Welcome to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing! (Croatian acronym: FER)
The year 2007 is the 338th year since establishment of the University of Zagreb, 88th year since establishment of the study of electrical engineering and the 51st year of independent Faculty of Electrical Engineering. In 1994 the Faculty changed its name becoming the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing reflecting the fact that eminent professionals in electrical engineering but also in computing have been coming from this institution.
Technological changes now occurring worldwide are so abrupt and revolutionary that any attempt to predict them became rather risky. They are connected to terms like Digital age, Information society, Knowledge society etc.
The mission of the Faculty is to prepare students to perform direct tasks on their workplace, but what is even more important, to be ready for permanent education in a profession that is dramatically changing. In this aspect the Faculty enjoys respect in Croatia and in the world. The students who have completed their studies at this Faculty are appreciated and in high demand. Regardless of the FER’s staff efforts, they would not be sufficient to achieve such result if our Faculty were not enrolling the best of the best available in this country. A rigorous selection procedure, practically proven through thirty years, enables on average every second applicant to enrol. The best positioned 650 applicants from the rank list are enrolled. The payment of tuition depends on the position on the rank list.
The subject of study on this Faculty is objectively hard. Excellent mastering of mathematics and understanding of physics as bases for engineering are indispensable. Mastering of English language is also compulsory because in such a rapidly developing profession one cannot rely upon translations and secondary information sources. To a significant number of students it is important to have a high degree of common culture because many of them might work on multidisciplinary projects and often in international environment.
Already the previous generations of the Faculty professors were aware of the challenging study, so that long time ago organisational measures and equipment were provided to make the students’ work easier. This tradition continues. Student’s time is appreciated and useless waste of time on administration is mostly avoided. A majority of tasks, like insight into examination results or continuous checking of personal knowledge can be performed from home, over Internet or by using modern information kiosks supplied with touch screen monitors, which are at students’ continuous disposal in the Faculty premises. The lectures are scheduled carefully in order to enable the students fulfilling of their obligations. The time spent in direct education has been reduced to about twenty hours weekly on the undergraduate and sixteen hours per week on the graduate study. In all the courses a permanent checking of knowledge is performed via homework, on-line testing and interim examinations. At the end of semester, final examination takes place. The examination results are added to the results achieved during the semester and the sum determines the final grade. The summer semester is concluded till the end of June, so that the students can dedicate more than two months for individual activities and rest. The ECTS system has been introduced enabling exchange of students with European universities. The Faculty’s equipment and quality to a great extent result from its market-oriented approach in offering knowledge as product. In our scientific production, evident through papers published in journals and on conferences; with our average of 1.5 papers per scientist yearly, we have reached world class comparable results.
All these perform 130 professors and 160 scientific novices, assistants and technicians, organised in 12 departments, with altogether 59 laboratories, out of which 9 are public computer labs containing more than 180 computers. The Faculty disposes with overall 35,000 m2 of usable and contemporarily equipped premises. The backbone of the Faculty’s computing infrastructure is a gigabit computer network with 1,300 connections in all the Faculty premises. It is the fastest LAN in Croatia. The students can connect their laptops also to the wireless network covering most of the public areas at FER.
The Faculty is in a constant change, adapting itself to the requirements of the moment, after the motto that “courage in waging a breakthrough is not gambling with the institution’s fate but rather the knowledge about risk management”. After this model, we wish to form our Faculty as an interactive interface offering to our students the knowledge and comprehension, reacting simultaneously to students’ needs and while interacting keep changing.
In academic year 2005/2006 we introduced a new syllabus in accordance to the Bologna processes. After three years of undergraduate study, the academic title of baccalaureus is achieved. After additional two years of graduate study, the academic title of master is granted. FER has used this change of the study structure also for a significant overhaul of its syllabus and curriculum, making it more modern and attractive.
The message to the young ones who deliberate whether to join our community of 4300 current students is “if you are a good pupil, with broad interests, prepared to dedicate yourself to a professional career and if you are prepared for the most secure and most profitable investment of your life – investment in your own knowledge, which is highly demanded on the market, join us!”
Professor Vedran Mornar, Faculty Dean
