University with new vice presidents

The new vice presidents will take office on 1 January 2015; their term of office is linked to that of University President Hartmut Ihne and will thus end on 31 October 2020. During the election assembly the candidates, first of all, explained their understanding of their responsibilities as vice presidents, presenting a kind of strategic plan including their fields of activity.

Prof. Dr Iris Groß has been a member of the university for five years, teaching basic subjects of Mechanical Engineering at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Technical Journalism. Above and beyond this, she has been active in the university’s self-administration right from the beginning. In her capacity as Vice President for Teaching and Learning she intends to analyse, improve understanding of and optimise the process from the study applicants’ phase to the start phase, the actual studies through to the paths towards professional practice and research. Furthermore, she wants to achieve more support for professors in view of the increasing student numbers.

Prof. Dr Margit Geißler is from the Department of Natural Sciences, where she has been teaching analytical chemistry and chemometrics since 2012. She used to work in the chemical industry for many years and is also familiar with work in an association. These two fields of activity enable her, in her capacity as Vice President for Research, to understand the business partners’ interests and to initiate joint projects. She takes a personal interest in improving the internal general conditions for research activities and in making the findings publicly known.

Prof. Dr Jürgen Bode has been Commissioner for International Affairs in the President’s Office for four years and is, so to speak, the logical successor to the office of Vice President for International Affairs and Diversity, which is currently vacant. He has been teaching international marketing at the Rheinbach Campus of our university’s Department of Management Sciences. His goal is, among other things, to make international orientation felt by all students. He wants H-BRS brand to be associated with international skills.

Prof. Dr Reiner Clement had re-applied for the office of Vice President for Innovation and Regional Development and was re-elected by the election assembly. Clement is one of our university’s first professors. He joined the Sankt Augustin Department of Management Sciences in 1995, representing economics as a subject. He wants to continue to deal with topics promising potential that cannot yet be exactly classified. In the past these included the Graduate Institute or scholarship programmes. He said that the integration of campus and city development was a challenge to be faced at present.

University President Hartmut Ihne thanked the current vice presidents, whose term of office ends on 31 December 2014, and explained the criteria for choosing the candidates. According to the president, the latter include, alongside expertise, personal, but also inter- and cross-disciplinary skills.  He added that this was important because even though the vice presidents are all members of a university department, they would not represent their departments’ interests in the President’s Office.