The UP Faculty of Physical Culture (UP FPC) will be led for the next four years by sports psychologist Michal Šafář. The current dean, the only candidate for the office, received the majority of votes from the members of the UP FPC Academic Senate in the first round.
The senators unanimously appointed the current dean for a second term, which will start on 9 February 2022 and last until 8 February 2026, with fifteen votes. “I really much appreciate the trust the senate has placed in me, in the previous term and now. I must say that when I compared the two elections, the first one was probably more dramatic, but I wasn’t so nervous then. Today, however, it was emotionally demanding. In a way, it is a testament to how the faculty management worked in that past term, and even though I had already claimed when I presented my vision that it was just a halftime score, I took the election seriously. In sports, I’ve seen games we were winning 15-0 at halftime, but ended a debacle. Also, I’m quite annoyed by the fact the pandemic has cost us over a year of standard functioning, and as a pessimist, I think it will take at least another six months to get back on track. However, I firmly believe that if we all suit up, we will get back to normal times and we will retake the pitch,” said Šafář after his re-election.
During the pre-election presentation of his vision for the future of the faculty, he said that above all, he wanted to be a good dean. In the coming years, he and his team of vice-deans want to continue the work they have started so that at the end of their second term, he would hand over to his successor a faculty that has successful and proud students and graduates, that brings forth new knowledge in kinanthropology (the science of human movement), and that is the centre of sports not only at UP but in the whole region. As he emphasised, the faculty should be grounded on values and principles such as freedom, tolerance, responsibility, continuity, (r)evolution, and transparency.
Michal Šafář has been the UP FPC dean since 2018, when he succeeded Zbyněk Svozil. He graduated in Physical Education and Teaching at the UP Faculty of Physical Education and in Psychology at the UP Faculty of Arts and completed his doctoral studies with a focus on sport psychology at UP FPC. Since 2001 he has been working at the faculty as an assistant professor, later he headed the Department of Social Sciences in Kinanthropology and was also the chairperson of the UP FPC Academic Senate. As a sport psychologist, he closely worked with tennis star Petra Kvitová as well as many other top Czech athletes. He is the chairperson of the Czech Association of Sport Psychologists.