Strategic partnership sealed with the German Jordanian University

Since the founding of the German Jordanian University (GJU) in 2005, there has been intensive cooperation between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology there. The GJU is a special university in Jordan, as its teaching is based on the model of German universities of applied sciences and has a strong practical focus. However, the connection to Germany is also evident elsewhere: every student on all Bachelor's programmes at GJU has to complete a compulsory year in Germany. This means that dozens of students from the Computer Science (B.Sc.) and Computer Engineering (B.Sc.) programmes come to Germany every semester. A handful always come to the Department of Computer Science, and other German universities accept further GJU students.

This long-standing and now extensive collaboration has now been evaluated and further developed as part of a HAW.International project. As part of the final conference of the Take-Off4Internationalisation (TOFI ) project, the partnership with the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana was ceremoniously sealed as a strategic partnership alongside GJU. This partnership is new territory for the Department of Computer Science. 

By signing the cooperation agreement on the strategic partnership, the universities are committing themselves to the collaboration at the highest level and thus facilitating its development and expansion into other divisions and fields of activity. The requirements of a strategic partnership, as defined by H-BRS, can be reduced to the formula 3x2x2x1, which can be broken down as follows:

At least 3 structures (e.g. departments, language centre, international office, library) support the partnership, at least 2 target groups benefit from it (e.g. students, staff, university management) and at least 2 fields of action are covered (e.g. research, transfer, teaching). In addition, at least one major project (e.g. DFG, DAAD, Erasmus+) should have already been approved and implemented.
However, the signing of these two cooperation agreements is not the end of H-BRS's internationalisation strategy. The aim for the near future is to identify further strategic partners in Asia and America.