The Jan Kochanowski University (JKU) in Kielce is the only university of Świętokrzyskie region, and one of Poland’s twenty universities. It provides workplaces for 1,637 employees, including 909 university teachers, out of whom 243 hold academic titles of professors or degrees of doctors habilitated, and 442 hold doctoral degrees. The University has the rights to confer doctoral degrees in eleven disciplines, and degrees of doctor habilitated in two disciplines. It has 16,310 undergraduates, 155 doctoral students, and 666 postgraduates. The JKU offers 9 doctoral programmes as well as education in 34 fields of study at first- and second-cycle level, with almost as many as 150 specialties in a variety of disciplines in the humanities, social science, arts, medical science, natural sciences and exact sciences. The University comprises 7 Faculties: Humanities, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Education and Arts, Management and Administration, as well as Faculties of Language Studies and History, and Social Science at the University’s Branch in Piotrków Trybunalski.
The University has been methodically expanding and updating its research and teaching facilities by making efficient use of European Union’s structural funds. For example, over PLN 300 million has been used to expand the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, the Centre for Arts Education within the structures of the Faculty of Education and Arts, the Foreign Language Centre at the Faculty of Humanities, the Centre for Business and Entrepreneurship of the Faculty of Management and Administration, and the Main Library. Projects worth almost PLN 40 million, related to comprehensive expansion of the University’s ICT infrastructure and implementation of the integrated IT university management system have been completed. Special stress has been laid on providing state-of-the-art equipment for research and teaching faculty laboratories.
The work of the University gives a considerable boost to the region’s development by providing education to the young and involvement of the academic circles in the cultural, scientific, economic and social life. These tasks acquire special significance for knowledge-based economy. The University’s leading role is that of a centre which brings together and produces intellectual elites, conducting scientific research, inspiring new technological solutions and supporting the building of regional identity: these values are consistently stressed in the fundamental documents which define development strategies for Świętokrzyskie region.
Rector of the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce
Prof. Jacek Semaniak, Ph.D. habil.
