Senate: Corvinus 2023 annual report adopted

At its meeting on 7 May, the Senate discussed three agendas and voted in writing on three issues on the same day.  

The amendment of two points in the Senate’s Rules of Procedure was unanimously supported. Since March, the university has had a new foreign senator, Stanley Allen Ward Jr. master lecturer, that is why it was necessary to modify the working language of the body. Meetings are held in English, with the possibility of contributions in Hungarian, and simultaneous interpretation is provided on request until the next cycle of the Senate. Furthermore, it has been added to the Rules of Procedure that in cases of extreme urgency, a proposal may be submitted beyond the deadline, but no later than 72 hours before the date of the meeting, in which case it is possible to submit proposed amendments until the 24th hour before the Senate meeting. 

The senators made a decision in a personal matter, too: they supported the awarding of the title of Professor Emeritus to József Tóth, Professor of the Institute of Sustainable Development. József Tóth, who defended his academic doctoral thesis this year, was the head of the Department of Agricultural Economics for four years, deputy dean of the Corvinus Business School for eight years, and is still a committed and active member of his department and institute. In addition to his extensive teaching, research and public activities, he plays an active role in mentoring the young generation.  

Under the last item on the agenda, the Senate agreed to amend Annex 1 of the Statutes of the Student Union, creating a new, separate category of ‘colleges for advanced studies’ in the student organisation accreditation procedure to support the value-creating activities of colleges for advanced studies.  

On the day of the 7 May session, senators voted in writing on three other issues, too, which was necessary because submissions took place beyond the deadline.  Technical clarifications were introduced in the Quality Manual already adopted by the Senate, therefore the decision had to be confirmed again. In the case of mobility programmes financed from funds other than Erasmus+, the University must take certain steps within tight deadlines, therefore – in the lack of programme-specific rules – the provisions of the Regulations on Partial Training Abroad must be extended to cover funding and mobility applications for the 2024/2025 academic year.  

A written vote was also taken on the adoption of the University’s 2023 annual report, accounting report and public benefit report. Speaking before the closing of the vote, Chancellor Ákos Domahidi said that this was the first year when the report was prepared in this new form, providing lots of information to the general public. He stressed that the University – similarly to the previous three years – ended year 2023 with operating savings, which will allow them to finance the development programmes of the institution development plan. The auditors’ report did not contain any comments and the public benefit report is also positive. 

In a written vote, the Senate supported all three proposals. 

After the agenda, the Senators were informed about the results of the end of the cycle of the Academic Career Model (ACM) and the start of the new cycle.  Ágnes Zsóka Vice-Rector for Academic Development summarised the situation by saying that on the basis of the data of the 6 semesters, in terms of teaching load, the vast majority of colleagues with a completed career cycle met (and more than half of them actually exceeded) the expectations.  She added that in the first cycle they could only rely on the HalVel/MyView results in the assessment of the quality of education, but in the next cycle they will rely on the data of the comprehensive, complex evaluation system of Corvinus Teaching Excellence. Ágnes Zsóka pointed out that research performance has increased spectacularly over the past three years at university level: the number of publications has tripled and articles are published in journals of increasingly high quality – about three quarters of the colleagues have met or even exceeded publication expectations in terms of quantity and/or quality. The Vice-Rector added that more and more colleagues are able to meet the renewed criteria of academic advancement based on international practice. In the next period, 35% of academic staff will have a teaching focus, 43% will have a balanced focus and 22% will continue working with a research focus. 

After that, Zsuzsanna Csenterics, Head of HR, gave some information on the base salary development in the academic area in 2024, which was differentiated on the basis of objective data from the closing of the ACM cycle, along a uniform set of criteria and on the basis of individual performance. At the meeting, there were some questions about IT problems occurring during the Students’ Scientific Association competition. In his response, Márton Barta said that the IT area was working on the creation of a new platform to replace Moodle, in order to solve the difficulties that have existed for years. Also in response to a senator’s question, Chancellor Ákos Domahidi summarised that the University would spend more than 50% of the HUF 1.5 billion development support provided by the maintainer until the end of June 2025 on educational development, while HUF 450 million would be spent on investments in infrastructure, renovation of buildings and IT developments.  

At the end of the meeting, Acting Rector Lajos Szabó presented the written information provided by the Secretary of the Board of Trustees regarding applications for the Rector’s position. Four candidates answered the international call, and only one of them met the requirements of the Act on National Higher Education and the minimum requirements for university professors specified by the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. The other three candidates either lacked the minimum academic performance required for the position of university professor in Hungary, or did not have sufficient experience in higher education leadership. Senators were able to learn the details in the explanation, without names. Lajos Szabó concluded by saying that the next meeting of the Senate would be held on 22 May, where the Senate would hold an advisory vote on the basis of the proposal of the Academic Tenure and Promotion Committee and the ad hoc committee assisting the Senate’s assessment of the applications for the rector’s position.