Taras Dobko elected new rector of Ukrainian Catholic University
Ukrainian Catholic University has elected Doctor of Philosophy Taras Dobko as its new rector. He previously held the position of senior vice-rector of the university. The UCU senators announced the decision at the session of the Senate on 24 June 2023.
Taras Dobko came to the election campaign for rector with the program “A university that serves.” He said that, during the full-scale invasion, UCU is called to be a prophetic example of all the best that Ukraine can be. “Today we live with a debt, at the cost of borrowed time, acquired for us by our defenders. This should be productive time, where our first-priority tasks as an academic community are to provide hope, a vision of the future of our country, and the capacity to implement it. As Patriarch Lubomyr Husar told us: ‘We cannot and should not lose hope in better times. Rather than lose faith, set to work,’” said the newly-elected rector of Ukrainian Catholic University.
На засіданні Сенату 24 червня 2023 року
Taras Dobko emphasized that the UCU community is called to demonstrate leadership in three main areas: healing the wounds of war and renewing/modernizing Ukraine, promoting the Ukrainian agenda in the world, and creating a Christian spiritual proposition for the person of the 21 st century.
“Today education faces the challenge of radical changes. The global competition for talent, the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, the appearance of entrepreneurial players in the educational market, and threats of a pandemic create significant pressure on educational institutions and their ability to carry out their mission appropriately. Under the influence of the war and its challenges, young Ukrainians seek knowledge which will be the most relevant for these circumstances; this can help them better understand what is happening and find their personal path in conditions of global uncertainty. Also, on the one hand, UCU has to build an institutional culture open to innovations and experiments in the educational process. On the other, the key criterion for evaluating the integrity of introducing them should be the integral development of the student and the awareness of the young person of the importance of the common good,” emphasized Taras Dobko during the session of the Senate.
Тарас Добко під час наради, УКУ, 2008 р.
Fr. Bohdan Prach headed Ukrainian Catholic University from September 2013. So, in August 2023 he will finish 10 years of service as rector. Inasmuch as legislation in Ukraine governing education allows the head of an institution of higher education to hold that position for no more than two terms (a maximum of 10 years), and maintaining UCU’s corporate culture, Fr. Bohdan Prach at the March session of the university’s Senate announced his intention to leave the position of rector of UCU as of 1 July 2023. The Senate of Ukrainian Catholic University then announced a competition for the position of rector of the university and formed a nominating committee to conduct the election of the rector, headed by Senator Andy Hunder, President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, former director of UCU’s branch in London.
On 24 June, during a regular session of the UCU Senate, the candidate’s program was presented; there was also a question and answer session and discussion and then a secret vote which elected Dr. Taras Dobko as rector of UCU.
Тарас Добко та Софія Опацька під час випускних урочистостей в УКУ
The Head and Father of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, who is UCU’s Grand Chancellor, thanked Fr. Rector Bohdan Prach for 10 years of dedicated service and close cooperation: “UCU’s intellectual community is part of the community of our Church. Fr. Bohdan has always guarded the university’s ecclesiastical character. I am extremely grateful for the development of the pastoral department, which today became a separate deanery in the university’s structure. This is extremely important, because today our university is a forum of strong evangelization. A great number of the students who study here are not Greek-Catholics, but with enthusiasm and wonder they discover the face of our Church at the UCU community, which is able to attract but not force, which knows how to open prospects but never set them.”
Fr. Bohdan Prach thanked His Beatitude Sviatoslav, Archbishop Borys Gudziak, Taras Dobko, and the university’s senators and team for many years of service and support: “During my service at UCU in the position of rector, it was a great challenge for me but, at the same time, a joy to work with an incredible team. I am grateful to the Lord God for this blessed time. I thank the team, the rectorate — they are strong as concrete. Our university’s success in based on the fact that we all feel responsibility for the community and create something valuable, useful not only for us personally but for society. And I thank you all for that. May God bless Taras Dobko; I wish him always to be in union with God, to hear what the Lord wants to tell him and our whole community. All will then be well.”
Владика Борис, отець Богдан Прах та Тарас Добко
UCU Senator and head of the nominating committee to conduct the election of rector Andy Hunder commented: “Today a historical event happened — the election of a new rector of Ukrainian Catholic University. The Senate unanimously chose Taras Dobko for this position. Today the whole world is watching events in Ukraine; there are so many challenges, but this is also a time of possibilities. What UCU does inspires not only Ukraine but the whole world. We rejoice that the team led by Taras Dobko will continue to build the university on strong foundations. These will be years of great and fruitful work. I hope that Taras Dobko will inspire the team, because the UCU community is phenomenal. Today we on the Senate quoted the words of Patriarch Lubomyr Husar: ‘Rather than lose faith, set to work.’ All of us together will support Taras Dobko,” emphasized the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine
UCU President and Metropolitan Archbishop of Philadelphia Borys Gudziak thanked Fr. Bohdan Prach for his service, stating: “Fr. Bohdan in a noble way led our university for 10 years. We rejoice that the Lord is blessing Taras Dobko for further service. His Beatitude Patriarch Sviatoslav, UCU’s Grand Chancellor, has blessed this election; we have the Senate’s unanimous support. In the world, where a brutal fight for power is happening and people hold on to their positions, the UCU community demonstrates an election marked with peace and joy. The burdens of the rector of UCU are not light; it’s not easy to be Fr. Bohdan Prach’s successor. But we believe that the Lord is with us; we are in God’s hands. May this new service of Taras Dobko at the head of the UCU community be blessed, fruitful, and life-giving. UCU faces a number of challenges — together with the Church, society, and our whole people we have to defend truth and ensure the victory of God’s truth in this war, which is a great moral battle. This war adds anew to those genocidal traumas which our people have suffered. But we see how the Ukrainian people have risen. They are a source of inspiration for many in the whole world. And the university must join in this; it must be salt and yeast for the Kingdom of God.”
Президент УКУ, митрополит Філадельфійський Борис Ґудзяк
We note that the key personal and professional qualities of the person who heads the university and bears responsibility for the university to carry out its mission and strategy is described in the Profile of the Rector of UCU. According to UCU’s Statutes and the provisions for the election of the rector, the Senate chooses the leader of the university upon submission of the president of the university after it receives the recommendations of the rector and the UCU Learned Council and also a response from the Grand Chancellor, the Head of the UGCC His Beatitude Sviatoslav (Shevchuk).
Addendum
Taras Dobko has more than 20 years of experience working in the field of higher education. Together with the operational administration of the university, in his professional activities he promoted university autonomy, developed its academic culture, built a system of ensuring and improving the quality of education, developed plans for the university’s strategic development, and refined the culture of the integral human development of students, professors, and staff.
He has taught at Ukrainian Catholic University since 1998 and, since 2008, been UCU’s senior vice-rector. In this position, he was responsible for the general administration of the university, strategic planning and development, personnel policy, student life, and civic service.
Taras Dobko was born on 2 June 1971 in Lviv, Ukraine. In 2003, he received a PhD with honors from the International Academy of Philosophy in the Duchy of Liechtenstein. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Happiness of the Human Person. A Phenomenological Study of the Human Person’s Disclosure in Happiness.” In 2011, he was nostrified for a candidate’s degree in philosophy, with the specialty Ethics, at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv.
In 1996 he received a master’s degree (M. A.) with honors from the International Academy of Philosophy in the Duchy of Liechtenstein on the basis of comparative research in religious faith and metaphysical convictions regarding the existence of God. Earlier, in 1988–1993 he studied at the Mechanics-Mathematics Faculty at Ivan Franko State University in Lviv, where he received a specialization in theoretical mechanics with honors.
He has 25 years of teaching experience at Ukrainian Catholic University. And he also taught courses in philosophy at other institutions of higher education, in particular at: Ivan Franko State University in Lviv; the Center for the Development of Master’s and Doctoral Programs; the Metropolitan Yosyf V. Rutskyi Basilian Institute of Theological and Philosophical Studies; the Mykola Charnetskyi, CSSR, Higher Institute of Theological and Philosophical Studies; and the Institute of Theology, Philosophy, and Culture at Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani Teaching University in Tbilisi, Georgia.
He is the compiler and scholarly editor of four books and author of more than 40 articles with a scholarly and scholarly-popular character in Ukrainian and international publications.
He has three times done scholarly internships at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA. His research interests include phenomenological epistemology, personalism in ethics, the philosophy of religion and secularization, historic-philosophical analysis of concepts of rationality in European culture, education and integral human development, and problems of university autonomy and academic culture.
https://ucu.edu.ua/en
