Summary

The publication you are holding in your hands is the first issue of a series of periodicals that we intend to produce from time to time, hopefully on an annual basis. The aim is to give us the opportunity to reflect on the results, issues, data and trends that tend to go unnoticed in our everyday life at the faculty, and to see them collected and curated, states Professor Gabriella Medvegy, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, in her introduction.

The number of female students and international students joining our faculty is increasing. This growing presence of women in the field of engineering is leading to a completely new mindset, which is a crucial element for progress. In the spring semester of the 2021/2022 academic year, 716 female students (155 international students and 561 Hungarian students) took part in the engineering courses offered by the faculty. The first English education in architecture was launched in 2013, and in the nine years since then, this has grown to twelve programmes of study which are available in English. Currently, 20% of our students are from abroad with 426 international students enrolled in the current academic year.

Student feedback on teaching is a useful tool for the evaluating the effectiveness of teaching. In the first semester of the 2021/2022 academic year Dr Attila Széll and Dr Tamás Molnár were ranked as the Best Teachers of the Year based on student feedback.

In our magazine, we interviewed two retiring lecturers, Dr Ildikó Perjésiné Hámori, who has been working at Pollack for more than 40 years. “My field of study is didactics of mathematics in higher education. The knowledge of humankind, mathematics and engineering are changing at an exponential rate, meaning we have to find the delicate balance and educate students not to accept everything as fact, but to search for the why,” says Dr. Ildikó Perjésiné Hámori.

Dr Ildikó Jancskárné Anweiler graduated as a chemical engineer, then became a computer systems engineer and obtained her PhD in computer science. In 1990, she joined the Pollack Mihály Technical College where she is now an associate professor. “I’ve always been looking for ways to make even difficult theoretical lectures more interesting and understandable, so I bring a lot of examples into the classroom to show students where an algorithm is relevant,” says Dr. Ildikó Jancskárné Anweiler.

Two members of staff working in the Dean’s Office are also featured in the magazine. Annamária Kukai, who “knows everything in the TO (Registry Office)”, has been working at the faculty since 2012 and is now head of the Registry Office. As she says, her success is not measured in student competition results, but in solving student problems. Marianna Regdon, the “Mechanical Engineer Mum”, has been a member of the faculty for 40 years and is currently responsible for the administration of the two mechanical engineering departments. “I can’t resist addressing the student who is dithering in the corridor and doesn’t have the courage to open the door,” she says. In MIK-KOR, we also present details of the faculty’s research groups, specifically the Medical Engineering Research Team, where engineers develop medical instruments of the future. The magazine also reports on the faculty’s infrastructure developments, including the renovation and expansion of lecture halls and laboratories, and the work of the student council, including programmes for international students. These are aimed at strengthening the relationship between international and Hungarian students, addressing the interests and needs of foreign students, and developing English-language communication channels. The journal also reports on the experiences of two lecturers teaching abroad, Tamás Juhász in Denver and Ákos Hutter in Wuhan. The placement of Tamás Juhász also aims to build a better functioning student exchange programme between the two institutions. Dr Ákos Hutter, who represents our school of architecture at the HBUT Arts and Design School in Wuhan, says: “The Chinese university management gives its lecturers freedom in terms of curriculum design, which means that we are able to shape the possibilities for transferring and deepening knowledge, freely adapting the Hungarian and European approach to architectural education”.

Finally, you can read interviews with two foreign students in MIK-KOR, and we also report on the launch of the faculty’s alumni website (alumni.mik.pte.hu), which, in addition to current news and interesting profiles, allows Pollack graduates to network and connect companies with their potential employees.

www.mik.pte.hu