University of Graz

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The University of Graz, founded in 1585, is Austria's second oldest university and one of the largest in the country. Many excellent scientists, amongst them six Nobel laureates, have taught and researched here.
With 32,500 students and 4,300 employees, the University of Graz contributes significantly to the Styrian capital's vibrating life. Its location in Europe encourages a lively scientific, economic, and cultural exchange with South-East Europe, from which the city benefits and its educational institutions.
As a comprehensive university, the University of Graz regards itself as an international institution for education and research committed to research and teaching for the benefit of society.
Our policy is to maintain freedom in research and teaching, which permanently commits us to be social, political, and technological developments. Increasing flexibilization and globalization are the essential frame conditions.
Besides our ambition to create profile and visibility in a European and global context, it is above all of our most outstanding characteristics that our university has acquired a unique position in the south-eastern European region.
Basic and applied research belong to our excellence, based on the foundations of scientific and ethical integrity. We foster topical and methodological variety within an international cooperation network. We build our profile by determining research focuses under the consideration of socially relevant research questions. Innovative interdisciplinary research and cooperation are amongst the subjects especially encouraged.
We involve our students in research in the context of research-based teaching. We cooperate with excellent European and non-European universities and participate in extensive networks. We actively provide our knowledge and the results generated through research to society.
At our university, students are trained to become autonomous and, as graduates with excellent technical and social skills, to acquire interdisciplinary and critical thinking. Teaching has the same value as research and is developed according to high-quality standards. Research-based teaching allows for the needs of students and the requirements of science, society, and business. Innovative and interdisciplinary teaching plays a similarly important role as does student counseling and comprehensive education of students. We acknowledge that students must take responsibility for their learning processes, and we support the principle of active participation in the further development of teaching. We encourage students' mobility by providing international mobility and mutual study programs.
At our university, students are trained to become autonomous and, as graduates with excellent technical and social skills, to acquire interdisciplinary and critical thinking. Teaching has the same value as research and is developed according to high-quality standards. Research-based teaching allows for the needs of students and the requirements of science, society, and business. Innovative and interdisciplinary teaching plays a similarly important role as does student counseling and comprehensive education of students. We acknowledge that students must take responsibility for their learning processes, and we support the principle of active participation in the further development of teaching. We encourage students' mobility by providing international mobility and mutual study programs.
The second oldest university in Austria was founded in 1585 by Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria, initially with just two faculties, those of philosophy and theology in a Jesuit college in 1778, the faculty of law was established. After the college had been turned into a lyceum, Emperor Francis I re-established the institution as Karl Franzens University in 1827, to which in 1863, a faculty of medicine was added. Today's campus dates back to 1870.
The flourishing scientific life was severely damaged in 1938, when numerous teachers, amongst them Nobel laureates Otto Loewi, Viktor Hess, and Erwin Schrödinger, as well as some third of the students were expelled by the Nazis. From the 1960s onwards, the number of students steadily increased.
After the Faculty of Medicine had become independent in 2004, the sixth faculty of Environmental and Regional Sciences and Education (URBI) was created in 2007.

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