the profile of choosing a career in technology. The presence of managers from successful companies on the Council means that the principles of cooperation we agree to will be implemented easily and quickly at companies with ties to the IC. The Council will be able to establish working committees, as needed, with the participation of specialists, who will prepare expert materials for members of the Council. Our goal is to represent all areas of interest to UCT Prague, starting with inorganic technologies and ending with the food industry. Representatives of relevant ministries, the financial sector, and professional associations will also be permanent guests of the Council. The operating principle will be similar to that of the Board of Directors. The Rector appoints the members, but the Board then acts and meets independently.

What will be UCT Prague’s leadership priorities for 2025?

Priority number one will clearly be the launch of the new system for financing doctoral students and the new organization of doctoral studies resulting from the amendment to the national Higher Education Act. Without doctoral students, UCT Prague cannot function, so we will devote utmost energy to this topic.

I have set myself the task of finding ways to support our compensation policies so that our salaries are competitive in order to retain quality researchers, instructors, and staff members who do their jobs well here at UCT Prague.

Priority number three will be to find additional budgetary sources for the implementation of our ambitious construction plans. Investment levels in our standard budgetary streams are obviously insufficient. Well, finding and securing funds “another way” is an extremely demanding—one could say lobbying—task. That’s why I have decided to strengthen the Rector’s Offices organizationally so that my hands are freed up more for negotiations beyond campus.

In addition to the IEP-EUA international evaluation, we also have a key national evaluation for R&D activities called MEP 2025+ that will determine institutional funding levels for UCT Prague and other public universities in the Czech Republic. We must complete reform of the common core curriculum and instructional methods in general. We must also prepare the call for proposals documentation necessary for selection of the general designer for the new building on Vítězné náměstí. There will of course be many more tasks, but the aforementioned ones will take precedence over others, in accordance with the meaning of the word “priority”.

What will the budget look like?

I cannot be specific yet; we do not have all the information about expected funding levels in the national budget, but everything indicates that the higher education sector will be strengthened financially in 2025. This gives us a good opportunity to try to change the philosophy for how we create the UCT Prague budget in coming years. The main imperatives will be making expenses sustainable, establishing a balanced budget without the need to involve savings and reserves. When planning, we will confront all real income and all necessary expenses needed to ensure essential university operations. Thus, we will see how many funds will remain after doing this, and then we will agree by consensus about how much we will transfer to reserves and how much will be freed up for other budgetary requests. We must prepare for the future, when we will lose significant income from EU operational programmes, and we need to ensure co-financing for the renovation and modernization of Dejvice Campus infrastructure.

Is there anything you would like to wish the UCT Prague community for the New Year?

Apart from health, which is essential, I wish that all members of our UCT Prague community will stayed focused and reasonable as they face all the challenges and issues in these hectic and volatile times. After all, as chemists, a rational view of the world is our idiosyncrasy. I hope that our mutual communication and cooperation stays open, honest, and without intrigues. Our feelings of well-being will certainly come from a sense of satisfaction for a job well done and for achieving the study results we strive towards, as well as from the reinsurance that investigating chemistry is the best job in the world.