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Dear colleagues,
Every year, the opening word of the first newsletter of the semester falls to the Chairman of the Student Chamber of the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Arts MU. I want to use it to welcome all new and existing students to the new academic year at our alma mater. To the newcomers in our ranks, I would especially like to congratulate them on their admission and entry to Masaryk University and wish them every success in their studies.
This autumn semester, after many years, we are entering an academic year that could perhaps be called "normal" with a bit of goodwill. For the first time in a long time, we are not urgently worried about pandemic measures and their impact on teaching, nor the threat of curtailment due to the culminating energy crisis. Let us, therefore, enjoy university life to the full and at the top of our lungs, whether in lecture rooms or at events and happenings outside the classroom. However, we should not close our eyes to the challenges presented to us – the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its integration into the functioning of our very faculty (traditionally strongly text-based and honestly working with information and resources). The long-standing problem of academic staff salaries and, more recently, of the funding of science and education as a whole also remains unresolved.
Our university and faculty will celebrate 105 years of teaching in the coming year. At the same time, however, we mourn the loss of our Scala cinema due to long-term repairs. The University is monitoring this process closely and doing everything possible to ensure this loss is not final. So let us do the same as students - keep an eye on the situation, ask the right questions at the right time and remember, even though it is a long run. Scala is ours, and I believe it will come back to us again if we do not relent.
Wishing you all the best for the new semester
Ondřej Varaďa
Chairman of the Student Chamber of the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Arts MU
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