Student voices

During that time they met at meetings with students or with representatives of the student societies. He greatly appreciates how hard Associate Professor Kopecký tries to help not only organisations but individuals as well. He always found a way to support their activities. Whenever they needed something, he was ready to help — whether with materials, with funding, or simply with good advice, for which he always made time. Marek valued his approach most of all when preparing an educational event for a hundred international students, which he helped to arrange in many ways and which he also backed with his patronage. His human approach and his readiness to help all students are a great inspiration to Marek.

Klára has been at the Faculty since 2019, and over that time she has been able to watch how the Faculty and the University as a whole work and develop, from a student’s point of view. At the same time, she founded the student society PHOSA (Public Health Ostrava Student Association, z.s.). Thanks in part to Associate Professor Kopecký’s approach, setting the society up was quick and free of needless obstacles. She personally also regards it as very positive that, under his leadership, the University of Ostrava creates space for student societies and their activities and offers them support. PHOSA is one of them, and it is precisely thanks to this support that it can go on developing its activities.

What the two of us value most in Associate Professor Kopecký is his human and helpful approach. Our experience is that when students come to him with an idea or a problem, he genuinely listens to them and tries to look for a solution. We see as positive not only his relationship with students and his support for student societies, but also his overall approach to leading and representing the University.

Openness, humanity and a willingness to give students space and support are, in our view, exactly the qualities that matter in the leadership of a university.

In community activities supporting the development of the town of Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, for instance, and later in supporting and working with a local private primary school in the same town. We last met at the induction course “Doktorandské rozkoukání” (an orientation course for new doctoral candidates) in the autumn of 2025, which was an excellent introduction for me to doctoral study in social work and to the academic environment at the University of Ostrava.

I have always respected Petr, and still do, for the calm, composure and perspective I invariably sense in dealings with him, but also for his knowledge and his broad grasp of things. On the basis of my own experience, I am convinced that re-electing him for the coming term is the right step for the University of Ostrava.

I greatly value the trust he placed in us, and the fact that in his position as Rector he retains a human touch and believes in the potential of students, who always find his door open.

Thanks to that, I was able to experience one of the most powerful moments of my studies and to fulfil a dream of mine. He deals with students in a completely unpretentious way; with him you never run into an overblown ego or put-on authority, and that is how both I and my fellow students see it. As both a student and an employee of the University of Ostrava, I see him as someone who gives young people real opportunities without needless gestures, and that is why he has my full support.

Through our cooperation in the NEOLAiA alliance I later came to know him as a professional and open representative of the University, someone able to represent it with dignity and who seeks out new opportunities for the University and for its students.

Despite the seriousness of his office, he does not lose his humanity — and it is precisely this ability to remain a human being even at the head of a university that I regard as one of his greatest strengths.

I respect him for the kind, fair and decent way he deals with people, which is important in the leadership of a university.