Dear delegates of the Conference of the labor collective, employees and applicants for higher education of the university, invited!
Of course, we would all like the current Staff Conference to have the hallmarks of the first post-war large gathering of university staff and students. However, the war continues, daily increasing the list of polytechnic heroes whom we honor together and should not forget. All-Ukrainian grief is multiplying, and the relative safety of the capital region should not be misleading for security and detachment. What we can afford at work and at home is the result of hard days without holidays and weekends of the defenders at the front, border guard brigades and mobile air and missile defense units. And only our total involvement in helping the army in various ways, in many accessible and feasible forms, can bring the much-anticipated Victory closer.
At the moment, 84 university employees are part of the units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine, in 2023 11 employees were commissioned and returned to work at the university, while 8 employees were mobilized. 56 university employees received a six-month reservation from the Ministry of Defense. Reservation is now an extremely complicated, sometimes overly bureaucratic process, and requires, first of all, organized military records of employees of military age. Very often, the qualifications and specialization of teachers without degrees are so high that the benefits of their participation in defense engineering projects at a university can be many times greater than the expediency of being subject to general mobilization. Technological superiority with a focus on the development and capacity building of the Ukrainian defense industry, which Chief of the Army Valeriy Zaluzhnyi had the courage to declare in the Economist, has already become an axiom of this war, understood by the military, recognized by politicians around the world, and which we, engineers, must create.
What the university, its structural units, organizations, teams, and individual employees and students are doing is truly impressive. While in 2022, the assistance to the army was more centralized through the staff and students, as well as the activities of the Kyiv Polytechnic Charitable Foundation, in 2023, we saw a decentralized model that was not limited to our purchases or donations to the foundation. And this targeted assistance, work on the manufacture of structures and experimental developments necessary for the army has increased many times over. Those who are able to create new engineering models were creating them, those whose specialty is physical and psychological recovery were rehabilitating them, those who have first aid skills were teaching colleagues and students, others were organizing cultural, sports, educational and awareness raising events and raising funds for KPI students on the front line. Most of them simply donated to the "Come Back Alive", Serhiy Prytula, "United 24" and many other funds. There are no indifferent people in KPI. At the same time, it remains important to develop a university-wide Strategy and Vision that would strengthen creative areas, raise funds to accelerate prototyping, and interact with all possible structures that are already successfully using other advanced Ukrainian developments. In this most difficult time of its existence and development, the university must reject everything unnecessary and destructive in its internal activities, simplify all forms of vertical and horizontal interaction, and, if you like, mobilize its own staff, students, and resources in a scientific and educational way so that each of us can demonstrate real daily commitment to the needs of defense. This is a homework assignment that we must complete in a timely and high-quality manner.
European integration processes require universities, especially those of KPI's caliber, to develop a national ideology and a step-by-step plan for rapid integration into the Western educational and scientific community. We should not be donors of human capital, we need to motivate and encourage young people. KPI has a 125-year tradition of forming fundamental knowledge and unique skills in entire generations of engineers, and the historical and geopolitical realities of today should push us to create new Sikorsky and Korolevs, Chelomeys and Lyulievs. Our task is not to miss the moment, to be flexible and inventive, to use the opportunities of European, American, Japanese, South Korean institutions and corporations to develop our own, KPI's, Ukrainian.
The socio-economic component of university life in wartime was not favorable. The sequestration of the educational budget in January 2023, in the middle of the academic year, canceled UAH 8.5 million of the university's monthly funding. This meant that we had to cut 680 positions, including 184 academic and 105 teaching and support positions. This decision hit the KPI staff and led to the transfer of teaching and support staff of many departments to part-time positions, reduction of vacancies, etc. The enrollment of 2023 was generally successful in both budgetary and contractual forms at all levels of education, and from October 1, we were returned 199 positions of academic staff and added UAH 13.6 million to the payroll with monthly accruals. However, this did not allow us to significantly increase the amount of funding to return to full-time positions in certain specialties. Unfortunately, the situation on the labor market in the last decade has not been conducive to recruiting those willing to study in knowledge-intensive specialties with enhanced mathematical and natural science training, which requires the development of asymmetric measures both at the intra-university level and proposals for their enhanced support and incentives at the ministerial and state levels. We have already learned how to work with those who have chosen chemistry, physics, mechanics, materials science, electronics, and communications: we have opened a bunch of clubs, organized hundreds of competitions, contests, hackathons, and challenges, individually tutor and adapt basic disciplines, open joint laboratories with industry leaders, and much more. It is unclear what additional guarantees and benefits can be used to maintain a steady demand for applicants for specialties that have probably the most powerful scientific schools and multimillion-dollar revenues from research and innovation. But water will not flow under a rock, because we are the leaders of technical education in the country with the largest connections in industry, IT, public administration, and now also in the military - this should be used in a total and systematic way, not only by asking, but also by offering and demanding.
The year 2024 began with a certain increase in social standards, in particular, the minimum wage increased on January 1, the salary of the first tariff category increased by 10.4%, and thus the salaries of all categories of university employees increased. The relevant resolution was approved by the Government on January 12 with a delay. It was also published late, which can be justifiably explained by the delay in decisions from European donor partners for budgetary education spending. However, its validity was normalized and our employees were awarded a raise in February, taking into account the additional payment for January. With full responsibility, I want to dispel some rumors that have begun to spread at the university about double salaries. There have been no official conversations, proposals, actions or decisions on this matter at various levels of the Ministry of Education and Science or the government. Behind-the-scenes talks about double salaries at KPI and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv have been going on since their introduction, so do not believe the latest horror stories and fakes, there are existing regulations and legal ways to defend them.
Traditionally, legislative reform initiatives to "improve" and "improve the quality" of higher education in Ukraine have caused concern and fear. The fact that the number of higher education institutions in the country is inflated with a gradual deterioration of the demographic situation was obvious both 10 and 20 years ago. And the fact that the country, and since the beginning of the war donor countries, cannot afford to finance such a network is also known. It is unclear why a roadmap for consolidation, modernization, optimization - whatever you want to call this process - has not been developed over the years, and the teams would have been informed. Then the risks of destruction of scientific schools during the merger would have been minimized, and the personnel policy would have been predictable.
Another challenge may be the introduction of a grant system for higher education for social sciences and humanities, IT, and some other fields of knowledge. The most important questions are how the maximum number of students enrolled under grants will be set and how much the cost of education should be raised, which should be no less than the state spends on training specialists at the appropriate level of education in a particular university. For Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, this cost has been over UAH 59 thousand for bachelors and masters, as well as UAH 46 thousand for full-time PhD students since January 1. Does the maximum grant cover these levels? No, it does not. Will applicants and their parents be ready to pay the difference at their own expense, and will this not lead to measures to reduce the salaries of teachers and staff? These questions are not rhetorical at all, and most likely Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, like all higher education institutions in the country, will have to adapt to these changes very quickly, make appropriate calculations and develop measures to make education more financially attractive. Simple dumping, which we used to resort to for certain specialties, will not be enough.
The long-suffering Labor Code, which, as a relic of the Soviet era, has been trying to be rewritten for over 30 years. And if earlier this process was either accelerated or slowed down depending on the personal needs of the oligarchs, now the reason for martial law has become just a pretext to "tighten the screws" on workers' rights. The latest version of the Code caused a negative reaction not only from national trade unions, but also from European institutions. After all, the Euro-Atlantic path provides for broad rights for employees and trade unions representing them, as well as full involvement of labor collectives in management processes in institutions and enterprises, and significant freedoms in terms of social priorities, standards and control over their observance. I would like to believe that these inconsistencies are the reasons why the new draft law was suspended in the Verkhovna Rada.
Changes continued in the management of university departments. In 2023, a competition for the positions of heads was held at 12 university departments, and 6 new deans of faculties/directors of institutes were elected.
The commissions and councils approved by the decisions of the previous Staff Conference performed their functions in accordance with the current legislation. In 2023, 19 meetings of the Staff Council on Housing and Social Affairs were held. They considered 380 applications for temporary accommodation of employees and university graduates in dormitories. There were no comments or complaints about the work of the Council. The Labor Disputes Commission did not receive any appeals or applications in 2023.
During the reporting year, the administration of sick leave at the university was carried out mainly according to the electronic register. However, there were also isolated cases of paper forms due to system failures due to hacker attacks. In 2023, 1192 (almost 10% less than in 2022) insured persons issued 4104 sick leaves (10% more than in 2022). The number of days of incapacity for work paid for by the KPI's payroll amounted to 9077 (up 11%), with the total number of days being 30 520 (up 4%). In connection with pregnancy and childbirth, 26 university employees were granted paid leave. The Pension Fund paid only one lump-sum funeral benefit in the amount of UAH 4,100. In accordance with clause 2.6.1 of the Collective Agreement, 126 employees received such payments from the Trade Union for a total of UAH 458,710, which is 20% more than in 2022. In 2023, 4 inquiries were sent to medical institutions and 6 appeals were sent to the Pension Fund regarding the correctness of issuing and extending sick leave, resolving disputes, etc.
It should be recalled that for the third year in a row, the team has not received a single penny of funding from the university, as provided for in Article 44 of the Law of Ukraine "On Trade Unions, Their Rights and Guarantees of Activity". The reality is that this is no longer the responsibility of the university administration and is now its right, and the right, as we know, requires good will. The above items of expenditures in the interests of KPI employees and students were provided from our own revenues, charitable contributions and assistance from partners.
The issue of health improvement of employees and their families became somewhat more active in 2023: the accumulated fatigue and old diseases were noticeable. The Group provided 31 health resort vouchers with a 50% reimbursement, with the discount amounting to UAH 222,259, and 24 vouchers for summer recreation with a 20% discount for a total compensation amount of UAH 70,950. Summer health resort recreation and rehabilitation will continue in 2024 under the same conditions without limiting the number of people. The university recreation centers were not functional in 2023, but in 2024, employees and students may return to rest at the Polytechnic, at least preparations are being made for this.
Unfortunately, as a result of rocket attacks on the capital's region, the university employees' homes continued to be destroyed. In accordance with the decision of 2022, we continued to partially compensate for the damage, depending on the degree of damage to the housing.
In 2023, children's recreation took place in the Verkhovyna and Carpathian Dawns children's camps for 26 employees' children, and another 47 children attended the traditional Summer Camp of the Warsaw University of Technology in the town of Grybów. Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, employees of all categories continue to receive free services in the sections and training facilities of the Polytechnic Sports Center according to the agreed schedule. The children's swimming and climbing sections were actively attended by children and grandchildren of the university employees, in total there were almost 200 visits worth UAH 65 thousand.
he University and its Election Committee played a key role in creating conditions and ensuring the election of student delegates. This year, 21 out of 26 conferences and meetings of labor collectives at faculties, educational and research institutes and large units were held in person, 3 online and 2 in a mixed format.
The requirements of the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", the Charter and the Collective Agreement of KPI were met, all reports of the heads and heads of trade union bureaus at all levels were successful, and the Collective Agreements of the units were extended for one year.
The trade union committee and the meeting of representatives of delegates of faculties/educational and research institutes/divisions consider the rector's work for the reporting period satisfactory, the Collective Agreement as a whole fulfilled and recommend the Conference of the university staff to extend its validity for another year.
At a meeting of the University's Academic Council in October 2023, a prominent university professor, Yuriy Franzovych Zinkovskyi, who, by the will of fate and the call of his profession, worked in different parts of the former Soviet empire, spoke significantly about Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute: "Horses are not changed at the crossing." Like any other opinion, this one has the right to be, and it is quite possible that it would be better for the university in general. But, on the other hand, Yuriy Frantzevych testified that our Alma Mater is still at a crossroads. Unfortunately, the war is giving us a hint on how to overcome this crossing. To maximize the effectiveness of this process, it would be good to use simple principles that will allow us to develop the university's potential and become the impetus for a new strategy in Ukrainian education and science - the Strategy of Winners.
The first principle is to determine one's real place in the team, in society, in the economy, and to create and promote innovations as a start for further development. And the more soberly and objectively this is done, the more correct the next steps, action plan and growth strategy will be. You cannot be an innovator by reinventing the wheel.
The second principle aims to narrow down the areas of scientific and educational potential for the priority and accelerated development of the most promising and necessary industries at this historical moment. You can't be everywhere, you can't cover the unreachable, you have to be large-scale and deep in your field, in your topic. This also applies to various rankings. Because when a university falls in the rankings, we don't say anything about it; when the ranking hasn't grown for several years, we say that we have managed to stabilize the situation. But it is not uncommon for us to hold the top spot in the rankings without weight or reputation.
The third principle is aimed at looking around you and realizing that you are not the smartest, most talented, or most experienced. There are people around you with much higher professional and human qualities who do more and better than you. Your job is to accept this and not be afraid to ask for help or lend a hand. We are training the best young professionals in Ukraine, and we need to set a good example of teamwork and constructive cooperation.
The fourth requires courage. Courage similar to the spirit of the defenders on the front line, courage to have an opinion, courage not to be afraid of the truth, courage to recognize your mistakes in time and be able to correct them, courage to be yourself.
In our opinion, these principles are fully applicable to both individuals and institutions.
To summarize, the current situation with mobilization, events at the frontline, internal and external migration, and specific demands of the defense industry lead to the conclusion that women will be the main driving force behind the observance of these principles and the implementation of changes.
And finally, a few words about the election of the university rector. I am convinced that the staff wants to see the election process transparent, democratic, free and fair, without pressure and dirt, prepared provocations against any of the candidates. We will not choose a person, but a carrier of values, worldview and beliefs. We know and remember the past of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, we see and feel its present, and on June 11, 2024, when we will stay in the secret voting booth face to face with the ballot, we will choose the future of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute together with you. So, good luck to everyone!
Glory to Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute! Glory to the Armed Forces! Glory to Ukraine!
Report of the Chairman of the Trade Union Committee Mykhailo Bezuhlyi on the results of work and implementation of the Collective Agreement of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute for the period from April 2023 to April 2014.
Dear delegates of the Conference of the labor collective,
employees and applicants for higher education of the university, invited!
Of course, we would all like the current Staff Conference to have the hallmarks of the first post-war large gathering of university staff and students. However, the war continues, daily increasing the list of polytechnic heroes whom we honor together and should not forget. All-Ukrainian grief is multiplying, and the relative safety of the capital region should not be misleading for security and detachment. What we can afford at work and at home is the result of hard days without holidays and weekends of the defenders at the front, border guard brigades and mobile air and missile defense units. And only our total involvement in helping the army in various ways, in many accessible and feasible forms, can bring the much-anticipated Victory closer.
At the moment, 84 university employees are part of the units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine, in 2023 11 employees were commissioned and returned to work at the university, while 8 employees were mobilized. 56 university employees received a six-month reservation from the Ministry of Defense. Reservation is now an extremely complicated, sometimes overly bureaucratic process, and requires, first of all, organized military records of employees of military age. Very often, the qualifications and specialization of teachers without degrees are so high that the benefits of their participation in defense engineering projects at a university can be many times greater than the expediency of being subject to general mobilization. Technological superiority with a focus on the development and capacity building of the Ukrainian defense industry, which Chief of the Army Valeriy Zaluzhnyi had the courage to declare in the Economist, has already become an axiom of this war, understood by the military, recognized by politicians around the world, and which we, engineers, must create.
What the university, its structural units, organizations, teams, and individual employees and students are doing is truly impressive. While in 2022, the assistance to the army was more centralized through the staff and students, as well as the activities of the Kyiv Polytechnic Charitable Foundation, in 2023, we saw a decentralized model that was not limited to our purchases or donations to the foundation. And this targeted assistance, work on the manufacture of structures and experimental developments necessary for the army has increased many times over. Those who are able to create new engineering models were creating them, those whose specialty is physical and psychological recovery were rehabilitating them, those who have first aid skills were teaching colleagues and students, others were organizing cultural, sports, educational and awareness raising events and raising funds for KPI students on the front line. Most of them simply donated to the "Come Back Alive", Serhiy Prytula, "United 24" and many other funds. There are no indifferent people in KPI. At the same time, it remains important to develop a university-wide Strategy and Vision that would strengthen creative areas, raise funds to accelerate prototyping, and interact with all possible structures that are already successfully using other advanced Ukrainian developments. In this most difficult time of its existence and development, the university must reject everything unnecessary and destructive in its internal activities, simplify all forms of vertical and horizontal interaction, and, if you like, mobilize its own staff, students, and resources in a scientific and educational way so that each of us can demonstrate real daily commitment to the needs of defense. This is a homework assignment that we must complete in a timely and high-quality manner.
European integration processes require universities, especially those of KPI's caliber, to develop a national ideology and a step-by-step plan for rapid integration into the Western educational and scientific community. We should not be donors of human capital, we need to motivate and encourage young people. KPI has a 125-year tradition of forming fundamental knowledge and unique skills in entire generations of engineers, and the historical and geopolitical realities of today should push us to create new Sikorsky and Korolevs, Chelomeys and Lyulievs. Our task is not to miss the moment, to be flexible and inventive, to use the opportunities of European, American, Japanese, South Korean institutions and corporations to develop our own, KPI's, Ukrainian.
The socio-economic component of university life in wartime was not favorable. The sequestration of the educational budget in January 2023, in the middle of the academic year, canceled UAH 8.5 million of the university's monthly funding. This meant that we had to cut 680 positions, including 184 academic and 105 teaching and support positions. This decision hit the KPI staff and led to the transfer of teaching and support staff of many departments to part-time positions, reduction of vacancies, etc. The enrollment of 2023 was generally successful in both budgetary and contractual forms at all levels of education, and from October 1, we were returned 199 positions of academic staff and added UAH 13.6 million to the payroll with monthly accruals. However, this did not allow us to significantly increase the amount of funding to return to full-time positions in certain specialties. Unfortunately, the situation on the labor market in the last decade has not been conducive to recruiting those willing to study in knowledge-intensive specialties with enhanced mathematical and natural science training, which requires the development of asymmetric measures both at the intra-university level and proposals for their enhanced support and incentives at the ministerial and state levels. We have already learned how to work with those who have chosen chemistry, physics, mechanics, materials science, electronics, and communications: we have opened a bunch of clubs, organized hundreds of competitions, contests, hackathons, and challenges, individually tutor and adapt basic disciplines, open joint laboratories with industry leaders, and much more. It is unclear what additional guarantees and benefits can be used to maintain a steady demand for applicants for specialties that have probably the most powerful scientific schools and multimillion-dollar revenues from research and innovation. But water will not flow under a rock, because we are the leaders of technical education in the country with the largest connections in industry, IT, public administration, and now also in the military - this should be used in a total and systematic way, not only by asking, but also by offering and demanding.
The year 2024 began with a certain increase in social standards, in particular, the minimum wage increased on January 1, the salary of the first tariff category increased by 10.4%, and thus the salaries of all categories of university employees increased. The relevant resolution was approved by the Government on January 12 with a delay. It was also published late, which can be justifiably explained by the delay in decisions from European donor partners for budgetary education spending. However, its validity was normalized and our employees were awarded a raise in February, taking into account the additional payment for January. With full responsibility, I want to dispel some rumors that have begun to spread at the university about double salaries. There have been no official conversations, proposals, actions or decisions on this matter at various levels of the Ministry of Education and Science or the government. Behind-the-scenes talks about double salaries at KPI and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv have been going on since their introduction, so do not believe the latest horror stories and fakes, there are existing regulations and legal ways to defend them.
Traditionally, legislative reform initiatives to "improve" and "improve the quality" of higher education in Ukraine have caused concern and fear. The fact that the number of higher education institutions in the country is inflated with a gradual deterioration of the demographic situation was obvious both 10 and 20 years ago. And the fact that the country, and since the beginning of the war donor countries, cannot afford to finance such a network is also known. It is unclear why a roadmap for consolidation, modernization, optimization - whatever you want to call this process - has not been developed over the years, and the teams would have been informed. Then the risks of destruction of scientific schools during the merger would have been minimized, and the personnel policy would have been predictable.
Another challenge may be the introduction of a grant system for higher education for social sciences and humanities, IT, and some other fields of knowledge. The most important questions are how the maximum number of students enrolled under grants will be set and how much the cost of education should be raised, which should be no less than the state spends on training specialists at the appropriate level of education in a particular university. For Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, this cost has been over UAH 59 thousand for bachelors and masters, as well as UAH 46 thousand for full-time PhD students since January 1. Does the maximum grant cover these levels? No, it does not. Will applicants and their parents be ready to pay the difference at their own expense, and will this not lead to measures to reduce the salaries of teachers and staff? These questions are not rhetorical at all, and most likely Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, like all higher education institutions in the country, will have to adapt to these changes very quickly, make appropriate calculations and develop measures to make education more financially attractive. Simple dumping, which we used to resort to for certain specialties, will not be enough.
The long-suffering Labor Code, which, as a relic of the Soviet era, has been trying to be rewritten for over 30 years. And if earlier this process was either accelerated or slowed down depending on the personal needs of the oligarchs, now the reason for martial law has become just a pretext to "tighten the screws" on workers' rights. The latest version of the Code caused a negative reaction not only from national trade unions, but also from European institutions. After all, the Euro-Atlantic path provides for broad rights for employees and trade unions representing them, as well as full involvement of labor collectives in management processes in institutions and enterprises, and significant freedoms in terms of social priorities, standards and control over their observance. I would like to believe that these inconsistencies are the reasons why the new draft law was suspended in the Verkhovna Rada.
Changes continued in the management of university departments. In 2023, a competition for the positions of heads was held at 12 university departments, and 6 new deans of faculties/directors of institutes were elected.
The commissions and councils approved by the decisions of the previous Staff Conference performed their functions in accordance with the current legislation. In 2023, 19 meetings of the Staff Council on Housing and Social Affairs were held. They considered 380 applications for temporary accommodation of employees and university graduates in dormitories. There were no comments or complaints about the work of the Council. The Labor Disputes Commission did not receive any appeals or applications in 2023.
During the reporting year, the administration of sick leave at the university was carried out mainly according to the electronic register. However, there were also isolated cases of paper forms due to system failures due to hacker attacks. In 2023, 1192 (almost 10% less than in 2022) insured persons issued 4104 sick leaves (10% more than in 2022). The number of days of incapacity for work paid for by the KPI's payroll amounted to 9077 (up 11%), with the total number of days being 30 520 (up 4%). In connection with pregnancy and childbirth, 26 university employees were granted paid leave. The Pension Fund paid only one lump-sum funeral benefit in the amount of UAH 4,100. In accordance with clause 2.6.1 of the Collective Agreement, 126 employees received such payments from the Trade Union for a total of UAH 458,710, which is 20% more than in 2022. In 2023, 4 inquiries were sent to medical institutions and 6 appeals were sent to the Pension Fund regarding the correctness of issuing and extending sick leave, resolving disputes, etc.
It should be recalled that for the third year in a row, the team has not received a single penny of funding from the university, as provided for in Article 44 of the Law of Ukraine "On Trade Unions, Their Rights and Guarantees of Activity". The reality is that this is no longer the responsibility of the university administration and is now its right, and the right, as we know, requires good will. The above items of expenditures in the interests of KPI employees and students were provided from our own revenues, charitable contributions and assistance from partners.
The issue of health improvement of employees and their families became somewhat more active in 2023: the accumulated fatigue and old diseases were noticeable. The Group provided 31 health resort vouchers with a 50% reimbursement, with the discount amounting to UAH 222,259, and 24 vouchers for summer recreation with a 20% discount for a total compensation amount of UAH 70,950. Summer health resort recreation and rehabilitation will continue in 2024 under the same conditions without limiting the number of people. The university recreation centers were not functional in 2023, but in 2024, employees and students may return to rest at the Polytechnic, at least preparations are being made for this.
Unfortunately, as a result of rocket attacks on the capital's region, the university employees' homes continued to be destroyed. In accordance with the decision of 2022, we continued to partially compensate for the damage, depending on the degree of damage to the housing.
In 2023, children's recreation took place in the Verkhovyna and Carpathian Dawns children's camps for 26 employees' children, and another 47 children attended the traditional Summer Camp of the Warsaw University of Technology in the town of Grybów. Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, employees of all categories continue to receive free services in the sections and training facilities of the Polytechnic Sports Center according to the agreed schedule. The children's swimming and climbing sections were actively attended by children and grandchildren of the university employees, in total there were almost 200 visits worth UAH 65 thousand.
he University and its Election Committee played a key role in creating conditions and ensuring the election of student delegates. This year, 21 out of 26 conferences and meetings of labor collectives at faculties, educational and research institutes and large units were held in person, 3 online and 2 in a mixed format.
The requirements of the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", the Charter and the Collective Agreement of KPI were met, all reports of the heads and heads of trade union bureaus at all levels were successful, and the Collective Agreements of the units were extended for one year.
The trade union committee and the meeting of representatives of delegates of faculties/educational and research institutes/divisions consider the rector's work for the reporting period satisfactory, the Collective Agreement as a whole fulfilled and recommend the Conference of the university staff to extend its validity for another year.
At a meeting of the University's Academic Council in October 2023, a prominent university professor, Yuriy Franzovych Zinkovskyi, who, by the will of fate and the call of his profession, worked in different parts of the former Soviet empire, spoke significantly about Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute: "Horses are not changed at the crossing." Like any other opinion, this one has the right to be, and it is quite possible that it would be better for the university in general. But, on the other hand, Yuriy Frantzevych testified that our Alma Mater is still at a crossroads. Unfortunately, the war is giving us a hint on how to overcome this crossing. To maximize the effectiveness of this process, it would be good to use simple principles that will allow us to develop the university's potential and become the impetus for a new strategy in Ukrainian education and science - the Strategy of Winners.
The first principle is to determine one's real place in the team, in society, in the economy, and to create and promote innovations as a start for further development. And the more soberly and objectively this is done, the more correct the next steps, action plan and growth strategy will be. You cannot be an innovator by reinventing the wheel.
The second principle aims to narrow down the areas of scientific and educational potential for the priority and accelerated development of the most promising and necessary industries at this historical moment. You can't be everywhere, you can't cover the unreachable, you have to be large-scale and deep in your field, in your topic. This also applies to various rankings. Because when a university falls in the rankings, we don't say anything about it; when the ranking hasn't grown for several years, we say that we have managed to stabilize the situation. But it is not uncommon for us to hold the top spot in the rankings without weight or reputation.
The third principle is aimed at looking around you and realizing that you are not the smartest, most talented, or most experienced. There are people around you with much higher professional and human qualities who do more and better than you. Your job is to accept this and not be afraid to ask for help or lend a hand. We are training the best young professionals in Ukraine, and we need to set a good example of teamwork and constructive cooperation.
The fourth requires courage. Courage similar to the spirit of the defenders on the front line, courage to have an opinion, courage not to be afraid of the truth, courage to recognize your mistakes in time and be able to correct them, courage to be yourself.
In our opinion, these principles are fully applicable to both individuals and institutions.
To summarize, the current situation with mobilization, events at the frontline, internal and external migration, and specific demands of the defense industry lead to the conclusion that women will be the main driving force behind the observance of these principles and the implementation of changes.
And finally, a few words about the election of the university rector. I am convinced that the staff wants to see the election process transparent, democratic, free and fair, without pressure and dirt, prepared provocations against any of the candidates. We will not choose a person, but a carrier of values, worldview and beliefs. We know and remember the past of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, we see and feel its present, and on June 11, 2024, when we will stay in the secret voting booth face to face with the ballot, we will choose the future of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute together with you. So, good luck to everyone!
Glory to Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute! Glory to the Armed Forces! Glory to Ukraine!