Being a state university, the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) holds a special position: on the one hand, it offers a broad spectrum of subjects allowing school graduates to study within the state and thus encourages qualified academic youngsters towards the attractive location of Schleswig-Holstein. On the other hand, the CAU takes on the demands of the national and international competition between universities through its clear scientific profile and specializations. Adding to this are also the Bachelor and Master’s degrees that comply to the standards of a well-organized European higher education region of comparable study structure and certifications.
Excavation in Okolište (Poland): an excavation team at work.
The CAU attaches great importance on independent research and close contact to regional and national networks for its doctoral candidates. A graduate’s centre (currently in development) supports the young scientists with a variety of opportunities.
The Career Center builds on the competencies learned during the study courses and prepares the graduates for their working lives. The organization of family, career and scientific education should in future be eased through the option of part-time study.
Efficiency through interdisciplinarity
To combine the diverse fields of subjects is one of the highest priorities at the University of Kiel, where scientific questions are seldom constrained within disciplinary boundaries. It is above all through interdisciplinary co-operation that new solutions can be found which raise the efficiency of economic processes and for society symbolize innovation. A concrete research profile contributes towards following problem-oriented approaches and thus facilitates a technology and knowledge transfer. This frequently leads to the registration of patents, for example in the intertwined main research topies “Marine and Geosciences” and “Applied Life Sciences”. Both complexes have achieved an interdisciplinary Cluster of Excellence.
In the area of “Nanotechnology and Surface Science”, technical processes are realized on a molecular level on grounds of models taken from nature. Within individual collaborative research centres, such as “Function by Switching” or “Fundamentals of Complex Plasmas”, the topic orientates itself closely around the needs of free science and carries out basic research. A similarly promising potential can be found at the graduate school “Human Development in Landscapes” and the main topic “Cultural Spaces”. Here, doctoral candidates from the subject courses of archaeology, the geosciences, history, medicine, classical philology and biology jointly research for spaces as a particular element of human development.
Novel questions create workplaces
The establishment of specialized workgroups require a well-educated infrastructure. From office workers to scientific assistants to newly-formed professorships – every university development secures and creates workspaces of varying qualifications. The Clusters of Excellence “Inflammation at Interfaces” and “The Future Ocean” alone directly created 187 workspaces that naturally also bring more with them.
CAU research has gained around 75.6 million euros until today.
Start-up and spin-off companies with university support
The ongoing anchoring of the trend of company independence requires competent advice and motivation. For these purposes, a network of the universities of Schleswig-Holstein brought the L@INC project to life.
With consideration of the competence areas of the individual universities and under leadership of the CAU, spin-offs from scientific institutes and company foundations are specifically supported. In the future independent entrepreneurs arm themselves with training courses for the start of their career, while valuable networks are already established during the founding phase.
The author is the president of the CAU in Kiel. He received his doctorate at the University of Siegen in 1985 and habilitated in Siegen in 1994. He received a appointment with his C4 professorship for Economic and Social History in Kiel in 1996. Fouquet was dean of the philosophical faculty from 2000 to 2002. He was elected deputy rector in 2005 and president in December 2007.
