30 let FP

Apart from teaching chemistry, we also provide science teaching and two engineering study programmes: Nanotechnology and Bioengineering. To be specific, Nanotechnology is led under the Faculty of Mechatronics and Interdisciplinary Studies. What’s more, we also provide teaching about the environment and global issues for the entire university.

The Department of German has a young working team, foreign teachers and lecturers (DAAD). We have close working contacts with the University of Dresden (TUD and Mittleuropazentrum), and we help arrange foreign scholarships that can also be taken as part of a given study programme.

The Department of Czech Language and Literature was set up as an independent department in 1992. Right from the start, the department’s members focused their scientific research activities on regional issues.

The Department of English arose from the English section of the then Department of Social Sciences and Languages. Right from the start, it had a distinctively international character. At that time, it was taught by three Czech teachers and otherwise by foreign lecturers from organizations such as the British Council, the United States Information Service (USIS), the East European Partnership and the Peace Corps. Some foreign lecturers have made significant contributions to the department’s profile. Elements of the teaching program for academic writing by American lecturer Donna Sarvay are still used by the department today. Back in 2003, another American lecturer - Kevin Mactavish - was already using Moodle extensively, and, thanks to his inspiration, the department was one of the pioneers of this electronic form of teaching at the university. Nowadays, too, the department’s staff is very international.

In August 1991, in an atmosphere of concern for the joint state, the first seminar on Czech-Slovak relations was held in Liberec. It was initiated by the Czech-Slovak Understanding Movement and organized by the staff of the newly created Faculty of Education in Liberec, the North Bohemian Museum and the Institute for Contemporary History of the CAS. This created a traditional event that is unique not least for its long-term continuity.

In the first years of its existence, the department carried out a service function and taught social sciences for the University of Mechanical and Textile Engineering. The Department of Philosophy was incorporated into the newly created Faculty of Education and began, in line with the idea behind the university, to provide teaching in the social sciences at all of the Technical University’s faculties apart from the Faculty of Architecture. It is also involved in teaching at the Centre for Continuing Education and the Institute of Health Studies.

When the Faculty of Education was set up in the summer of 1990, the Department of Physics was one of the Faculty’s founding departments. A separate Department of Physics had been established in 1962.

The Department of Education and Psychology draws on both its tradition and the many areas of its current creative activity. Through its activities, it endeavours to be part of a multilayered professional dialogue with other departments at the TUL Faculty of Education that have pedagogical practice as well as with "its" students.

There had been a complete lack of teacher training in Liberec since 1964, when the Pedagogical Institute was abolished. This meant there were not enough qualified teachers in the region. Thus, the creation of a new institution to provide teacher training was a foregone conclusion. The founding charter was signed at the meeting of the Academic Senate of the College of Engineering and Textiles of VŠST on 10 July 1990. The first dean of the then Faculty of Education was the mathematician doc. Václav Pecina.

The first year of the newly set up faculty saw 516 applicants apply. At the end of July 1990, there was an admission procedure to select 64 students to enter the four-year master's degree in teaching for the second stage of primary school beginning on 1 October 1990. Four years later, the summer of 1994 saw the first 23 students to graduate.