Excellence Initiative

Following its good showing in the first round of the Excellence Initiative launched by the German Government and the Länder, the University of Bremen is on the best way to scoring another success in the second round, too. The Institutional Strategy “Ambitious and Agile“ sailed through the preliminary selection. 

This means that the University of Bremen is the only university in the North West of Germany to have a chance of being awarded the coveted title “University of Excellence”. Out of the ten winners in the first round of the Excellence Initiative in 2006, Bremen is now one of the final seven universities to have been given the chance in the second round to submit a proposal for the whole university, a so-called “Institutional Strategy”. This already confirms that the University of Bremen is among the very best in all Germany.  

The institutions of excellence at the University that were already selected for special funding in the first round – the BIGSSS graduate school of social sciences and the MARUM excellence cluster– The Ocean in the Earth System – automatically go through to the final round and are applying for a prolongation of support. The application for the GLOMAR graduate school of marine sciences, which was also a winner in the first round, will be integrated in the cluster application. The two applications for prolongation must be submitted together with the University’s “Institutional Strategy” by 1st September 2011. In the following months these applications will be evaluated by a panel of international experts: the results will be made known in June 2012.

The University of Bremen’s Institutional Strategy bears the title: “Ambitious and agile: Institutional Strategy for Advancing Research Strengths at a Mid-sized University”.

Although only mid-sized, the University of Bremen is among the leading German universities when it comes to acquiring third-party funding. The University’s strength lies in its agility – its ability to adapt and focus attention on pressing socio-economic issues in a context of interdisciplinary research. The culture of the University is marked by a willingness to experiment, flexibility, team work, and the personal individual motivation shown on the part of its scientists and scholars, the student body, and all members of staff.

As a consequence of concentrating on just six high-profile areas of research, the conditions have been created for establishing sustainable cutting-edge research. This is not to imply that the University of Bremen has lost sight of new developments. There is still plenty of scope for scientific inquiry and innovative research on pressing issues. The campus is a magnet for talented young academics from all over the world. Here they are able to advance their academic careers in a creative atmosphere of intellectual openness, critical reflection and interdisciplinary communication.