Academic Affairs Department

The Academic Affairs Department coordinates the work of the university's departments and of the relevant units and services in training specialists, and plans, monitors and manages the teaching process. It analyses the work of other higher education institutions, studies and draws together good practice in the field, and brings modern, innovative teaching methods into the teaching process.

The department works under the Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs, together with the deans' offices and the academic departments, and reports to the Vice-Rector on its current work. Its staff are organised in three groups (below).

• ensuring that the regulatory documents for the teaching process are well prepared and fully applied;
• organising the teaching process well, and providing and improving its methodological support;
• carrying out teaching and educational work on the basis of the curricula and syllabi;
• drawing up the academic calendar for each year, organising the timetables and supplying the teaching process with the regulatory documents it needs;
• introducing the rating system of assessment, test-based assessment and other effective methods that raise the quality of teaching;
• ensuring and monitoring the proper use of classrooms and lecture halls;
• drawing conclusions on students' progress, analysing the results of the final state examinations and reporting on them to the University Council;
• helping to prepare information and draft decisions on academic matters for the University Council, the rectorate's meetings and the Academic and Methodological Council;
• monitoring and analysing how the deans' offices, the academic departments and other units carry out the orders, decisions, instructions and recommendations of higher authorities on teaching, as well as the decisions of the Academic Council and the rector's orders and instructions;
• contributing proposals for developing the teaching process and its facilities;
• making sure that units and departments are supplied in time with group registers, teachers' individual work plans, grade books, student ID cards and academic forms;
• organising regular seminars, training sessions and consultations with those responsible for teaching in the departments and faculties on bringing modern information and new teaching technologies into teaching;
• determining the student body;
• checking that the deans' offices and academic departments are ready for the new academic year.

The group is led by the head of the department. It gathers data on the teaching process, prepares analyses and draft orders and instructions of the rector aimed at improving teaching, and develops proposals and recommendations for raising the quality of education. Its tasks also include:

• collecting, analysing and monitoring data on students' attendance and progress;
• organising the work of the state examination boards;
• ensuring that the curriculum is fulfilled and that independent study hours are used effectively;
• organising students' work placements;
• passing the management's instructions on to the heads of department and the teaching staff;
• studying the achievements, good practice and methods of the university's departments and of other higher education institutions in organising teaching, and introducing them at the university.

• applying the curricula in force, the decisions of the University Council, the management's instructions and the state educational standards to teaching;
• organising the preparation of working curricula;
• planning teaching loads and distributing them among the teaching staff;
• monitoring and analysing how the departments fulfil their teaching loads by academic year and semester;
• drawing up the schedules of all types of classes, of mid-term and final assessments and of the final state examination boards;
• drawing up the department's annual work plan, the university's academic calendar, the plan of the year's main organisational events, and the schedules of teaching inspections, peer observation and open lessons.

The group works to raise the teaching skills and potential of the academic staff and to improve the training of qualified teachers. It sends teachers, according to the list approved by the ministry, to the regional professional development and retraining centres set up at the Head Scientific and Methodological Centre and at base universities, and checks that their teaching loads are planned accordingly.

To share the new competences of teachers who have passed the courses' assessment, it organises open lessons, seminars, training sessions and master classes; teachers who did not pass are given the opportunity to retake the course and the assessment.