Kemijske znanosti

The evaluated doctoral study program Chemical Sciences educates well trained experts in the fields of chemistry, chemical engineering and biochemistry, who are highly employable, and their employment in industry represents an important link with the faculty for future collaboration and research. Good research infrastructure is available and additional research infrastructure and equipment is available at participating research institutes and within international networks. The student-centered approach of teaching enables tailoring the study contents to the needs of students with regards to their stream of study and the subject of their dissertations. Doctoral dissertations were in general found of good or high quality and students as well as their mentors are active in publishing their research result in international journals. Academic staff was found highly motivated despite mentioned overload which arises from teaching duties, but also from administrative work. This arises in part also from some procedures, which appear overregulated, such as for example selection and approval of the doctoral dissertation topic. Administrative staff was found very supportive in assiting students during their study as well as in supoorting academic staff in their work. One of the weaknesses of the self evaluations of the program, which are carried out on anual basis, is the small number of students participating in annual questionnaires, which also complicates the retrieval of students' satisfaction with the program. No formal engagement of stakeholders in the evaluation process has been notified. Study program changes are made individually but not comprehensively monitored by the internal quality assurance system at the level of the institution. Furthermore, monitoring of changes is not documented. This results in several opportunities for improvement and even in one non-compliance, which needs to be addressed and overcome. The group of experts has particularly exposed: - no participation of stakeholder other than academic staff in adopting measures for improvement of the program or in monitoring their implementation. - inadequate informing of stakeholders from outside the institution, who as a consequence do not provide feedback needed for improvement of the content, structure and delivery of the study programme, - students are not actively engaged in actual preparation of self evaluation reports. This leaves the quality loop not completely closed, since there is no feedback to or from all stakeholders assured. Students and stakeholders outside the institution are not engaged in actual preparation of self evaluation reports. In the self evaluation reports the opinion of students is not considered statistically relevant and therefore not taken as the basis for taking the measures leading to improvements. In addition: - no clear statement is made in the admission criteria that students need to present a draft of a doctoral research proposal and a supervisor for this proposal before their admission, - no quantitative indicators for reaching specific goals arising from self-evaluation reports, and no time deadlines are specified, - study program changes are made individually but not comprehensively monitored by the internal quality assurance system at the level of the institution. No effective actions are taken to update the changes in course syllabi or improve the study program based on the needs of the stakeholders outside university. These actions, which by themselves represent important improvements, should in addition include rather opportunities for improvement suggested by the group of experts in their report.