University of Kassel

[EduCativ]

The University of Kassel is a young, modern, and vibrant university, characterized by its openness to new ideas in every area of its work. Receptivity, initiative, transdisciplinary thinking, and unconventionality are traits we cherish and welcome in studies, research and teaching, knowledge transfer, and entrepreneurial ventures, to which the university provides superior support. We aspire to develop, validate, and implement ideas – even if they are not yet in the mainstream. The University of Kassel has an unconventional profile with expertise in nature, technology, culture, and society. Questions relating to our planet's future and our existence, such as globalization, climate change, environmental protection, and questions regarding the evolution of technical systems or demographic change, are characteristic of our profile in both research and teaching.
With more than 23,000 students and approximately 1,800 scholars, more than 300 professors, the University of Kassel is one of Germany's mid-sized universities. It plays a crucial role in developing the northern Hessen region, but its profile also attracts many students and scholars from across Germany and abroad. We nurture creativity, critical analysis, ethical reflection, and unconventional thinking. Extending academic fields' development beyond their boundaries is another marker for many University of Kassel research centers searching for sustainable answers to our most important questions. This focus offers scholars and scientists exciting challenges and paves students' way into their lives and careers.
To overcome the challenges our future holds for us, it is crucial to understand and utilize the principles of nature and the environment. The University of Kassel contributes to this endeavor in its Field of Competence: Nature by educating young minds in the natural, environmental and agricultural sciences in many courses that range from astrophysics to zoology. The university is also known for its widely respected research contributions in the areas of sustainability and environmental protection, renewable energies, and coping with climate change. In Kassel, the three classic fields of the natural sciences– physics, chemistry, and biology – work in very close cooperation with other fields of study, especially engineering, agricultural sciences, and urban and landscape planning. With over 30 fields of study that boast an environmental focus, the University of Kassel has established a clear profile in environmental research and education. More than 200 environment-related courses each year result from Kassel's Europewide leading role in the field. The field of nanostructure and molecular sciences has also developed into a highly promising research focus in Kassel. Physicists, biologists, and chemists cooperatively research along with side electrical and mechanical engineers into the basics of nanotechnology, which is regarded as a critical technology of the 21st century, and develop applications in the material sciences, information technology, biosensor technology, molecular biology, and medical diagnostics.
This is where we are inventing the world of tomorrow: civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and IT are all characterized by innovation and proximity to application. Kassel engineers and scientists focus on future tasks: innovative material development, exploitation of thermomechanical processes, simulation of technical systems, vehicle systems technology, designing interfaces between human and machine, the problems surrounding mobile internet, and the development of multimedia learning environments. This expertise in technology has also proved hugely beneficial in addressing environmental issues. In cooperation with colleagues from other areas, Kassel scientists have earned an excellent reputation about sustainable material flow systems, regenerative energy systems, and energy efficiency, in the use of biomatter as a source of energy and material, in environment-friendly planning, producing and building as well as in integrated aquatic ecosystems management. The University of Kassel is situated and well connected in a strong technology cluster in northern Hessen, where it cooperates closely with innovative companies and institutions that help shape Germany's technological renewal. Prominent among them is the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy Systems Technology (IWES), which originated at the University of Kassel, and the idE Institute for Decentralized Energy Technologies.
In art and culture, Kassel forges a strong link between its historical roots and uncompromising modernity. Kassel is one of the few German universities that encompass a school of arts, the tradition of which reaches back to its foundation in 1777. After the war, the School of Art and Design brought forth the "documenta" – a modern art event of global recognition, which still maintains close links to the University of Kassel. The School of Art and Design is a place of constant activity with and around visual worlds and critical discourse about the visualization of content. These focal points span from the fine arts to visual communication and product design. Countless awards and accolades, including two Oscars for animated shorts, are a testament to our lecturers and students' creative force. Our art school's connection also opens up opportunities for exchange and cooperation between artistic and scientific fields. Our strong faculties of the arts, teaching subjects such as linguistics, literature, media sciences, philosophy, psychology and history, architecture, and music, go beyond their range of topics and enable interdisciplinary connections and the travel between disciplines where they interface. Also, the University and the School of Art and Design play a vital role in the region's cultural life.
Complex developmental processes, including the paradigm shift from an industrial society to an intellectual one and national to international structures, continue to present enormous challenges. Our scholars are highly involved in precisely this development: whether in education, economy, science or technology, whether in the professional context, in the structural shift of cities and regions, in the planning of human communities and international communication. The spectrum of subjects in the educational sciences and the humanities, in linguistics and literature, in cultural studies and economics, architecture and urban and landscape planning, and many other fields, offers an unusually vast base for answering precisely these questions. Education facilitates the management of significant changes. But in Kassel, education itself also is the subject of research: Kassel boasts a unique cluster in the field of empirical school and university research, teaching and learning research, and comparative international university and occupational research. Kassel scholars place particular emphasis on questions of e-learning, information technology, digitized society, and media development. The structural change of European cities and regions, the shift in employment, gender studies, and teacher education held near schools are other topics the University of Kassel contributes to. In this way, social studies can help turn a change into an improvement.

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