The University of Bremen is a young university. It was founded in 1971 for teacher training. What was to become known as the "Bremen Model "was conceived in times of social reform. Its core elements apply to this day. These basic principles first made the subsequent research success possible: Interdisciplinary orientation, research-based learning in teaching projects, orientation to the practice, and social commitment. Some new guiding principles have been added since teaching and research, equal gender opportunity, and environmental responsibility.
The University of Bremen is a medium-sized German university with around 20,000 students. For its committed and talented students, Bremen offers a wide range of subjects: More than 100 master's programs and bachelor's programs, as well as the state law exam. And with research-based learning, the University had reinterpreted project studies, a defining feature originating from when it was founded. Two thousand five hundred academics (41%), among them 270 professors (29% women), teach and research in a wide range of disciplines: In the natural sciences, engineering, the social sciences, and the humanities, as well as in teacher training, we have a long-established tradition in interdisciplinary cooperation and excellent research. In 2012, the University's Institutional Strategy "Ambitious and Agile" led to it being awarded the title of "The University of Excellence," one of only eleven universities in Germany.
The issues of today's and future societies are dealt with in six high-profile interdisciplinary areas focused on the oceans and the global climate, the future of industrial production, the social conflicts of modern welfare states, the interfaces between digital technology and humans, the logistics of global supply chains, and equity in health care. The University promotes diversity, has always encouraged the implementation of new ideas and its young researchers' independence, and takes its social responsibilities seriously. We are not afraid to be the first to tread new territory: Founded as a reform university, we aim to breathe life into change.
The University has been cooperating successfully with the non-university research institutes in its immediate vicinity for a long time; this includes 11 jointly funded by the federal government and the federal states. More than 50 so-called 'cooperation professors' can testify to this. Our vision: To further anchor Bremen as a leading European research university and an inspiring place of education. To achieve this, we rely on our strengths, on the potential of all University members, and the trusting cooperation with our partners.
In only forty years, the University of Bremen – founded in 1971 – has achieved the status of being named a "University of Excellence." In 2012, together with ten other German universities, it acknowledged merit for its institutional strategy concept for cutting-edge research. Some have called it "the Weser miracle" due to high motivation, close cooperation, and apparent profiling over several decades. The University continues to pursue its path of excellent research. This remains the case, even though it was unable to gain the required two clusters of excellence in the current round of the Excellence Initiative and is therefore no longer eligible to apply to the funding program "Excellence University" in the period after 2019.
However, in the current round of the Excellence Strategy, the University of Bremen is still running with the MARUM proposal "Ocean Floor," where an excellence cluster is already working. The BIGSSS social science graduate school, which received funding in two phases of the Excellence Initiative, has been jointly funded permanently by the University of Bremen and Jacobs University. There is no further funding for graduate schools in the excellence competition.
Nevertheless, the University currently has more DFG Collaborative Research Centers than ever before: This is mainly owing to its high profile research areas and profiling strategy that began over twenty years ago. The University of Bremen is now system accredited and can thus conduct its independent quality management in teaching. The current focus is on research-based learning and setting up innovative new master's programs; these are also characteristics of an Excellent University. At the same time, it is establishing new, dependable career paths with a tenure perspective and the professorship career path. The whole University was involved in developing the future perspectives formulated in "Strategy 2018-2028".
The institutional strategy entitled "Ambitious and Agile" is a development strategy for the entire University. The nine measures formulated in the strategy have strengthened the University as a whole. The funding totaling 45 million euro lasted for five years (November 2012 to October 2017). The federal and state governments have extended the funding by two years until 2019.
The Institutional Strategy built bridges: Eleven cooperative junior research groups (M1) have established new research topics at the interface between the University and our partner research institutes – and thus introduced a new career concept. Among their members was Céline Teney, who received both the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize awarded by the DFG and a Heisenberg Professorship. Five bridge professorships anchor long-term cooperation with our partners, who also participate financially. A new framework for this was created in 2016 with the establishment of the U Bremen Research Alliance. The Rectorate has also initiated other essential developments in the University's high-profile areas: MAPEX in materials science and the social sciences merger into SOCIUM. Both now create more cooperation and more international visibility over the long term. And in computer science, the Graduate College Systems Design (SyDe) now combines the promotion of young researchers from the University, DFKI, and DLR.
The Institutional Strategy has systematically expanded the University's capacity for innovation: Only in this way can new topics, new structures, and new areas of professorial work be established on an ongoing basis. Exploration projects for individual research were newly established. Supplemented by an interdisciplinary component, they are now an integral part of our Central Research Funding. With the Creative Units, the University has given six interdisciplinary groups the chance to pursue new research lines – over three-year periods and with a great deal of freedom. It will also be possible to implement this innovative funding format in the future. Moreover, as planned, the University consolidated some of the limited-term professorships set up in the Institutional Strategy frame. It boosted some incredibly dynamic subjects (energy research, media and communication sciences, East European research, and post-colonial studies).
Following the founding of the University ― as an "academic complex" on the outskirts of the town ― and several reforms initially, a period of consolidation set in through the nineteen-eighties. The University of Bremen grew in size. New faculties for natural science and engineering were established. The University started cooperating with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Ocean Research in Bremerhaven, and the Technology Park was created (1988).
The University of Bremen also began to score its first successes with the establishment of Collaborative Research Centers (in 1988, the University was accepted into the German Research Society - DFG) and substantial external funding. Steadily improving research rankings, growing national and international recognition, and many endowment professorships were the visible fruits of this success.
The University advanced this success further by establishing a set of new guiding principles. Among other things, the University concentrated efforts on the promotion of young research talent. It implemented personnel development programs for its young researchers, many of whom were awarded professorships in the wake of the generation change that was taking place.
In addition to all this, teaching and studies at the University of Bremen underwent a considerable change: A new admission policy, for instance, with program-specific enrolment requirements, and the swift transition of study programs to Bachelor and Master Degrees. The reward for this commitment came with the title "City of Science 2005", awarded to Bremen and Bremerhaven due to joint efforts on the part of science, politics, culture, and the enterprise sector.
Today, some 25,000 people study, teach, research, and work at the University of Bremen. It has become the center of science and research in the North West of Germany, particularly renowned for its strengths in the natural and engineering sciences and the social sciences and the humanities. The work carried out by its excellent researchers, many renowned, provides an essential stimulus to societal development.
As the outstandingly favorable outcome of its showing in the underscores, the University is not content to bathe in past success and rest on its laurels. As a "learning organization, "it is continuously adapting the role it intends to play in the present and future research and academic landscape.
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