Dean's speach on the Fakulty Day
Dear colleagues,
"Faculty Day speech" had been on my to-do list for several weeks until the day before yesterday. I was looking for some inspiration, and over time various ideas came to mind, which I immediately dismissed. For example, I first found it fitting to take inspiration from the pre-spring apple tree pruning, where the gardener looks at the tree from different angles and different heights and chooses which branches to prune and where to cut them to lighten the tree. But then it occurred to me that in the context of the events of the past few weeks at our faculty, this might have some very strange connotations. So, I kept searching and thinking.
Until it came to me last weekend. At the time I was looking forward to listening to the spring buzz of the bees and doing some nice work in the apiary after being spoiled by the nice weather of the previous days. But the weather and temperatures were what they were, you may recall. The bees stayed in their hives; it would not have been wise to disturb them. So, there was no choice but to use the time differently, for the types of work that no beekeeper looks forward to - cleaning the hives in which the colonies had not survived the winter for one reason or another. You sweep out the frames, clean the hive bottoms, scrape propolis, disinfect hives and many things come to mind. Like the disappointed autumn hopes that you did everything you could to make sure all the colonies survived the winter - and yet it didn't work out. Or maybe you wonder if something should have been done differently after all. What are the various things that come into play? The dreaded varroa destructor, where the three female mite-pests that survive all the treatments over the winter will have offspring of up to 3,072 females by mid-August, weakening the colony almost imperceptibly, so that all it takes is a slight fluctuation and you're done. Because it only takes 1,000 females to cause a disaster. They don't kill directly - they just parasitize the larvae of the bees, so they are born weakened or with various deformities. The weak strength of the colony sometimes in August can also have an effect, which then makes them unable to defend themselves, and other colonies rob their food reserves for the winter so that they literally starve to death. As a beekeeper, I don't think I know of a more depressing job than sweeping empty frames with bees half-holed up in honeycomb cells where there is nothing left.
I had to smile when I washed the hive mats off the bottom space and my Dad handed them back to me, telling me to wash them again. My reaction reminded me of a discussion I had had the previous week at the faculty. I responded to my Dad in the same way as the two department heads had responded to me and the secretary about the suggestions for the total amount of personal remuneration in the departments - we had already done it. And he told me the same thing we told them - it's not enough, do it properly. So, on Saturday, I could see how they might have felt.
Everything that I've talked about so far is pretty negative. Is there anything positive about it? That's exactly what I just realized when I was sweeping out the barren bee hives - sure, it's a frustrating job, but if I don't do it, there's no hope for a better result next time. And I also realized something else - that I keep bees because I enjoy it, that there is significantly less sad work than work that brings happiness. I think that's how it is at the faculty. Sure, there's a sense of futility at times - of teachers with students, students with teachers, teachers, and staff with supervisors, supervisors with staff, and everyone with the dean. The reverse is no longer true; the dean experiences only the good times with everyone, like a beekeeper feeling the weight of boxes with frames full of honey.
Those feelings of futility often have to be resolved in some way - for example, by returning a desperately bad term paper or master's thesis for revision; by telling a student that nothing can be done, but that he or she will have to come back next time; by taking various and unpopular steps to make it clear to the employee that they are not working as well as they should and could; that after years of living above its means, the department will have to adjust its salary expenses to a sustainable level, etc. - But these feelings of futility are often interspersed with moments of reward, when we say to ourselves, yes, this makes sense. I wish you all could experience that feeling at graduation when a graduate student, who points out that she can compare various things because she studied at other faculties, thanks everyone in her graduation speech - from the study department to her lecturers and classmates - for the incredibly amazing environment and people here. And believe me, this hasn't happened just once. So I'm happy to pass along these thanks - they belong to you.
Or publications. Over the past years and decades, various waves have passed us by, with many of us learning new terms that we did not know even existed before: impact factor, journal databases, WoS, Scopus, formerly known as ERIH, later quartiles, deciles, h-indexes... I remember how horrified I was when, as head of the department, I first heard years ago the proposal of the then-new vice-dean Martin Vaculík regarding the distribution of money for science. That we should fully apply the M17+ methodology, that we should not take into account all publications, but only the best ones. A few people are sitting among you who can confirm that we thought together about how to respond to this, how to buy some time... I was convinced that we had no chance to adapt to such a policy. I didn't want to admit that maybe some of our faculty publications are in the state as those collapsed colonies or bees with a drone-laying queen that only lays unfertilized eggs, so the colony will die anyway - so it's better to replace her in due time.
We approached an uncomfortable and painful change to the budget rules. And the result? Last year alone, social scientists from our faculty published 124 articles in WoS, of which 6 were in the first decile, 28 others in the first quartile, and 43 in the second quartile, which is almost two-thirds. And the amazing thing is that not just one part of the faculty is involved as it was just a few years ago. Last year, each department or institute managed to publish at least one publication in the first quartile, almost all in the first decile as well. Most importantly, it's not the result of the work of just the two or three most talented people. In the top quarter of the world's top journals in their fields, i.e. in the first quartile, about forty staff and Ph.D. students of our faculty had their publications accepted last year. And not only that. Since a good number of our disciplines are not exclusively oriented towards published journals, but towards books that are an influential medium for their research, you know very well that we still take into account and will continue to do so the publishing of books. But we are not looking to settle for marginal publishing houses where they would just be gathering dust in warehouses without reaching readers. And so last year, people from our faculty published their monographs in some of the world's leading publishing houses - Palgrave, Lexington, Routledge; separate chapters in Oxford University Press, Springer, etc.
We are showing that we are doing academic social science work at a truly world-class level - and that only the lack of earlier external and internal pressure did not encourage us to see this earlier. For we are not achieving these great results like some other universities by bringing in foreign stars who are no longer even visiting professors, but professors who credit a result here and there for a contract. They are achieved by you - you who, in addition to the excellent level of scholarship, also do an excellent job of teaching and taking care of the day-to-day running of degree programs, departments, and faculty.
In addition to this, we do not forget our social responsibility and convey the results of our research to the broader Czech society, as was perfectly visible during the collection of background information for the preparation of the faculty budget.
I know I've only talked about research so far, and that's only part of our job. But we have been continuing to ride a successful wave in terms of teaching as well, as both quantitative and qualitative indicators prove. Not only that, but we can be proud of the interesting graduates who are successfully capitalizing on all the good work we have put into them in various positions at home and around the world. After some years, we have been able to significantly increase the number of freshmen enrolled in almost all departments, so we are no longer teaching to half-empty classrooms. We are increasing the number of theses written in English, and we are still the flagship of the university when it comes to student mobility. As you already know, we are taking the bold step of relaxing the barriers for students to enroll in compulsory elective courses in almost all of our Czech undergraduate programs, since we believe that in this way, we will send graduates out into the world with an even broader social science outlook.
You may say – that all sounds nice, but so what? Apart from a good feeling, this also concerns money. Because everything I've talked about in our university and faculty is reflected into things as mundane as finances. I would like to thank all of you because through our combined efforts, we have managed to achieve in the 2022 budget that we have the largest year-over-year increase in funding in the K quality indicator, that is, we have improved the most year-over-year out of everyone in the entire university. And we were already excellent last year. Moreover, together with the Faculty of Economics and Administration, we were the only faculty to improve in all the parameters monitored (science and research results, external income, the number of professors and associate professors, graduation rate, the number of foreign students and staff, foreign language work, student mobility, etc.). The excellent research results have also led to the university’s largest year-on-year percentage increase in research grants (DKRVO) and total budget - we are growing by 9% overall year-on-year. Thus, unlike some other faculties, we will easily manage a mid-year increase in tariff salaries (based on the state’s salary tables) and will not have to reduce the personal remuneration component because of this. In the two departments where the reduction in personal remuneration is more significant, this is something that was due to problematic financial management in previous years, where we are now rectifying the situation so that there will be no recurring problems in the future.
Going back to the opening images of the beekeeper's life, we must not simply rest on our laurels. Just as the cranking out of the last honey in July or August is not the start of a period of celebration but instead immediately signals in essence the beginning of a new year of beekeeping. A time when one cannot afford to lean back with their hands behind their head. The cycle is similarly never-ending at the faculty and the university.
In exactly one week from today, on 14 April, it will be 25 years since the University Senate agreed to establish our faculty on 1 January 1998. We seem to be entering our anniversary faculty year in excellent shape. And so, we enter not only a jubilee year, but potentially worse times. It probably needs no explanation why it is reasonable to expect that this year, when the government fulfilled its promise and higher education was the only area that did not see its budget get cut back but instead grew, may not be repeated for a long time. It is all the better that we have a number of excellent domestic and international grants, that we have come to believe that it makes sense to publish in journals and publishers that are in the top-tier internationally, and that we have a faculty full of excellent students. It is the combination of these things that should help us weather the worse times. We have what it takes. Angela Merkel would say: 'Wir schaffen das. We have made it, we are making it and we will make it through many more challenges, including those that we have not yet been able to imagine.
But because of this, we also have to do things we don't really want to do so that we can enjoy a strong colony, a beautiful harvest, and the well-deserved honey or other rewards afterward. We are not members of the FSS just because we are paid to be and we don't know what else to do with our lives. As students, we are here because we desire a top-quality education; as academics, we are here because we want to teach and to do research and to work; as non-academics, we are here because we want to help students and teachers grow; because we all enjoy it and take pleasure in it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here.
But we also need to treat ourselves preventively - with natural and artificial medicines - so that the academic varroa destructor does not multiply too much, so that it does not weaken us - so that it does not deform our consciousness that we are here primarily for the students; elsewhere, so that it does not lead us to believe that teaching is secondary and that the main thing is grant-getting and research; elsewhere so that it does not deform our conception of science, which would close in on itself. That is to say so that we don't end up like the bees because of the mite - they are still bees, but they are no longer fit for almost anything.
Let us also wish that, as a faculty community, if this happens to someone by chance, we will still be able to help each other out and enter into the next season with renewed energy and strength.
