Address by the Dean of the faculty to students and staff for the opening of the academic year 2012-2013

What will this new academic year be like, what to expect and what we as a coordinated team would like to implement?

Our freshmen begin their studies, others continue their studies at the university and its faculty, which in the last evaluation period gained a position in the WEBOMETRICS world ranking agency and was recognized among the top 500 out of over 24,000 tertiary level educational institutions worldwide. This position amongst those that have been ranked as the best in the world is due to our previous hard work. Whilst maintaining our current position, further improvement does not come for free. Even on a national scale, we have become one of the leading Faculties of 2011 - we took eighth place between Slovak technical faculties during the latest statistical reports which dealt with an interest from practice about the graduates, we are in the 14th position amongst more than 100 Slovak faculties - this is certainly an improving trend for the future. Our faculty's main objective is to maintain the present status that we have achieved - University Faculty of excellent university institution in the next comprehensive accreditation in 2014, the preparation of which will begin in the next few weeks.

The academic year of 2012-2013 will certainly be a year in which we will make our projects successful with grants totaling into tens of millions of euros. The most important of them is the implementation of the university science park at our faculty, totaling more than € 42 million, which must be completed by the 30th June 2015. The research and development base is to become one of the most interesting and most advanced in Central Europe - therefore we have to build future research partnerships in the common European Research Area. The environment of the faculty which we are systematically building and developing is now characterized by a high efficiency and comfort for our students and staff.

In order to substantially improve the quality of the educational process, also due to our anticipated inclusion amongst the top-class tertiary education institutions in Slovakia, which has a drastically limited  number of students per teacher at the university, the faculty systematically strongly reduced the actual number of matriculated students for the 1st Bachelor degree of study - we will start with approximately 900 imatriculated students at the 1st level of study. Since teachers will be required to have a more individual approach to students, we believe that the main effects will be reflected in a substantial reduction of the failure of our students in their first semesters at the faculty, which currently accounts for almost 50% of the 1st stage of Bachelor's degree studies. We continue to look for new and advanced forms of education in order to improve its quality - we have started a project called "Paperless faculty" in which we are planning to equip each student at our faculty with a tablet. We will continue our preparation of the e-learning materials and the reconstruction of the educational premises so that they will be up to date with the trends.

I believe that the holidays and vacations provided adequate opportunities for rest and rejuvenation of staff and students of the faculty in the new academic year of 2012-2013. We believe that together we can fully comply in time with all of the tasks that await us. We expect all employees to be patient whilst overcoming problems, obstacles and challenging tasks which will bring together a high level of involvement.

Thanks to all who can contribute to the creative atmosphere, mutual respect, solidarity and trust in the necessary prerequisites of successful joint work for the further development of our alma - mater, in accordance with the values ​​specified in the document called "Long-term plan for the MTF STU 2012 -2017", which will allow for academic freedom, fairness, humanity, ethics and more.

Prof. Dr. Ing. Oliver Moravčík
       Dean of the faculty