Videos and Video Messages

Dear Colleagues, Dear Employees, Dear Students,

It is the last week before Christmas and we are all looking forward to a few days of relaxation and carefree togetherness with family and friends. Many families share the lovely tradition of the Christmas letter, in which they reflect on the positive experiences, but also on the challenges of the past year. I would also like to use the last Rector's Forum of this year to take a look back on what has been happening at the University of Greifswald in 2023. A year in which we were fortunately able to return to full in-person teaching.

Our university's system accreditation was renewed without any conditions at the beginning of the year and we were pleased to report an "all-time high" in the acquisition of external funding, including a significant increase in DFG and BMBF funding.

In March, we received funding from the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (Foundation Innovation in Higher Education) for the inter-university learning network "Teaching Low German" and celebrated the opening of the Centre for Life Science and Plasma Technology on the Beitzplatz Campus.

April saw the start of our new team of conflict counsellors and mediators, who - together with their coordinator Katharina Ruffer - have been a central part of our complaints and conflict management procedure ever since and to whom I would like to express my sincere gratitude for their commitment.

In May, we held the first Dies Academicus in several years that saw the bestowal of university awards for teaching and sustainability as well as the DAAD prize and the Käthe Kluth scholarship. We are already looking forward to continuing this tradition next year on 29 May on the Loefflerstraße Campus.

In June, we honoured 144 doctoral and 5 postdoctoral graduates at our traditional ceremony in the St. Nikolai Cathedral. A highlight of the event was the speech by Prof. Dr Lothar Wieler, former President of the Robert Koch Institute. The Greifswald Research Award was also presented in the same month; this year's senior prize went to the theoretical physicist and Scientific Director of the MPI for Plasma Phsysics, Prof. Sybille Günter.

In July, a jointly developed policy paper on AI and its consequences for teaching, research and administration was adopted, we were delighted to receive the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize from the DFG together with our junior professor Isabelle Dolezalek and we recorded a significant improvement in the CEWS university ranking on gender equality aspects. The University of Greifswald now has 29.4 per cent female professors, which is well above the national average of 28.1 per cent.

In August, Education Minister Oldenburg visited the university for the first time to discuss teacher training and the amendment to the Teacher Training Act with members of the Rectorate and the GULB. During a second visit in mid-December, Ms. Oldenburg then visited one of three “Classrooms of the Future” that had been set up for student teachers as part of the special programme "Digitisation in Teacher Education".

In September, Prime Minister Schwesig visited the University of Greifswald together with the Ukrainian Ambassador Makeiev and exchanged views with students and academics from the Department of Slavonic Studies. However, it was not only members of the State Government who visited our university last year, but also many members of parliament, with whom we were able to discuss our concerns. In September, we were also delighted to receive further funding for two projects from the "Freiraum 2023" funding line of the Foundation Innovation in Higher Education. In the middle of the month, we held our first Health Awareness Day since the end of the pandemic under the motto "Hand in hand - Sustainable - Healthy" and the administration celebrated a well-attended get-together, which, after a guided tour of the MPI for Plasma Physics, ended on a high at the University Water Sports Centre in Wieck.

The winter semester 2023/24 started in October with the traditional Opening Ceremony at the St. Nikolai Cathedral, with the keynote speech delivered by Prof. Christoph Markschies, President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, who welcomed the 1,734 new students together with the Rectorate, Deans and representatives of the Senate. The Deutschlandstipendien, which were awarded in our beautiful Aula in mid-October, set a new record with 82 scholarships. We were also pleased to have been able to quickly appoint a new Academic Director for the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg, Prof. Thomas Klinger, following the departure of Prof. Ulla Bonas.

This year's "Academic Career Day" took place at the Krupp-Kolleg in the first week of November. The event is aimed specifically at those interested in doing a doctorate, doctoral candidates and postdocs and this year's motto was "Open Science - Science open". In the same month, the administration made it possible to change given names for internal university matters on the basis of the supplementary ID card issued by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Transidentität und Intersexualität. Seven institutions in the town, including the university, have joined forces to form the Greifswald Sustainability Alliance in order to implement the 17 sustainability goals defined by the United Nations. As a university, we are setting a good example: last year, we launched the first measures by commencing a project to optimise buildings’ energy consumption, which includes, e.g. the installation of photovoltaic systems in the LPG and C_FunGene, and initiated a feasibility study for connecting the Institutes of Biochemistry and Physics to a geothermal heat pump. The climate protection forest in Eldena, which was established at the end of 2022, now binds around 700 tonnes of CO₂ equivalents annually and thus forms a central building block for achieving climate neutrality at the university by 2030.

In December, seven professors were elected as DFG review board members for the 2024-2028 term of office and are now actively involved in shaping DFG research policy. We are also delighted that the Transregio initiative Wetscapes 2.0 was invited by the DFG Grants Committee to submit a full proposal and that Prof. Fabian Leendertz received the Hamburg Science Award for One Health. The research strategy initiated around a year ago together with interfaculty expert groups, which aims to fine-tune the profile and positioning of our key fields of research vis-à-vis the state, is now nearing completion. In order to remain an attractive employer in the future, we have drawn up and passed a new service agreement on working from home, which allows employees to complete up to 60 per cent of their work hours from home - if suitable for the respective work tasks. Work is in full swing on an application for the European University KreativEU, an alliance of eleven universities, as is the evaluation of the university-wide survey on international collaboration, which should enable a more targeted establishment of strategic university partnerships.

The past year has therefore been characterised by countless highlights and we recorded many successes in research, teaching and transfer, that we can be very proud of. However, 2023 was also overshadowed by financial concerns. Even though the Federal Government's “energy price brake” and the State's hardship fund did provide relief in view of the immense rise in energy costs, the inflation-related additional costs and the collection of part of our reserves to cover the global budget reduction made cost-cutting measures necessary that were painful for us all.

In view of the continuing shortage of financial resources, declining student numbers and changing political and social conditions, we have decided to develop an overall university strategy for 2035 that will be discussed and developed together with the faculties, central institutions and administration. Taking stock of our strengths and weaknesses as the basis of any strategic process, identifying future research priorities, developing study programmes and critically examining the structures and functions of our organisational units are necessary in order to position ourselves as a competitive university in the face of state-wide, national and international competition, that is characterised by strong research and transfer capabilities and attractive study programmes. However, the successful implementation of this strategy - which we want the Senate to approve next summer - can only succeed if all members of the university, whether researchers, teaching staff, students or administrative staff, are aware of their responsibility for our university and its future.

The initiative "Setting Face against Racism - a campaign for Greifswald", which will be launched on 13 January at 2:30 p.m. with a kick-off event on Greifswald's Market Square, shows me that, by joining forces, we can make a difference. The broad alliance against racism was initiated by our students, but is now supported by a large number of university members and Greifswald institutions. It is precisely this solidarity and joint activities that will be important if we want to overcome the challenges of the current crises together.

Dear Colleagues, Dear Students, Dear Employees,

On behalf of the entire Rectorate, I would like to wish you a wonderful and relaxing festive season. I hope that you spend the holidays in good health, that you find time to read, play music, exercise outdoors and pursue your hobbies - all the things that may have been neglected in recent busy weeks - but above all, that you find time for your partner, your children, grandchildren and friends. In particular, I hope that you are able to relax and recover from the demands and efforts of the past few months. Have a good start to the new year, both I and we look forward to continuing our joint efforts in research, teaching and shaping our university life in 2024.