5 Million Zlotys for Consolidation of UO and Medical School

- It is a major success,' says Jarosław Kubiak (on the photo), director of the recently established Office for Research and Project Management at the University of Opole, who supervised the work of many people on the application for the competition announced by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. - The effort of the employees operating in the fourteen areas we identified at the university and of the leaders of these areas was recognized. We developed a detailed plan - first, the preparations for the merger of the universities, then its implementation, and finally the integration stage - because now we have to start to function as a single, well-coordinated organism, above all on the level of interpersonal relations. All of this has produced the expected effect and success in the ministerial competition in which we, as a university, participated.

The project areas were created in accordance with the natural division of functions at the university, so among the fourteen areas there are: the Rector, the Chancellery, HR and payroll, finance, the library, the publishing house, teaching, enrolment, science, Medical Simulation Centres, the IT Centre, the Foreign Language Centre, the Physical Education Centre or promotion.

Weeks of arduous work resulted in a detailed list of tasks assigned to specific people, carried out on specific dates and priced. All in all, these activities formed the project that the Ministry of Science and Higher Education accepted and decided to finance a significant - compared to the amount requested - part of it.

We were granted PLN 5 million for activities related to the process of consolidation of our university.

 - Probably without this project, the consolidation process would have taken place anyway, because it was decided months and and it simply has to be done,' says Jarosław Kubiak. - However, the fact that we started to write the project meant that each of the members of the team, having to plan, stagger and write down their activities in the area for which they are responsible, began to predict in detail what might happen and what they will have to deal with. We are therefore no longer threatened by the proverbial fire-fighting, and if it is, it will certainly be smaller, because the relevant actions have been planned, the tasks are clearly timed and priced. Now they must be carried out consistently.

To put it simply, it can be said that the PLN 5 million obtained in the competition of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education is the money which will help finance the gigantic work which the whole team of the merged universities had to do and is still doing, in addition to their daily duties, specifically in connection with the merger.

- Probably life will verify some details of the project assumptions we have adopted, but the general rule is this: we do not allow the option that we will not fulfil a certain task,' points out Kubiak. - We will certainly carry them out, perhaps in a slightly different way from what was originally planned, perhaps modified, but in such a way that the whole project can be settled according to the procedures,' he stresses.

We have one year to implement the project - the planned deadline for completion is the end of October 2021.