Tasks of modern univeristy teacher

Main tasks of modern university teacher can be principally divided into three categories:

1. The traditional university teacher

2. Academic researcher

3. Applied researcher who works at the interface of science and work life.

These tasks overlap each others more often than previously: universities encourage researchers and teacher to multidisciplinarity and applied research, so the university teacher's task is increasingly diverse. Academic researcher can no longer be only a pure scholar, as well as university teacher cannot be anymore just pure teacher. I feel personally that this trend is very welcome: no-one can no longer do purely one thing in nowadays world, and work life requires wide variety of skills and competencies.

This division of three of tasks of modern university teacher works in best case, if a university teacher, which also makes academic research, can also be involved in enterprise-development projects. But in real life, this is never achieved situation but a compromise of all these three tasks.

Similarly, academic researcher works in best case could directly import latest academic research results into teaching and education. This also works the other way around; education can bring new points into work of academic researcher. My opinion is that this topic is far too rarely taken into discussions about education. In best case, thoughts and ideas expressed by students can have influence to research as well. This just requires teacher´s own activity and self-reflectance of his/her own teachership.

There are no longer an academic researcher sitting alone inside in their academic rooms doing their own academic study but nowadays society requires researchers to be involved more and more in industrial projects. Also broader understanding of expertise area than just theoretical knowledge is required. This is also valid for demands of nowadays education. When academic researcher co-operates with industry, he/she also gains better understanding of how today's experts should look like; what he/she should be able to do, how he/she should act in work life and what skills work life requires from him/her. In this way, university education is interactively able to meet nowadays business challenges of life and to increase students' readiness for working life.