Thirty-four graduates of the two-year master’s programme International Development Studies – GLODEP from twenty-seven countries graduated in the auditorium of the Faculty of Science, and three additional students took part online. Seven graduates from last year also took part in the graduation ceremony, as ceremonies were not held in 2020 due to epidemic measures.
“Studying abroad was a big challenge for me. We had the opportunity to study in the Czech Republic, France, and Italy and meet people of different nationalities. I would like to use my experience in the future to work in government or elsewhere in the public sector. I would like to participate in the creation of legislative rules that would lead to an improvement in the situation in our country,” described Rafal Roshdy Ramadan Mohamed from Egypt.
Kazuma Yabe from Japan also intends to use his experience from his studies. “Thanks to interdisciplinary subjects, I was able to deepen my knowledge of development issues and at the same time expand my skills in quantitative analysis. I would like to apply the experience gained in development practice. At the same time, the friendships I made during my studies are important to me: they are for life.”
The Department of Development & Environmental Studies was in charge of organising graduations. “We did not want the parents and family members of graduating students to lose out on this exceptional social event. For the first time, we managed to organise graduations online. The livestream took place in real time all over the world. To date, over a thousand people have seen the broadcast,” said Simona Šafaříková, director of the programme at Palacký University.
This year’s graduations did not take place in robes for hygienic reasons. A unifying element was a special scarf with the student’s name and the GLODEP logo. “The students designed the scarves themselves and had them made in Ghana, where one of our students comes from. When the scarves were made, they were sent to each one separately. I was very pleased that all the students brought them to graduation, it looked very nice. It united an otherwise diverse group of people dressed in different formal wear,” added Šafaříková.
The GLODEP study programme offers students the opportunity to study at three European universities which implement programmes in the field of development studies and development economics. In addition to Palacký University, these are the University of Clermont Auvergne (France) and the University of Pavia (Italy). The aim of the programme is to prepare students for work in the field of development policies which contribute to solving current problems at international, national, and local levels. Non-European universities are also involved in the cooperation (i.e. the Royal University of Bhutan and the University of Hassan II Casablanca in Morocco).
