Inspirational trip
The management group's visit in Strasbourg and Karlsruhe leads to new exchange agreements and more.
Dear staff
This week, the management group and our Erasmus coordinator visited two of our nine Epicur partners: Strasbourg University (Unistra) and Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT).
The two institutions have an impressive number of students (55,000 and 22,000 respectively) and an impressive number of researchers, including many Nobel laureates and well-known inventors.
It is of course far from possible to get an overview of all degree programmes and research groups in a one-day visit to each location, but we got a good impression of both locations.
Why even be interested in Epicur partners when we have so many opportunities to cooperate in existing agreements and networks? I would like to emphasize two things:
- There is a great interest and willingness to collaborate.
- We have a lot in common in research and teaching.
Due to the size of the two institutions, the organisation of research and teaching can seem somewhat unmanageable, but common for both is that they set up research centres or interdisciplinary departments when they work across traditional subject areas.
Many of these initiatives are supported with extra funding in the form of excellence or strategic funds and are characterized by great activity and a great desire to collaborate with external partners.
We were introduced o several ITI's (Interdisciplinary Thematic Institutes) at Unistra, where for example Qmat (quantum research) and IMBCio+ (molecular biology) could be relevant partners for our research environments.
At KIT, over 170 researchers are gathered in a single centre around Health Technology, which involves subjects from our four departments and which is relevant for collaboration with the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Odense University Hospital.
Both institutions have an impressive infrastructure, which they make a point of bringing into play both internally and externally. I can only encourage everyone to check websites or talk to the department heads about possible collaborations.
One of the reasons why both institutions are part of Epicur is the desire to exchange Bachelor, Master and PhD students. Several programmes are offered in English, but we were a little surprised that there were relatively few of them out of the total teaching portfolio.
Our Erasmus coordinator is now started to establish exchange agreements with both institutions. It is much easier now that he has put a face to contacts in both places.
There is already an opportunity to go visit for a semester or participate in summer schools. There is great interest in developing new forms of teaching in the longer term and there are various programmes that can support this development – a development that we also need here at our faculty.
I hope that there is an interest in exploring the Epicur collaboration more among researchers and students.
In the coming time, we will work to inform more about the opportunities within both areas, including opportunities for financial support for joint activities.
Read more about the Epicur alliance
Marianne Holmer, dean