Press News

Budapest, March 9, 2004

In 2004 the University of All Knowledge won the Süveg Award given by the Professional College of PR Agencies. The award was presented to the representatives of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Matáv and Axelero that established the program and the representatives of the media partners by Péter Sárosi and Viktor Polgár, members of the Professional College of PR Agencies, before the March 8, 2004 lecture.

In November 2001 Hungary's leading PR agencies established a professional college with the objective to enhance the social prestige of PR. The body wants to raise public awareness that PR is a communication profession based on special know-how and that the leading agencies work according to strict professional and ethical norms. The Süveg Award, that was established in 2002 and reflects independent professional recognition, is not open for applications; it is awarded in recognition of outstanding PR and/or communication performance that is approved unanimously by all members of the College. This year the series of programs called University of All Knowledge established by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Matáv and Axelero won this award. One of the reasons for granting the award was that the program targets the widest possible audience – reaching also Hungarians in the neighboring countries – and is based on a very extensive, comprehensive and professional communication strategy.

The University of All Knowledge was launched on September 16, 2002 as perhaps one of the boldest initiatives in the dissemination of scientific knowledge in Hungary. The program founders wanted to revive high-standard scientific education, popularize Hungarian scientists with the help of communication and Internet developments previously unknown in this area. The fourth semester of the program started on February 2, 2004. With the professional contribution of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the support of Matáv and Axelero, the University of All Knowledge offers free public lectures on a weekly basis given by the most prominent members of the Hungarian scientific scene on the most burning public issues of various science areas and debated with the audience. From the second semester lectures were also given outside Budapest in other university cities (Miskolc, Pécs, Veszprém, Szeged) and from the fourth semester also at Hungarian locations across the border (first in Révkomárom in Slovakia). The private video records of lectures have already been included in various schools as auxiliary educational material, for example committed physics teachers projected the graphic experiments to their students.
The lectures are available on the www.mindentudas.hu site in video file. The microsite (full text, illustrations, supplementary materials, complete video recording made at the site and a portrait film of the lecturers edited on a web site) of each lecture is available. Listeners can register for programs and contact the lecturers and each other. After each lecture the students can test their knowledge, at the end of a semester "certificates" can be obtained and at the end of the series of 53 lectures a "diploma" is given to those who complete all tests. Tests can be completed continuously or subsequently and certificates can be obtained also by those joining later. Readers can register for the weekly newsletter of the University. Additionally the website offers fresh reports, scientific news, book and program reviews. All the knowledge presented to the audience by the first 19 lecturers is readily available in printed form in the book published in November 2003 under the title "University of All Knowledge 1" and students can no doubt be quizzed on it. The second in the series of books is expected to be published in April 2004. Seeing the success of the program the founders decided to continue in the long term and established in early 2004 the University of All Knowledge Non-Profit Company that organizes and manages the series of events as an independent company. The average audience at the sites of the 61 lectures held so far was 600. On the website the number of pages downloaded exceeded 13 million and the number of visitors was more than 3 million.