A Strong Academic Start

New stimulus for university teaching: In a Germany-wide competition to improve teaching, the Ministry of Education and Research has selected 111 universities for funding. Among the winners was Goethe-University, whose policy of “a strong academic start” was convincing, and the University can therefore expect to receive up to 21 million euros over the next five years.

The Frankfurt policy will be implemented as early as the 2011/2012 winter semester. “The introductory phase will lay the groundwork for academic success,” says Müller-Esterl. “With the aid of additional resources we can improve student monitoring.”

The “strong academic start” policy focuses on special requirements at the beginning of first-year students: “bridge classes” for example, can help students compensate for deficits, and smaller learning groups can improve individual monitoring. “In this initial phase, we are especially concerned that students acquire the basic methodological and technical skills that prepare them for independent and research-oriented studies,” says Professor Tanja Brühl, who as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences made a major contribution to the development of the successful policy.

The respective departments will in the future work together in four new centers - one each for the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and teacher training – to better impart basic scientific skills. One other important goal is to significantly reduce the failure rate in basic education. At the same time, the “strong academic start policy” focuses on the professional teaching qualifications of the instructors, from tutor to professor.

“The ideas that were sparked in the last few months during the regular meeting of the Dean and the students, have been included in the policy”, says Dr. Kerstin Schulmeyer-Ahl, who heads the new Office of Teaching and Quality Assurance which coordinated the application; and she already set her sights on the next target: “If the referees give our implementation high marks in 2016, we could be granted another 21 million Euros through 2020!”