About Faculty

Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences is an institution providing higher education in accordance with the national and regional demands as well as carrying out research in a wide range of natural sciences and humanities.

Our faculty is multidisciplinary and open to the international scene. Perfectly knowing the region to which it is tightly bound, in association with the national research institutions and the international research facilities, it is building its research and innovation policy.

In a constant quest for progress and initiatives, our faculty and its departments cooperate with many partners to keep up with the development of the society, its needs and challenges.

The faculty consists of six departments who together represent the foundation of our education and research within disciplines such as biology, ecology, geography, physics, mathematics, technics, pedagogy, psychology and andragogy.

Teaching is offered at all levels and in all our research fields.

Offered programmes and modules - university

Offered subjects - faculty (Please find more details and information about the courses taught for incoming students on the websites of the individual departments.)

Departments

Education

The faculty runs both single and double honour degree teacher training as well as non-teacher training programs, some of which are also offered as part-time programs.

Teacher training programs include teacher training in the following academic disciplines:

Biology
Geography
Physics
Technology Education
Pedagogy

Non-teacher programs include:

Biology
Ecology
Geography and Applied Geoinformatics

In addition, the faculty runs doctoral programs in the following scientiﬁc disciplines: Anthropology, General ecology and ecology of an individual and populations, Regional geography and Theory of Physics Education.

Moreover, the faculty has been authorized to carry out habilitation proceedings and professorship appointments in disciplines: 4.2.8 Anthropology and 4.3.4 General ecology and ecology of an individual and populations.

Research

Scientific research is an inevitable part of staff activities and targets the domains in the above-mentioned disciplines. Research is conducted within the framework of national and also international grant projects (such as APVV, AV, VEGA, KEGA, etc.). Moreover, Excellence Centre of Animal and Human Ecology was established in 2009 as an implementation of the projects covered by Structural funds of EU to satisfy the need for state-of-the-art technology in research and education. On a regular basis the staff organizes international scientiﬁc conferences and publishes proceedings, monographs and textbooks. The teachers of the faculty have an excellent reputation for both education and their research activities, which is manifested by the fact that over the past years an independent ranking and rating agency ARRA has assessed the faculty as one of the best among all the humanities faculties in Slovakia. What is more, there are four EU projects currently operating at the faculty involving the departments of biology, ecology and physics.

In addition, the faculty boasts of highly specialized research laboratories:

Excellence Centre of Animal and Human Ecology (Department of biology and Department of ecology) is equipped by cutting-edge technology for performing biochemical, ecophysiological and molecular analysis at the top level. The research activities focus primarily on the research of influence of genetic and environmental factors on the physiology of animals and humans. The centre includes several laboratories: Laboratory of animal molecular ecology, Laboratory of animal and plant ecophysiology, Laboratory of human molecular ecology, Laboratories of sequencing analyses, Biobank, Laboratory of environmental biotechnologies and Laboratory of animal biodiversity.

Laboratory of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) (Department of Geography and Applied Geoinformatics) is a fully equipped laboratory for collection, processing and visualization of geographic information. The hardware consists of several GPS receivers, laser distance measurement tools, large-format scanners, plotters and high-performance computers. Spatial analysis and modelling are performed using QGIS, GRASS GIS, ArcGIS and other GIS software packages.

Laboratory of Open Source GIS Technologies (Department of Geography and Applied Geoinformatics) is focused on teaching, testing and development of modern open source GIS technologies with application use for university students and staff, as well as for public and private sector organizations cooperated with the university. It provides also a place for organizing GIS workshops, trainings, mapathons or data sprints related to work procedures within data creation of final geodata products.

Laboratory VERSALAB (Department of physics, mathematics and technology) is a modern laboratory which enables measurements of relations among electric, magnetic and temperature qualities of solid substances within the range of 50 K – 400 K. International cooperation is based on bilateral contracts signed at university or faculty level.

International relations

Student and teacher mobilities are mostly implemented within the Erasmus plus scheme, but the staﬀ is also involved in other international programs and are awarded scholarships and grants through ERASMUS+ and CEEPUS. Apart from EU countries, the faculty has professional and research contacts with higher education and research institutions also in Japan, Caucasian region (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia), Egypt, Thailand, India, and others.

See the list of courses taught in English (for exchange students)

Updated by: Lenka Bobuľská, 09.01.2025