Looking back at what year 2023 brought, it can be said with certainty that for the Faculty of Physical Culture (FPC) the past year was marked by fostering international cooperation. In October last year, an article about the collaboration with our partner institution Camosun College was published, but the efforts of FPC did not stop there. Working closely with Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Finland was also undoubtedly a significant aim of FPC during the past year.
Haaga-Helia (HH) has been one of our prominent partner institutions since 2014 and it is continuing to be a very popular destination among our students, who wish to study abroad. Especially students of the Adapted Physical Activities (APA) have annually participated in the prestigious study programme EUDAPA (European University Diploma in Adapted Physical Activity) organized by our Finnish partner.
The biannual event called International Teaching Week (ITW), which takes place at the Faculty of Physical Culture, presents a wonderful opportunity to connect our Czech academics with their international counterparts, and in some cases it can even lead to a string of consecutive international visits, which result in deepening an existing collaboration and starting new joint projects. In April 2023, a Finnish lecturer Milla Reponen participated in the 21st ITW, where, aside from giving lectures on sensorimotor development, she led also a practical session focused on hydrobic. Subsequently, an international affairs specialist, Noora Viljanen, came from HH to be a part of the International Staff Week, which Palacký University organizes twice a year for international officers from our partner institutions. To find out more about the impact of Noora’s visit to Olomouc, read the captivating article she wrote about her travel. By the end of the year, representatives of both universities met again at the FPC to collaborate on a proposal of a joint project, which is to follow in the footsteps of the successful concept of the EUDAPA project.
The staff of the FPC also paid several visits to HH last year. Already during the first three months of 2023, Ondřej Ješina and Julie Wittmannová from the Department of Adapted Physical Activities, visited the Finnish university to teach there within the aforementioned EUDAPA project. In May, two other employees, this time from the International Relations Office FPC, participated in the Finnish Staff Week, where they broadened their horizons in the field of internationalization and got an insight into the internal administrative processes of their partner university. This had a very positive impact on ensuring a smoother course of the administration of study exchange mobilities, and improving the quality of the study and internship offer for students of both universities. And lastly in October, a member of the APA department, Ladislav Baloun, took part in the first run of an international event organized by HH, called International Teacher Week. He summarized his experience from this trip in a short enticing report, which you can read here.
