Welcome to Computer Science: A Letter from the Dean to First-Year Students

Dear first-year students,

congratulations. You have enrolled in a programme that teaches not only how a machine works, but why it should work for people at all.

You are entering this profession at its most interesting moment. Artificial intelligence has left the laboratory and moved into hospitals, factories, courtrooms and schools. Europe is writing the rules by which this technology will develop. Someone will build these systems, someone will secure them, someone will set their limits. In three years, that will be you — and whether you become the people who understand and shape technology or the people who merely use it is decided starting this October.

Robotics, VR/XR, IoT, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity are waiting for you. So is a humanoid robot and a robot dog — and yes, you will work with them, not watch them from behind glass.

You will also have access to our own supercomputing infrastructure. That is something most computer science students in Croatia will not touch until graduate study, and you will get there far earlier.

A small group. Professors who know your name. Doors that open when you knock.

A faculty that is being built right now, with you in it — which means your ideas, your objections and your projects carry real weight here, rather than waiting in line behind a thousand others.

Mathematics and physics ask for patience; code sometimes fails and the reason is not immediately visible. That is the most interesting part of the work. An engineer is not someone who never makes mistakes, but someone who wants to know why the mistake happened — learn that in your first year and the rest follows on its own.

One piece of advice to begin with, ask. Ask in the lecture, ask a colleague, ask an professors and assistants, ask me.

The worst outcome of a first year is not a poor grade — it is quietly taking a seat in the back row, hoping no one notices you did not understand something.

Welcome to the Faculty of Technical Sciences of the Catholic University of Croatia. Good luck — and remember how today feels, so you have something to compare it with when you graduate.

Prof. Zlatan Car, PhD Dean, Faculty of Technical Sciences Catholic University of Croatia