Graduate Institute celebrates 10th anniversary

Extended family with structures

The Graduate Institute celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2021

From just twelve doctoral students to over a hundred – that is the impressive result that the Graduate Institute (GI) has achieved after ten years. On 1st January 2011, it began its work at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and currently offers 96 internal and 28 external doctoral students and their supervisors a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and further academic qualification. “The variety of subjects is a challenge, but the successful community-building is what makes us special,” says Rainer Herpers, Professor of Computer Science and Scientific Director of the Graduate Institute. He describes the institute as an “extended family with structures”.

When it was founded, the Graduate Institute took on a leading role among universities of applied sciences (UAS) in NRW, and little has changed in that regard. “The past ten years of the Graduate Institute have been good, and the next ten years should be even better,” says Herpers referring to the planned independent right for universities of applied sciences in NRW to award doctorates. An important step towards this goal was the founding of the joint Graduate Institute NRW in 2016, from which the Graduate School for Applied Research in North Rhine-Westphalia (PK NRW) emerged. The H-BRS Graduate Institute played a major role in its establishment. “The Graduate School for Applied Research North Rhine-Westphalia is now an important perspective for the universities of applied sciences in NRW,” according to Herpers. This is because the Science and Humanities Council’s evaluation of the PK NRW ended with a positive result at the beginning of July 2022. The council recommends that the state government of NRW grant the graduate school the independent right to award doctorates. After this successful evaluation, only the state’s approval is still needed for it to become the Doctoral College NRW. North Rhine-Westphalia would then be the third federal state after Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt to grant the right of awarding independent doctoral degrees to universities of applied sciences.

10 successful years: Rainer Herpers, Miriam LüdtkeHandjery (left) and Rita Cornely are delighted by the positive development of the Graduate Institute

www.hochschule-bonn-rheinsieg.de/de/news/herpersgruendungsdirektor-ampromotionskolleg-nrw Perspective of doctoral graduates

In the ten episodes of the podcast “Abenteuer Promotion” (“Adventure Doctorate”), doctoral students who graduated in 2021 discuss what they thought of earning their doctorate at H-BRS with Eva Tritschler, the press officer at the time. They provide information about their own individual research journeys, including successes and unexpected difficulties. In the interviews, which are well worth listening to, they also report on the personal value of their dissertation as well as on important exchanges with other doctoral students at the Graduate Institute.

More: https://www.h-brs.de/de/ podcasts-der-hochschule