Can you introduce yourself, please?
My name is Jana Švejdová and I came to Unicorn University in May 2017. I have worked as the Head of the Department of Economics and Management for three years. I’m currently passing the department management to my colleague, Tomáš Kremr, and I’m starting my new job, the Vice-president for Pedagogy. Before coming to Unicorn University, I worked for the Czech Science Foundation. I also currently teach and study the doctoral studies at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Economics, Prague. I live near Prague, in Kralupy nad Vltavou with my husband and my two-year-old son. I like to spend my free time doing sports and traveling.
What do you think of your position change to the Vice-president for Pedagogy? What are you going to focus on and whar are you looking forward to?
The job is really interesting and the range of involved activites broad. I’m looking forward to the job and I believe the school will benefit from my work. I’m going to learn more in the next few months of what the job includes. I also need to learn new things and gain new skills. Right now, I’m reading through the syllabi of the courses taughty by the Department of Information Technology, for example. Obviously, my knowledge of economically focused courses is not enough. I need to get at least a general overview of everything we teach.
The Covid-19 epidemics related restrictions has impacted all areas of life in the last months. The current state largely influences the operation of universities and our every-day agenda. The need to solve every unexpected situation quickly means that I haven’t had the time yet to deal with my new position in detail. I believe, however, that the summer months will provide me the time necessary to catch up. Besides, I realize that implementing restrictive measures, the need to stop standard classes and to convert swiftly to new forms of online courses, including online testing and oral examination gave me valueable experience. I am grateful for that. The current situation taught us so much and we can benefit from it in the future.
The current events bring a lot of new impulses for significant changes and development in the form of university education. The following years will undoubtedly see many such modifications. The form and content of classes at Unicorn University have been reflecting current trends in education and needs of the labour market for a long time now. We gained accreditation for two bachelor’s study programmes and a follow-up master’s study programme in 2019. We are working hard at the moment on extending the achieved accreditations to the distance form of study. One of my main aims in cooperation with individual departments lies in ensuring that we prepare high quality classes in time and without complications. I also want to ensure that students get experienced teachers capable of transferring their knowedge. We also need to offer students education by means of modern methods and provide a wide range of study props in high quality. We concentrate a lot on creating online textbooks, courses and supplementary materials, such as podcasts and screencasts.
What's your personal mission at Unicorn University and what direction is your work going to take?
In the upcoming months, I am going to focus on the most urgent points. Preparing courses in the newly accredited study programmes represents a priority. I’d also like to revise our students before the beginning of the winter semester, update and complete all information regarding the organization and course of studies in the UCL Directory. In the long run, I’d like to dedicate a significant part of my focus to the possibilities of education development and the study and teaching activities at our school.
As the Vice-president for Pedagogy, I’d like to contribute to a seamless operation of our school and its further development. I plan to improve our students’ orientation in the study agenda and to make the cooperation more pleasant for our colleagues. I want to run more one-time lectures and workshops along with our departments dealing with current and intriguing topics. I also wish to broaden the range of our optional courses. Students and teachers should have enough opportunities to get engaged into the school’s activities. The need to develop foreign cooperation represents another priority. We accredited the Double Degree study programme of International Management. I’d like to help achieving similar cooperation with foreign universities in IT. I’d like to motivate our students and teachers to use more of the opportunities to travel and gain study and teaching experience in some of our foreign partner organizations. I also plan to meet students in classes and cooperate with my colleagues on the preparation of the curriculum of new courses and of events for students and the public.
