Alumni

Iveta Dietz is a professional photographer who owns and operates her business, “First and Forever Photography,” from her studio in St. Charles, Missouri, where she specializes in newborn, maternity and baby photography.

During her college years, she spent a year in London as an Au-pair and two summers in California on a Work and Travel USA Program. This experience was priceless for her personal growth and communication skills in English.

After completing her teaching degree at the Faculty of Education at the Technical University of Liberec, she decided to travel the world while working with children on a cruise ship visiting over 50 countries around the world.

Back on land, she settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where she focused extensively on studying newborn posing, especially the safety aspects involved. “I capture the emotion in a natural, organic way while having the safety of the baby as my utmost priority,” she explains. Her mission is to create timeless photographs which will be cherished by her clients forever.

After completing a Master's in Teaching English and Mathematics at the Technical University of Liberec, Tomáš Dohnal taught English at a Czech high school for a year. He then applied for an athletic scholarship (cross-country skiing) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, USA. There he obtained a Master in Science (MS) in Applied Mathematics in 2002, and a PhD in 2005. "This move to the US was greatly facilitated by the language and study skills I acquired at the English Department in Liberec. Studying in the United States was an extremely enriching period of my life. I can only recommend it to all university students and recent graduates," Tomáš Dohnal says.

His subsequent career (and the life of his family) has been dictated by his research and by the search for a permanent position in academia. After the first postdoc position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), he spent five years at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), as a postdoc fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and KIT. In 2012, he obtained a junior professor position at TU Dortmund where he was until 2018. Since then he has been working as full professor at the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany. His research lies primarily in the area of the analysis of partial differential equations applied to waves.

"I am very grateful to my wife Kateřina, who joined me in Albuquerque and has accompanied me throughout my journey since then. Our first son was born in the US and our subsequent two children in Germany. We are well-settled in Halle now and enjoy living within a three-hour driving distance from Liberec," Tomáš Dohnal adds in conclusion.

n 2008, while still a student of the English Department, Petr took a business challenge and founded the local branch of the Polyglot language school in Liberec, which he successfully managed until 2015. In mid-2014, after doing an MBA at CESMA Business School, he started his own private publishing company, STAIR JUMPER, based in his hometown of Liberec. Here he specializes in translating and publishing books on business. The first book which he translated and published was Henry Ford’s iconic 1922 autobiography, My Life and Work.

Petr also makes use of English in his free time: he goes on regular trips to the USA, where he interviews country music stars for various radio stations and web portals.

"Having a master's degree in teaching English and Civics is extremely useful and can put you ahead of the game when it comes to finding a job." That was Martina's thinking behind choosing the teaching program in Liberec. However, teaching in the Czech Republic was not her dream job. So, after a couple of years of working in project management in Liberec, she decided to leave the country and look for some opportunities abroad.

Brussels was an obvious choice because of its international character, plus French, Martina's other foreign language, being an official language there. Luckily, she found a job rather quickly and was able to settle down. To improve her chances of employment, she gained another master's in management at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2014.

Currently, Martina is working as a high-level administrator at the Council of European Energy Regulators, where English is a working language. Thus, she finds that the knowledge gained during her studies in Liberec has been priceless; she uses it on a daily basis.

What about the future? Thanks to the European Union, her Czech teaching diploma is officially recognized by the Belgian authorities, so teaching English in a local school could be an option one day. The one certain thing is that she imagines her future job also as one that requires using English on a daily basis.

František Tůma gained his Master’s degree in Teaching English and Information Technology (IT) at Lower-secondary Schools from the Faculty of Education, Technical University of Liberec, where he was subsequently employed for four years. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree in ELT Methodology (Faculty of Arts, Charles University) he obtained a postdoctoral position at Masaryk University in Brno, where he currently works as an Associate Professor, having successfully passed the requirements for habilitation. He has participated in, led and coordinated a number of research projects and activities (including four grants supported by the Czech Science Foundation), mainly in the field of classroom interaction. He has stayed as a visiting scholar at universities in Finland, Sweden, Germany and Turkey, and has published articles in prestigious Czech and international journals specializing in linguistics and/or education (e.g. Pedagogická orientace, Studia Paedagogica, Slovo a slovesnost, Linguistics and Education).

After completing her bachelor’s degree in English and IT, Jana worked in marketing and sales on the Maldives. She says, “I was fortunate to find such a job where I met several native English-speaker expats, including my British husband.”

Once the couple’s contracts ended, they held teaching jobs on the island of Penang, in Malaysia, where they spent two years living and working for the Cambridge English Language Centre. Afterwards, they worked in Vietnam for a year as head teachers of two English Centers. Now they live and teach English in Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan.

Jana did not originally intend to study English and IT with the aim of becoming a teacher. She just loved the English language and computers. At the time she was unaware that the language-teaching market was so vast and that she would be able to teach overseas. Once she graduated and started teaching abroad, however, she soon realized that she had found her calling. “Teaching children, teenagers or adults is a very rewarding job, where you get to meet so many different, amazing and interesting personalities.” She adds, “Thanks to the guidance of my teachers at the English Department, and the knowledge I gained at the university, I’m able to compete for jobs with native speakers. Without my degree, I wouldn’t be able to get teaching jobs abroad and explore so many amazing countries.”