Dr. Zsuzsanna Rozmer, Vice-Dean for Education and Student Welfare at the University of Pécs Faculty of Pharmacy considers education and contact with students a matter of the heart. She believes that doing the bare minimum is not enough, there must be development and improvement, best practices must be conserved in order to make the pharmacy training in Pécs attractive for both current and future students.
The leadership of the Faculty of Pharmacy underwent changes on October 1, 2023. Dr. András Fittler replaced dr. Lajos Botz as dean, and dr. Zsuzsanna Rozmer, dr. Krisztián Kvell and dr. Szilárd Pál will support his work as vice-deans. Their final appointment happened in May 2024.
“As vice dean for education and student welfare, my main task is supporting the work of our dean with tasks connected to faculty leadership, specifically directing, overseeing, coordinating and developing gradual and post-gradual courses and application processes. I am also responsible for maintaining cooperative connections with the assigned leaders of similar fields at partner universities” – introduced her work dr. Zsuzsanna Rozmer, who also participates in the meeting of the UP Education Committee and Education Development Committee.
As she said, she is a member of the Curriculum and Credit Transfer Committees, is in active contact with the Education Committee, Registrar’s Office, Feedback Committee, the vice dean for education of the medical School, and also year representatives and students. She is also responsible for the overseeing of cross-education, dropout and mentoring matters. Aside from regular, plannable matters, many ad hoc topics are also part of her everyday work, like provision of data, student matters, problems to solve by the university leadership.
“We have determined several goals with dr. András Fittler dean, dr. Szilárd Pál vice-Dean for Organisational Development and Relations and dr. Krisztián Kvell vice-Dean for General Affairs, Science and Innovation, in order to not only achieve the bare minimum, but to be effective, to develop and improve” – emphasized dr. Zsuzsanna Rozmer, adding that they are planning to start courses granting micro-certificates in the future.
“We need to preserve best practices, but there is also a need for development in order to make the faculty attractive for both current and future students – and in the meantime, provide them with knowledge and skills that they can use to thrive after university” – she highlighted.
As she said, keeping in contact with students is made easier by having many classes – she teaches a lot, so she meets a lot of students daily. “Even before I was granted the position of a vice-dean, I was chatting a lot with students, and I think my relationship with them is good, they trust me and turn to me with their questions and problems. I have always tried to help them, but now that it has become my task in this position, I can take on a bigger part in the actual solutions – which is of course a big challenge” – she added.
Dr. Zsuzsanna Rozmer highlighted that since education and keeping in touch with students has been a matter of the heart for her, she is happy to work in this area. She added, that she sees the balancing of tasks between teaching, being a supervisor, doing research, being a the head of a department, working as a vice-dean and being the mother of three as the biggest and hardest challenge.
Dr. Zsuzsanna Rozmer supports the work of multiple graduating, TDK and PhD students as a thesis supervisor each year, aside from practical education and classroom lectures.
“Our work deals with the analysis of curcuminoid- and calcon derivatives. We subject the synthesized solutions to biological analysis at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. The derivatives have promising anti-tumour capacities, and our goal is mapping the mechanisms in the background of this effect, which is a highly complex task. At the same time, we also determine the physical-chemical parameters of the solutions – like solubility, lipophilicity, permeability, protein binding capability, chemical reactivity –, since these characteristics strongly influence the fate, bioavailability, and pharmacokinetics of a chemical or possible drug molecule in the system. As a result of these analyses, we can get a complex picture about the newly created molecules.”