From the President’s Office: Angela Fischer

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“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

John Lennon, Beautiful Boy (1980)

In 2021, the university, in particular the Rheinbach campus, painfully discovered how true this insight is. First came the coronavirus pandemic, which has in the meantime become a part of daily life at the university. Then the Rheinbach campus was hit hard by serious flooding. Many buildings are still damaged to this day, several of them substantially, and an extensive clean-up operation and demolition works must be carried out before reconstruction can start in 2022. But we are very thankful that no one was injured in the flooding.

With a range of ideas and the enthusiastic support of our staff, we have been working intensively and constructively for many months to overcome these new challenges. As a result, we have all developed new talents and formed many new partnerships to find interim solutions to carry on with teaching and research. Many institutes of higher education in NRW have shown solidarity and have helped us out by providing rooms and equipment.

We have shown that we can accomplish our job and daily tasks not only under difficult but also under extreme circumstances. Despite the pandemic and the lack of rooms at the Rheinbach campus, the start of winter semester 2021/22 was a success. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have made the slow return to normality possible.

Rebuilding the Rheinbach campus will take some time. We would like to learn from the experience, in particular by placing greater significance on the topic of sustainability in terms of the way buildings and outdoor areas are designed. We are undoubtedly rising from this crisis much stronger, and we will certainly be able to look back at the enriching encounters, talks and activities that have happened in its wake.

Angela Fischer

Chancellor