“For a long time I did family, senior citizens, women and youth politics (…) and now I’ve been given the additional area of education and research. I am Vice-Chairman for these two areas. I think it’s appropriate for a Schleswig-Holstein representative to have visited the most important educational and research institutions in this state,” says Sönke Rix, explaining his motivation for making a stop at the Technical University (TH) Lübeck.
The TH Lübeck President Dr. Muriel Helbig is looking forward to the visit and presents the priorities and current efforts of the university. “For example, we are planning a new course in “Sustainable Building Technology”, which is intended to produce specialists for Schleswig-Holstein that are urgently needed for the energy transition. Here we also rely on cooperation with other university locations – now we still need a funding commitment from the state,” says Muriel Helbig. Another important point: to clarify the importance of the universities of applied sciences, formerly technical colleges, for Schleswig-Holstein. “In our Factor 10 paper, which we wrote together with the universities of applied sciences in Flensburg, Heide and Kiel, we make it clear that experts at our universities combine academic knowledge with extensive professional experience, for example from business. They have excellent practical knowledge and extensive networks – this is how we can promote and support development in the country,” Helbig makes clear. Frank Schwartze, Vice President for Research and International Affairs, reports, among other things, on the funding commitment of the German Academic Exchange Service “HAW International”. It enables TH Lübeck to firmly anchor international and English-language offers for students in all four departments. “This allows us to further expand internationalization, an important focus of the TH Lübeck, and the program also contributes to securing skilled workers. However, we are observing the current cuts in the DAAD with concern and hope that political decision-makers will continue to support internationalization in the parliamentary framework,” says Schwartze.
Adrian Graaf, President of the Student Parliament, and Lara Wojahn, Advisor for University Policy, reported from a student perspective. The Bundestag member Sönke Rix was particularly interested in the assessment of the BAföG reform. “The time between the application and the payment of the money is particularly problematic,” says Adrian Graaf. Lara Wojahn adds: “In our state-wide exchange round of the general student committees, we of course also talked about the innovations in BAföG. However, the rising prices are driving us at the moment, especially in the canteens. There are students who can no longer afford to eat there,” explains Lara Wojahn.
During a tour of the campus, MdB Rix and the member of the state parliament SH Sophia Schiebe stopped at Dr. Monique Janneck. The professor of software ergonomics and human-machine interaction heads the Institute for Interactive Systems (ISy). She informed about digital teaching at the TH Lübeck and current research projects such as “DiSEA”, which deals with the prediction of study dropouts. Guido Kwast, Head of the Center for Digital Teaching at the TH Lübeck, reported on the rapid changeover in teaching at the beginning of the corona pandemic. “The fact that the changeover worked so quickly is due to our many years of experience with digital teaching,” explains Kwast. “As one of the founding universities of the Virtual University of Applied Sciences, we have been involved in digital teaching for 20 years and are constantly expanding this focus,” concludes Monique Janneck.