Our University Development Concept 2030

Our University Development Concept 2030

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Where do we currently stand as a Technical University?

In the University Development Concept (Hochschulentwicklungskonzept/HEK), we define our priorities for our university in the areas of research, studying and teaching, transfer, and governance and administration. The HEK serves to sharpen our focus and to embed our profile-giving focal points in an overarching development concept.

We are already working together across faculties and disciplines within the university and with external partners. Our clusters of excellence SE²A - Sustainable and Energy-Efficient Aviation and QuantumFrontiers also contribute to our clear positioning.

Our research priorities:

  • Mobility
  • Metrology
  • Engineering for Health
  • City of the Future

We see ourselves as a forward-looking university that meets global challenges, supports social change and attracts employees who want to work with us to achieve our goals.

And this is what we want to achieve:

  • to conduct cutting-edge research in all areas - even beyond our focus areas
  • to increase the potential for innovation
  • to live and shape interdisciplinarity
  • to involve all scientists in our research priorities
  • to collaborate with non-university partners - locally, regionally and internationally

What should the university of tomorrow look like?

Workshop Studierendenmarketing im Rahmen des Hochschulentwicklungskonzept

The present and the future pose unprecedented questions. Social change demands answers from us.

But we can only respond by focusing on comprehensive development, with collaborative approaches that transcend disciplinary and structural boundaries.

As part of the University Development 2030 Initiative, we have defined, through a participatory process, our overall objectives as well as strategic goals and principles for the four performance dimensions and four overarching themes. This process will be completed by the end of 2022. With the HEK, we want to set the direction for our development and provide orientation for all members of our university.

Comprehensive and sustainable thinking and action should underpin every step forward.

Our overarching goal is to have clearly defined standards of excellence at all levels and across the university. A dynamic, cyclical process that will continually adjust our goals, including through annual faculty discussions, will underpin this.

HSE excellence

Values that will guide our actions in the future

We have agreed to align our overall development with these values:

  1. Comprehensive: Everything is connected. That is why we think outside the box and exploit synergies within and beyond our four performance dimensions.
  2. Focused: We prioritise and create transparency.
  3. Enabling: We create new, individually designed spaces of opportunity.
  4. Open: We are transparent about what we achieve, can achieve and want to achieve - and communicate this.
  5. Participative: Diverse teams work together to develop smart ideas and solutions.
  6. Value-based: More courage, personal responsibility and trust – these are the values by which we measure ourselves.
  7. Unifying: We combine our competencies to become stronger and overcome the boundaries between centralised and decentralised institutions.
  8. Innovative: We encourage innovative creators.
  9. Flexible: We embrace continuous change, improvement and renewal.
  10. Forward-looking: Looking to tomorrow guides our actions today.
  11. Optimistic: We use our skills to create a future worth living.

The University Development Initiative 2030 and the concept of comprehensive development

With the concept of comprehensive development, emphasize the focus on our performance and overarching dimensions, and the strong links between all dimensions. It shows our four performance dimensions - research, teaching and studying, transfer, and governance and administration - consistently linked to our strategically important overarching themes of digitalisation, internationalisation, equality and diversity, and knowledge exchange.

The individual performance dimensions and overarching themes are not new to us. What is new, however, is the targeted orientation towards benchmarks that should lead us to a new self-perception as a university. This orientation is visible in our regulatory process towards university development. This serves the purpose of continuous adaptation and development. We have designed our circular process to be highly flexible in responding to external changes. This flexibility is indispensable for us as a large, partly decentralised organisation in today's rapidly changing world.

 

Comprehensive development - what does that mean?

With a clear focus on comprehensive development, all our actions, whether in the performance dimensions or in the overarching themes, will be coordinated and managed in a targeted way.

 

Sustainability as a guiding principle

Acting sustainably means questioning one's own actions and shaping them in such a way that they do not harm future generations or the environment. All members of our university are therefore called upon to act in an environmentally, economically and socially sustainable manner. The United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development provides guidance in this regard.

 

Ownership and participation as a guiding principle

We can only achieve our goals and excellence as a university if we work together. That is why we encourage the ideas and commitment of all members of the TU Braunschweig. We count on individual responsibility in our daily actions, which will become a matter of course the faculties, institutions and staff units.

At the beginning of 2021, we developed our University Development Concept in a short four-stage participatory process and set it down in writing. We sought broad support from all faculties, staff units and institutions of the University.  External critics advised us on the process and reflected on the initial results. The first version of our university development concept [in German only] has been available since the end of 2022.