As of 1 April, there are fourteen new members of staff at Masaryk University working at its individual faculties, the CEITEC MU research centre and the Teiresias Centre.
Among the new assistant professors is Oksana Stupak, who has joined the Department of Educational Sciences at the MU Faculty of Arts. In Ukraine, she used to work at a university in the Donbas region. Last September she relocated to Kyiv where she worked at the National Pedagogical Drahomanov University. “From October 2021 to February this year, I collaborated with assistant professor Markéta Košatková from the MU Faculty of Education on implementing a project called ‘Modernisation of educational courses with interactive digital tools for students of pedagogical disciplines’. This is how my cooperation with Masaryk University started,” Stupak explains.
The Faculty of Arts selected her from among the applications conveyed by MUNI HELPS based on her expertise and previous good experience working with Masaryk University. Oksana Stupak is interested in the economics of education, andragogy and social pedagogy. The Department of Educational Sciences of the Faculty of Arts will engage her mainly in teaching roles at the moment; in the future, she could be involved in the systematic support of schools that are educating Ukrainian children.
“I am very grateful to the Czech government, to all Czech citizens and also to Masaryk University for their support of the Ukrainian people. The only problem I have at work now is my insufficient knowledge of the Czech language. I’ve been getting by using English so far, but I have already started learning Czech,” adds the new Ukrainian assistant professor.
Svitlana Iemelianova will join the MU Faculty of Science as a researcher at the Department of Botany and Zoology. At the beginning of March, she fled to Brno from Kyiv where she worked at the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany. “I mainly focus on vegetation classification, the ecology of plant communities and biogeographical vegetation patterns. Ukrainian scientists are receiving strong support from their Czech colleagues, so I had the opportunity to come here to Masaryk University. I am grateful especially to Professor Milan Chytrý for his help,” explains Iemelianova.
In addition to the aforementioned two faculties, the Faculty of Sports Studies, the Faculty of Social Studies and the Faculty of Medicine have also welcomed new staff members from Ukraine.
You can still help Ukrainian students and academics by donating money through Masaryk University to support educational and humanitarian efforts. You can make a donation through the MUNI Shopping Centre. You can find out how much money has been collected so far on the MUNI HELPS website.