Professor Josef Machacek Vice-Rector for Development CZECH TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE
______________________________________________________________________________________
8th November 2004
Dear Dr Reichert,
We have received a copy of the letter by
Professor Hlavac (CTU Academic senate member) sent to you last week. We have
always appreciated active attitude of Professor Hlavac to important questions
and problems of CTU. On the other hand some of his deductions are questionable
and often ruled by his rather special opportunities within his department
(Department of cybernetics), due to preferred domain of this specialization in
current science.
The six Analytical Reports (prepared by
Academic Senate Committee under Professor Hlavac leadership) mentioned in his
letter were widely published within CTU and discussed by leadership of CTU,
leaderships of Faculties, senate and scientific board for many months.
Nevertheless, it has to be noted that most of the issues given in these Reports
were generally known and included either in long-term strategic plan or its
actualizations. As such the Reports have primarily become an excellent
opportunity to evoke the discussion among academic staff.
However, in his letter from 4th
November Professor Hlavac claims also conclusions which are not correct:
T1) Within last two years a great effort
resulted in new bachelor programmes of biomedical engineering, under intensive
progress are new master programmes of management in industry, master programmes
of biomedical engineering and master programmes in chemistry, all envisaged to
be accredited and start next year.
T2) There is long lasting effort to decrease
the drop out of the first year students. This is anticipated to be reached by
prepared measures concerning higher care of these students and adaptation of
study system.
T3) Entirely wrong is claim about continuation
of study programme scope in two-tier system. This system started in CTU 1 year
ago and, therefore, the students are in there 2nd year. Nobody can
claim that all off them continue in master programmes as they have not reached
it yet.
T7) CTU has many long-life education
programmes. Nearly all departments prepare one-off or regular seminars or even
one/two-semester programmes. It is hardly understandable not to be informed
about brochure of these CTU activities.
R1) Promotion of excellent researchers and
research group within CTU is done each year by extraordinary awards and
considerable bonuses to approx. 40 individuals and 20 research teams.
R2) The tradition within CTU is to do
industrial research and technology progress for practice in the frame of direct
contracts with industry. Therefore, the form of spin-off companies was not
common in this country and is just under progress – one such company (close to
professor Hlavac) has just emerged.
R4) Members of Scientific council are top
researchers of CTU and from other prominent Czech research bodies. Aside from
necessary procedures concerning professorship procedures, scientific awards
etc., there is enough space for strategy and discussion. Such discussion is
often started by Rector or Vice-Rector, unfortunately rarely by council
members.
H1) Responsibility of acting management is to
create good environment for young and talented people, hardly to appoint them
into managerial positions.
H4) To criticize office staff is easy, but
clerks are just employees and not academic staff. CTU is preparing management
information system to overcome some problems with internal evaluation by using
a row of CTU quality indicators.
O1) Question of quality in education and
research is one of the main issues and discussed for at least two years. The
new steps were presented at Rector’s gremium and discussed – why it was
said CTU has no policy?
Even other items are questionable, e.g. claim
at O4) about not existing survey of CTU graduates. Results of the last such
survey, done in 2003 with about 1 350 of graduates (after distribution of
5 000 questionnaires) was published in CTU Annual Report 2003.
Finally we conclude with rather unpleasant
feeling as if trying to interfere into your discussion with Professor Hlavac
but with responsibility to bring up the things correctly.
With kind regards
Prof. Josef Machacek