The Bremen science year has now been officially heralded in: With the traditional New Year’s reception held by the “unifreunde” and the two universities. 350 guests drawn from the fields of politics, science and scholarship, the economy, culture and society followed an invitation to attend the event in the upper rooms of the Bremen City Hall on 29th January. The official program included a welcome address by the Mayor of Bremen, Jens Böhrnsen, and Prof. Bengt Beutler, chairman of “unifreunde”. On behalf of the two universities, the Rector of the University of Bremen, Prof. Bernd Scholz-Reiter, and the acting President of Jacobs University, Prof. Katja Windt, took a look at the year past and formulated their expectations for 2014. Following tradition, the New Year’s reception was used to introduce Bremen‘s newly appointed professors. In 2013 the University of Bremen appointed a total of 15 new professors.

In his speech, the Mayor of Bremen, Jens Böhrnsen, stressed “We do our utmost to ensure that the budget for higher education is adequate“. He pointed out that the Federal State of Bremen had allocated extra funds for quality improvements in the area of studies and teaching and for the renovation of university buildings. He emphasized the huge significance of science and scholarship for Bremen und Bremerhaven, not least due to the vitality students lend to life in the two cities. Science is a priority of the State of Bremen’s financial policy, he said. Amidst the background of agreements made by the grand coalition in Berlin to make more federal funding available for financing non-university research institutes – also in Bremen – and thus to take pressure off financing by the federal states, in his speech the Mayor expressed his intention to uphold the drastic cuts in the budget for education. In reality, he said, more money was now available to the Bremen universities.

The Rector of the University of Bremen, Bernd-Scholz Reiter, expressed his satisfaction at these words of commitment from the Mayor, particularly in view of the structural under-funding of the basic university budget. The totally insufficient basic funding made available to the University of Bremen is felt especially in the area of teaching and studies. Any additional funding would first have to be spent there. Even though the Bremen Senate “may be steering the right course with its budgetary policy for 2014/1015“, the Rector still felt it necessary to make an urgent appeal for more reliability of long-term planning and investment in new lecture rooms and buildings.

Here you'll find some impressions of the New Year's Reception