Dear colleagues, dear students,
The summer semester classes are over, so let me wish all students as many successful credits and exams as possible.
In the last newsletter, I congratulated the participants of the Faculty Student Science Conference and the winners of the sections and wished the eight advancers the best of luck in the International Student Science Conference in Prague. Now, I can only bow to their achievements and congratulate them on their outstanding results in the competition not only of Czech and Slovak pharmaceutical faculties and universities, but also in the competition of students from Gdansk, Poland. Special congratulations and thanks for the excellent representation of our faculty to our colleagues Ekaterina Frantsuzova, Lizaveta Laviaha and Michaela Medkova, who dominated three of the four conference sections, namely chemical, technological, and biological! In addition, three more of our representatives placed second twice and third once. Of course, thanks go also to the supervisors and other colleagues from the faculties who create a perfect background for the scientific activities of our students.
On 6 May 2024, I had the opportunity to attend the annual awards ceremony of the City of Hradec Králové. Although our candidate Mgr. Martin Juhaščik did not win the Mayor's Award for Student Scientific Work, the event had an unexpected and all the more joyful outcome for our faculty. For his lifelong work for the benefit of our faculty and the city of Hradec Králové, Prof. Jaroslav Dršata received his highest award, the Dr. František Ulrich Award. Prof. Dršata is a professor emeritus of Charles University, who practically his entire professional career has been connected with our faculty and its Department of Biochemical Sciences, and, among other things, he held the position of vice-dean of the faculty for two terms. I congratulate him and thank him for his invaluable contribution to the development of our faculty.
The construction of our new campus is progressing successfully, and especially the smaller Central Building adjacent to the University Hospital driveway is already growing upwards. We can now virtually walk through the future cafeteria and children's group areas, and the walls of two large lecture halls and the library space are already growing. In the larger Faculty Building, we can already walk through the future Core Facilities, the areas where the most important and, above all, faculty-wide instruments will be located.
This year, based on the idea and activity of colleagues from the Student Chamber of the Academic Senate, the Faculty tested the interest in introducing student ambassadors. Experienced students from the upper years - ambassadors - were available to their younger colleagues from the first year and accompanied them at the beginning of their studies and during their first semester at our faculty. At the same time, the interest in tutoring was also surveyed, where students from the upper years, the so-called tutors, were available with advice in solving a particular problem or for regular tutoring.
I would like to thank both the student ambassadors and the tutors, especially the organizers headed by Anna Hanusova, Hana Janovcova, Petr Čech, and Stanislav Čech. On behalf of the academic staff, the faculty coordinators for quality assurance of educational activities, Assoc. Prof. Petra Matoušková and Dr. Miroslav Kovařík, were involved, and I would also like to thank them very much. As there was great interest in both activities among the first-year students and positive feedback was recorded in the survey, the faculty requested a financial contribution within the ESF project for the official implementation of the ambassador/tutor system. I believe that this activity will help with the acclimatization of our new students to the faculty and to Hradec Kralove in general, improve the learning environment, and ultimately increase the study success rate, which is a clear common goal of both students and lecturers.
I wish you a successful summer exam period.
doc. PharmDr. Jaroslav Roh, Ph.D.
Dean of the faculty