The Academic Senate met for the first time in its new composition
At the constituent session, the Chairmanship was elected and the Senate committees were appointed. The reform of doctoral studies was also discussed.
Academic Senate approved the basic division of the faculty budget
The Strategic Vision Implementation Plan and a number of accreditation renewal applications were also supported. The Senate has objected to reducing OneDrive's capacity.
At its meeting on 25 March 2024, the Academic Senate of the FF MU first heard the report of the Electoral Committee on the smooth conduct of the Senate elections to date.
Subsequently, applications for accreditation extensions were discussed. One of the interesting themes that emerged from the discussion was the academic failure caused by poor expectations of the applicant: either regarding the content of the study programme or its difficulty. In the end, all applications received Senate support.
In the next item, the Bursar of the Faculty presented to the Senators his proposal to transfer last year's economic result this year (in addition to the obligatory contribution to the RMU remuneration fund) exclusively to the investment fund: we are expecting significant investments in real estate and technology, paid for by projects, but with certain participation. He also presented an overview of the funds raised in the budget. He assessed the figures as not very optimistic but not tragic either. Some of the decrease is due to fewer external grants received. The Senate approved the macro budget.
A more extensive debate ensued over the plan to implement the strategic vision: interest was raised over funding for teaching practice or the applicants' field "calculator."
Dr. Bárta concluded with an update on current events at the Council of Universities. Vice-Dean Burešová donated a new secret ballot box to the Senate.
At the very end of the meeting, under Miscellaneous, a discussion was opened regarding the recent reduction in OneDrive personal storage capacity. It resulted in an adopted statement:
AS FF MU protests against the arbitrary, unexpected, and radical reduction of data volumes on Microsoft cloud storage, which the university as a whole switched to two years ago, while employees had no choice whether to use this service. We ask the relevant university departments to use solutions in the future that will guarantee long-term stability in the storage of scientific and pedagogical data for MUNI students and staff.
The detailed course of the Senate meeting is recorded in the minutes.
The next regular meeting of the Senate will be held on 15 April 2024.
