The study of public administration is interdisciplinary in nature and therefore includes economics and public administration management in addition to law and social sciences. For this reason, the Department of Economic Sciences was created at the establishment of the Faculty of Public Administration of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice in 1998. In September 2009, as part of an organisational change at the Faculty, the Department was renamed the Department of Economics and Management of Public Administration, reflecting the pedagogical and scientific research focus of the Department.
In the first years of the Department’s existence, it was mainly staffed by external teachers. The Department’s profiling is based on a comparison with other departments dealing with teaching in public administration. Gradually, the number of internal teachers in the Department increased and a concept for the development of the department was developed, individual courses were created and the focus of research work was shaped.
With the growing interest in the study of public administration, priority attention was given to improving the quality of the teaching process by focusing on raising the qualitative level of lectures, consultations and exercises, as well as aligning the content of courses with the needs of practice. With the growth in staff numbers, it has also been possible to expand the range and scope of elective courses.
The scientific research work of individual members of the Department is based on their professional orientation, the needs of society and the focus of the Department. The first grant project “Economic and Legal Aspects of Public Administration in the Conditions of the Region” was solved by the whole team of the Department in cooperation with the Department of Legal Sciences of the Faculty of Public Administration in the period 2002 – 2004. The teaching staff gradually became involved in several projects with a broader scope in line with the focus of the Department. The activities of the scientific and research activities of the Department are presented in monographs, scientific and professional articles and proceedings of domestic and foreign conferences.
Since its creation, the Department has developed cooperation with similarly oriented departments. Longer-term cooperation of the Department’s teachers is mainly with the Faculty of Economics and Administration of the University of Pardubice, the University of Economics in Bratislava, the Faculty of European Studies and Regional Development of SPU in Nitra, the Faculty of Management of the University of Prešov in Prešov, the Faculty of Economics of the Technical University in Košice, the National University of Public Service in Budapest, the Košice Self-Governing Region, the Košice City Municipality, and the Civic Association VZDELÁVANIE-VEDA-VÝSKUM.
Heads of the Department since its creation:
Department of Economic Sciences
- doc. Ing. Michal TUŠAN, CSc. (1998 – 2000)
- prof. Ing. Nora ŠTANGOVÁ, CSc. (2000 – 2009)
Department of Economics and Management of Public Administration
- prof. Ing. Nora ŠTANGOVÁ, CSc. (2009 – 2010)
- doc. Ing. Anna ČEPELOVÁ, PhD. (2010 – 2014)
- prof. Ing. Viktória BOBÁKOVÁ, CSc. (2014 – 2017)
- doc. Ing. Anna ČEPELOVÁ, PhD. (2017 – to date)
