A friendly environment, help, service, empathy, professionalism. Any of these words could be used to describe a certain building in Olomouc’s Vodární Street. Just a few dozen metres from the city centre down a side street at no. 6 is a university building – the home of the UP Welcome Office (WO).
Officially speaking, it is the UP contact and information point, providing help to international students, employees, and other visitors in the areas of administration, studies, accommodation, visas, health insurance, and more. Less officially, it is a place where foreigners can find all the services they need so as not to feel lost at the university and in the city. “One of our key tasks is active support in the field of visas and residency permits. As the head of the office, I am the contact person between the Asylum, Migration, and Integration Department of the Ministry of the Interior, and the university. We provide comprehensive assistance in filling out application forms, preparing and checking documents, and everything that entails,” said Alena Vyskočilová, the head of WO.
To illustrate what sort of agenda such a university office has, where a thousand foreign nationals visit yearly, let us take a look at a few numbers: last year, our team had 567 personal appointments with international students and employees regarding visas and residency permits, more than 250 international students came to the office for information, and another 50 received assistance outside the office. This year, they took interested parties on some three dozen town tours. And who are “they”? “In the office, we have a team of four experienced and trained assistants who are prepared to provide personal assistance in the field,” added Vyskočilová.
The basic principle behind this type of office is having the ability to communicate. The number of languages spoken at WO is impressive: in addition to Czech, they speak English, German, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Polish, Italian, and Slovak. Another important emphasis is communicating on social media and the internet. “During 2023, we completed a redesign of our web page, which contains extensive information for both academic and personal life for the international community, all fully accessible in English. We also maintain a presence on a wide variety of social media, thanks to which we can quickly and dynamically react to happening events and at the same time support information transfer between the members of the university’s international community,” said the head of the Welcome Office.
And if it seems that the WO would have no time for anything else, far from it: “We try to actively contribute to creating an internationally friendly environment at the university, which is why we prepare various events for international students and staff during the year. Important ones are for example orientation days for newly arriving students of degree programmes and for new employees. Another example was at the request of students and faculties – in the spring semester we prepared a series of lectures called “Welcome to Wellbeing: A Journey to Your Mental Harmony”, added Vyskočilová.