BTU awards prizes for excellent teaching

Prof. Dr. Peer Schmidt, Vice-President for Academic Affairs at BTU, presented the 2022 and 2023 teaching awards, each endowed with 5,000 euros, on June 13, 2024 at the university's central campus in Cottbus as part of the 7th Teaching Day. This was held under the motto "Teaching mission statement".

Professor Schmidt  emphasizes: "With the teaching award, we at BTU have been recognizing the results of special commitment to teaching-learning processes and environments in the form of innovative teaching concepts since 2009. The aim is to make the results visible and serve as inspiration and best practice models across the university."

The 2022 Teaching Award went to Prof. Dr. disc. pol. Alexandra Retkowski with her chair Social Services for Structurally Weak Regions and Heike Bartholomäus, Managing Director of the Centre for Continuing Education and her module Overcoming borders - learning from each other - structural change in border regions.

The topic of the 2022 Teaching Award was sustainability in teaching and learning. The module impressed the teaching award jury with its use of teaching-learning processes and environments that supported the acquisition of sustainability-oriented skills by students in a special way.
It deals with the understanding of sustainability in terms of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 and is anchored in the German-Polish Social Work study programme at the Jakub von Paradyż Academy in Gorzów and BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. In the winter semester 2022/2023, the module was implemented together with the guest student course WISSEN FÜR ALLE at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg.

The 2023 teaching prize was awarded to Dr. Francesc G. Rodríguez Mansilla from the Chair of Technoscience Studies with its module How to Talk About "Nature"? was awarded.
The main topic of the Teaching Award 2023 was the diversity-sensitive flexibilization of studies. The teaching award jury was impressed by how this module not only used numerous tools for synchronous and asynchronous formats, but also the free choice of learning materials and the active use of female international role models.
The module gives students an insight into the history and theory of "nature" as it has been and is conceptualized from a historical, philosophical and ethnographical perspective. In the current ecological crisis with its technical challenges, interdisciplinary reflection on "nature" has become all the more urgent. The module offers the opportunity to engage with "nature" and its various manifestations and concepts through reading, writing and visual practices.

Certificates for International Competence
On the occasion of Teaching Day 2024, BTU also honored the winners of the Certificate of International Competence for the year 2024: Adriana Handrich from the Vice President for Research and Transfer and Julia Braun from the Chair of Planning, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
This certificate has been awarded at BTU since 2016 in recognition of the acquisition of key intercultural skills, participation in language courses and internationally oriented exchange programmes as well as commitment to further internationalization.