In December, 9, rector of NTUU “KPI”, Mychailo Zgyrovskyi had a meeting with the members of students group – newly elected heads of university student councils, institutes and faculties, heads of professional bureaus of educational subdivisions and managers of students’ projects.
“I have been watching for many years a great tendency towards students’ environment promotion, - rector stated at the beginning of meeting. That’s very important to direct this youth power into something practical, aimed at creating something new.
Rector reminded that university activity is stipulated by the legislature standards on education, spoke on university management structure and how university environment is developing. By the way, in this part of his speech he mentioned the fact of the work of student community representatives who took part in university management bodies’ work – according to the law, the students’ share in its composition makes up not less than 10 percent. “It is important for these bodies to consist first of all of concerned people. Secondly, if they are already granted with this title, they have to be competent regarding issues of the university operation, Mychailo Zgyrovskyi stated. – You have to demand that from them…Besides, if our representatives work for these bodies, they have to attend sessions not to have information gap between management bodies and students’ environment. So that students can express their thoughts through these bodies while making particular decisions… You have to be the members of management process not as a result of talks that may be started for no apparent reasons, but in terms of right development according legislation”.
Among issues discussed during the meeting, was the issue of university property complex. Rector spoke on commitments allocation between KPI administration and managers of particular institutes and faculties towards operation and maintenance of buildings and premises where they work. According to Mychailo Zgurovskyi since the late 1980, the system of decentralized management has been implemented in KPI, according to which directors of institutes and deans of faculties perform functions of coordination of operation services work of particular buildings and constructions. Moreover, a certain amount of money in KPI budget is allocated for each educational subdivision to provide maintenance and effective application of facilities and resources. So, in cases problem in system or network operation arises, the maintenance or change of plumbing or some other equipment etc must be provided by the workers of maintenance organization of particular buildings. If these services fail to fulfill their responsibilities properly, the managers of subdivisions that are located in that or another building have to intervene into this process. Only when the faculty personnel are not able to cope with some problem, when that or another room or for example water closet need capital repair then the subdivision manager have turn to university administration, funds and special brigades for all necessary works are allocated centrally. A number of rooms that needs capital repair makes up nearly 10%, the rest have to be maintained by current works done by people who receive salaries for these kinds of work and work in subdivisions.
Mychailo Zgurovskyi drew attention to the quality of teaching – objective and subjective sides of this problem, in particular. Effective way of solving this problem, according to rector, is the system of “The teacher in the eyes of students” that provides feedback between students and moderators of educational process. Such systems operate in many leading universities of the world and help to assess work of teachers by some criteria. Currently, mobile application is being created in which the system will be realized. According to data received with its help, specific subdivisions will make some corrections. But it doesn’t mean that it will have some police functions, Mychailo Zgurovskyi warned. This system won’t be a weapon for careless student to settle accounts with the strict teacher. Some tendencies that may help teachers to develop their work or look for another position will be detected. “I think that there will be very few of them but they will be”, stressed rector.
Participants of meeting discussed also lower initiatives of students allowing increase apportunities of administration and students. “This is very good business and we have to implement the best ones” – said Mychailo Zgurovskyi. – Today we have nearly ten such projects under operation. He appreciated the following projects: “Vesha”, “Student’s space Bilka”, Student formula KPI” etc., but he also reminded that not only students but also teaching staff of KPI take great part in projects and their realization is maintained by allocation of finance of KPI.
Among other topics that were under discussion during the meeting were the issues of bribe, student governance bodies financing, organizations for providing public order within university and Campus etc. The head of student trade union of KPI Andrii Gavrushkevych, pro-rector for perspective development Oleksii Novikov, pro-rector for academic work Petro Kyrychok, campus director Oleksandr Ishchenko took an active part in discussion. The meeting took the format of live communication in the process of which some questions that students didn’t know who to address with or didn’t have any response from the side of executives were also discussed. During the meeting the decision about special meeting on the problems of university sport recreational camp “the Globe” was made; to get the answer to some questions, Mychailo Zgurovskyi asked to provide official note to have the deep understanding of situation. In general, the meeting was an evidence of the fact that some problems may be solved immediately after their arising and the reason of their putting aside is the lack of communication. Thus, the participants of meeting decided to organize similar meetings regularly – probably once per quarter or at least no less than once per term.