The Faculty of Law in Osijek was founded on the 10th of September 1975, but the study of law had already existed under the auspices of the Faculty of Economics in Osijek since 1973. The activities of the Faculty take place in two buildings, in 13 and 17 Stjepana Radiæa Street in Osijek, with a total space of 3,187 m2.
The Faculty staff includes 55 lecturers: 6 full professors, 6 associate professors, 11 assistant professors, 6 senior lecturers, 1 lecturer, 9 assistants and 16 junior assistants-scientific novices.
The Faculty has 9 lecture-rooms, 39 lecturers’ rooms, 2 apartments, 6 offices, a library with reading rooms for students and professors, a conference hall, a students’ cantina, and adequate auxiliary rooms. There are also 2 computer lecture-rooms with 30 computers that can be used by the students on a daily basis. The students use these computer rooms for various activities by their own choice: acquiring additional education, writing seminars, essays and diploma papers or masters’ theses, surfing the Internet, using free access to numerous data bases, e.g. Journal of Private International Law (www.hartjournals.co.uk), Administrative Science Quarterly (www.johnson.cornell.edu), Archiv für die zivilistische Praxis (www.ingentacnnect.com), Law and Philosophy (www.springerlink.com) . The core of the Faculty’s information center is a DELL PowerEdge 1800. The center provides router, DNS, mail server, WWW server, FTP server services and connects the 2 Faculty buildings with 3 printer servers.
At present, the faculty has 3840 students; each year about 400 students start their freshmen year at the Faculty, which gives them the possibility to meet new people, make new friendships, and acquire new life experience. So far, 3803 students have graduated from the Faculty (in 2006/7 268 students have won their diplomas). In 2005, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek made Study Regulations covering all the issues concerning the rights and duties of the students; these Regulations also apply to our students and they are available at the Faculty’s web page www.pravos.hr. With its Regulations about the Rights of Exceptionally Successful Students, passed in 2003, the Faculty Council encourages students in achieving better study results through various stimuli (awards, possibility to pass exams earlier, issuing diplomas with special commendations).
The importance of education and cooperation in the sphere of developing and strengthening of a stable, peace-loving and democratic society has been generally recognized as the most important factor of social development (individual, organizational, economic or cultural). Education is an important constituent part of improving and enriching of our affiliation with Europe which prepares its citizens for the challenges of the new millennium by making them aware of the common values and appurtenance to the same social and cultural environment. European institutions of high education have accepted the challenge and have taken upon themselves the leading role in the creation of a European education system in the spirit of the basic principles set out in the Magna Charta Universitatum signed in Bologna in 1988. Having signed the Bologna Declaration, the Republic of Croatia has accepted the duty to harmonize its higher education system with the EHEA – European Higher Education Area. This includes:
- adopting a system of easily recognizable and comparable academic and professional degrees and introduction of complements to the diploma for the purpose of faster and easier employment and better international competitiveness;
- adopting a uniform system comprising three cycles of higher education: undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate (specialist or scientific);
- introducing a uniform credit system (ECTS);
- promoting mobility and removing the obstacles that prevented free movement of students and professors;
- establishing a national system of monitoring and control guaranteeing quality and promoting European cooperation in that segment;
- promoting the necessary European dimension in the sphere of higher education.
Croatian law faculties (in Osijek, Rijeka, Split and Zagreb) have set the following strategic goals in the implementation of the “Bologna Process” in the function of “Europeanization of the legal profession”:
- improving the quality and efficiency of legal education;
- creating an open and attractive environment for the study of law;
- optimal utilization of the means for legal education and research.
Everything said above can be summarized in the conclusion that the Faculty’s mission is the reaching of excellence in research and educational activities, or simply: the Faculty’s mission is search for excellence. Every faculty must self-define its mission with respect to its own specific characteristics and its responsibility towards the social environment. The Faculty must be able to prove its quality both in Croatia and on the international scene.
Copyright © by FACULTY OF LAW IN OSIJEK All Rights Reserved.
