Although the Erasmus+ program undoubtedly reigns in terms of popularity among study stays, it is by no means the only way to travel abroad through your home university while studying. Students can also gain insight into their field and draw inspiration from elsewhere through summer schools. This is the form chosen by Svitlana Kotserzhynska, a student of the bachelor’s degree program in Environment and Health. She spent two and a half weeks at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, returning enriched not only with a lot of valuable insights but also with new contacts.
“I come from Ukraine, and I applied for this study program at RECETOX because I have always been interested in nature conservation, and the field made a lot of sense to me. I am now in my third year and working on my bachelor’s thesis on the topic of Practical Aspects of Small Municipalities’ Participation in the National Network of Healthy Cities. In this practical work, I will have to devise sustainable development strategies for a small municipality, with the theoretical part also including current legislation. This is why the experience from the summer school, where a lot of attention was paid to climate law, was very useful to me,” Svitlana explains her study focus.
Initially, the student decided on a summer school mainly because she did not meet the requirements to go through the Erasmus+ program. “Due to my visa, I can’t go on Erasmus+, which I am very disappointed about. At least I decided to attend a summer school. I searched the internet and came across a very user-friendly portal called Summer Schools in Europe. I just filtered my field of study and got a whole list of summer schools taking place in Europe. In the law section, I found a summer school in Zagreb that really caught my attention, and I submitted my one and only application there,” Svitlana describes.
Thanks to the fact that the University of Zagreb is a partner university to Masaryk University, Svitlana was also able to apply for a scholarship that covered a large part of the expenses. According to her, the administration was not significantly demanding. However, when complications did arise, the response from the University of Zagreb was surprisingly accommodating.
“Applying, getting into the summer school, and signing the learning agreement was not difficult, but complications arose with the scholarship. Somehow, the learning agreement from our faculty did not reach Zagreb, so at one point, I thought I just wouldn’t get the scholarship. I was very stressed and ended up sending the learning agreement myself manually. But that same evening, I received a response from Zagreb that they had signed it manually, so I quickly submitted the application and wrote a motivation letter for the scholarship, and everything turned out well in the end,” the student describes.
Once Svitlana knew she had been accepted to the summer school, she just had to create an application in the Information System of the Centre for International Cooperation at Masaryk University (ISOIS) and record her studies. “To get a scholarship to support short-term mobility, the summer school stay must be recognized as a subject on Faculty of Science at Masaryk University. Fortunately, everything went smoothly there,” adds Svitlana.
The courses of the summer school itself greatly excited the student with their content. "The entire summer school lasted twelve days, and classes were held from nine in the morning until 1pm. A few times a week, we also had a study trip or excursion prepared for us. We focused on European climate law and the basics of environmental law. There were many practical things, we read case studies, and some of the topics we dealt with were carbon trading, regulation of renewable energy sources in the EU, the Green Deal, carbon capture and storage mechanisms etc. We also compared EU system with American legislation and discussed ethical issues. The lecturers were not only from Zagreb but also from abroad, for example from the universities in Maastricht, Utrecht and even Oxford.
The participant group consisted of only fifteen people, so a large part of the time could be devoted to discussions, according to Svitlana. Since most of the participants were from abroad, a diverse mix of experiences and opinions was created.
“It was the first summer school organized by the university, which is why it was so small, but I really liked it and learned a lot. The university provided accommodation in dormitories, which cost me about one hundred and fifty euros in total. Besides, I was very excited about the excursions; we visited the Hydrometeorological Institute, the Croatian National Bank, the law firm BMWC, which deals with legal climate issues, such as carbon storage. We also got to know the place and the local culture – we had a guide who showed us the whole city and told us about various legends of the city and the whole country, we visited the Plitvice Lakes National Park, went to authentic restaurants, and visited a museum,” the student describes the program.
Although getting to know the local culture and environment were pleasant benefits, the student values the knowledge gained from the stay the most.
“Even though the whole summer school was fun, it was definitely not about slacking off. We had to read articles every day, we had assignments, at the end there was an essay, and then we received a certificate, thanks to which this stay could be recognized. I would definitely recommend everyone to take advantage of such an opportunity during their studies and go to a summer school. And if I had to give one final tip, it would be not to be afraid to ask if you are unsure or facing a problem. It's always worth giving it a try—you might be pleasantly surprised by the response.” the student concludes.
Since 2020, the RECETOX center has been involved in the European project SPRINT. This five-year project aims not only to measure new data on the occurrence and effects of pesticides in the environment but also to develop tools that will allow their impacts on the environment and human health to be modeled and predicted.
A study by scientists from Masaryk University showed that children of mothers with higher vitamin B12 intake during pregnancy were able to communicate better at one and a half years old, for example, using gestures, simple words, and understanding simple instructions. At the age of 8, they showed better results in verbal intelligence tests.
