The Annual Universitet Celebration with lots of celebration
This year's celebration presented the news about establishing a campus in Vejle with IT education programmes
Dear staff
This year, the Annual University Celebration offered even more celebrations than usual. First of all, Eva Bang Harvald from BMB was named Teacher of the Year based on her great efforts in teaching 1st year-students.
In addition to the fact that the students find her to be very committed and understand their challenges in the transition from high school to university very well, she is also praised for her work with the competence portfolio.
This year's honorary doctor, Professor Lene Hau from Harvard, is also incredibly inspiring. In the event at DIAS the day before, she talked about her way to the USA (inspired by exciting research and big cars) and the offer from the Rowland Institute for Science, which recruited researchers with "bold ideas".
Here she had the opportunity to switch from theoretical to experimental physics, which was a unique opportunity. She reflected on her interest in light, which she stopped and started again, and concluded that it is inspired by the long bright nights in Denmark. I can highly recommend participating in these honorary doctorate events, where you get the opportunity to get close to the researchers and learn about their path to breakthroughs in research.
The annual celebration also featured the Rector's announcement of the establishment of the Campus in Vejle. Sufficient funding and political support has now been secured so that SDU can build a research environment with associated programmes in Vejle.
It will be a big and exciting task for IMADA and for our faculty to build a new environment from scratch. We start small in the Spinderihallerne.
We will open four bachelor's programmes – two from the Faculty of Science and two from the Faculty of Engineering in 2026 – and from 2028 the master's programmes will be added. We are already well underway with applying for accreditation of the courses, and last week a recruitment film was made which will be used to attract the first researchers to Vejle.
The plan is for them to be employed from autumn 2025 and thus have one year to establish the programmes. We are now starting to recruit researchers.
It is still new for us to be present in the Campuses outside of Odense, but it is going very well in Kolding, where there is good cooperation with the two faculties in Kolding.
We are very much looking forward to working closely with the Faculty of Engineers and the joint administration with the common ambition to develop attractive programmes and an attractive research environment in Vejle.
Marianne Holmer, dean