Times of Change: A Goodbye and a hello!

Logo_ZentraleAfter six years I have yesterday ended my term of office as the Vicepresident of the Baden-Wurttemberg Cooperative State University (www.dhbw.de) – the first  and largest fully dual operating university in Germany. My main responsibility for this six years period from 2011-2017 were quality management, academic affairs and research.  
Being a young higher education institution which had been  the result of a merger of eight professional academies in Baden-Württemberg in 2009, together with the President and the Chancellor we had been the first presidential team after a 2 years‘ founding phase which ran from 2009-2011. Our task was to lead this young university into maturing as an organization and assuming its position in the higher education arena in Germany, and Europe.  
A main theme running through the entire time of office was the challenge of organizational development which is, after six years of rapid and strong growth both qualitatively and quantitatively – and which led to being the largest university in the South-Wet of Germany –  still today a main theme to be addressed, also for the new presidential team. I had the chance to work with the last president and served as link between the two teams.   
With my last day on Friday I feel truly thankful and blessed to have been part of this exciting voyage. Sometimes rough and often demanding but at the end of the day absolutely rewarding. I have made experiences I would never have dreamt of before and many of the challenges which needed to be overcome turned into personal growth. I learnt a lot and hope that where I failed, matters can be healed and loose ends come together. To all with whom I worked I would like to say thank you. Especially my team, the greatest team on earth, deserves my truly heartfelt thanks.
With the day yesterday, I completed my post as Vice-president, and  will now continue to be a Professor of the University and look forward to work in our Karlsruhe Campus and team. The leadership there is outstanding and I am very happy to join and see where my hands can help to further develop this great institution.
Specifically, I look forward to continue the European and international partnerships which we had developed and were involved in, before I started as Vicepresident and which we were  not able to always fully explore and develop during the last couple of years. One task will be to engage into supporting the Open ECBCheck community, for example. Another one to continue the network of European colleagues in which we developed European research clusters to further develop the field of quality and innovation in education in Europe.
So – to all of you, friends and colleagues, reading this: Let’s get back to work and start the next exciting era!
New contact data:

 

Professor Dr. Ulf-Daniel Ehlers
Professor for Educational Management and Lifelong Learning
Vicepresident European Association for Institutions of Higher Education
Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Karlsruhe

Erzbergerstr. 121
76133 Karlsruhe
Cell  +49 179 1449732
mail:   ehlers@dhbw.de
skype: ulf.ehlers
web:    www.dhbw.de  | www.ulf-ehlers.net

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