Best practice for engineering science faculties

DFG workshop presents international, exemplary management models

This release is available in German.

How can the engineering science faculties of German universities meet the increasing demand for engineers in Germany, the world champion in exports" How must successful faculties of the future be structured in the face of increasing internationalisation and interdisciplinarity" And, what structures are particularly promising in this regard" These questions were the focus of the workshop: “New Models for Governing Tomorrow’s Faculties of Engineering: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bath Water or Seizing New Opportunities”, recently held by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation). Some 40 high-ranking representatives of engineering science faculties who had been invited by DFG President Professor Matthias Kleiner travelled to the Head Office of Europe's largest research funding organisation in Bonn. In addition, representatives of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) participated in the workshop.

“Well-structured faculties are vital to us. They are an important setting for excellent research. For this reason, we would like to examine best practice examples of governance structures in engineering-science faculties from an international perspective and discuss them as they apply to the German university and research system,” said DFG President Kleiner as he outlined the primary focus of the workshop. Two such best practice concepts were presented in Bonn by their initiators. First, David Lynch, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, described how he successfully realigned his faculty. Through an active professorship appointment and recruiting policy, he was not only able to considerably lower the average age of the faculty, but above all noticeably increase the interdisciplinarity and quality of the research work. Lynch was also very successful in his efforts in encouraging high school students to consider pursuing a degree in engineering. A thriving endowment culture rounds out the success model from Alberta, which also impressed Professor Frieder Meyer-Krahmer; BMBF State Secretary; Professor Kleiner; DFG President; and Professor Bernd Scholz-Reiter, DFG Vice President, during visits to Canada in the fall of 2007. This is also where the seed for the event in Bonn was planted, at which Meyer-Krahmer again emphasised the importance of Canada as an outstanding location for research and as an important cooperation partner for German research during the opening remarks.