Photo: Erim Giresunlu
 

Advanced Talents Days

Career opportunities here and abroad

On 12 and 13 November 2015, the University of Cologne hosted the first Advanced Talents Days in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University: an interactive event exclusively offered to young academics, the so-called advanced talents. The aim of this and following events is to inform and advise advanced talents on career opportunities here and abroad.  Following the event, the first Cologne-Leuven Day took place, providing advanced talents with a platform to network and exchange ideas.

A report by Nina Maria Kohl.

“It is incredibly simple, incredibly simple – but not banal: you have to build and maintain your own personal network. No one else can do it for you. That is the trend today. Be a bit braver than you actually want to be,” Dr. Hubert Detmer of the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers encourages the young academics in front of him. He is talking about ways to become a professor. Following his lecture, he and his colleague Dr. Ulrike Preissler enter into a lively dialogue with the participants who have come to attend the first Advanced Talents Days in the University of Cologne’s seminar building on this blustery November morning.

Professor Gudrun Gersmann, Prorector for International Affairs at University of Cologne, and Professor Doris Klee, Vice-Rector for Human Resources Management and Development at RWTH Aachen University, jointly organized this event. Both universities consider the group of the so-called advanced talents to be highly important: “We, the University of Cologne, RWTH Aachen University and KU Leuven, are very aware of our responsibility to offer our young academics specific information and advice in a very difficult phase of their careers. I am very proud that to this end the two Excellence Universities in North Rhine-Westphalia have joined forces in a pioneering way and organized this event, which offers our advanced talents a joint platform for dialogue on all aspects surrounding national and international career options. Of course I am delighted that our global network partner, KU Leuven, was intensely involved in the organization of today’s event. This commitment allows us to establish a permanent platform for exchange on international support models and to position ourselves with KU Leuven as an international network in this region of Europe“, Professor Gudrun Gersmann explains.  

The advanced talents themselves seem to greatly appreciate the dialogic format of the event. Long after the beginning of the lunch break, Detmer and Preissler are still busy answering the many individual questions the participants pose after the lecture. Dr. Amelie Bernzen is one of the participants and sits down in a quieter corner of the seminar room to enjoy the delicacies she picked up from the snack buffet. Bernzen is a research associate at the Geographical Institute of the University of Cologne and far advanced in her pregnancy. “In my present situation, this event is really interesting for me," she explains. “My current position is funded by the German Research Foundation, but only for a limited period of time. Of course I have sought advice elsewhere on how taking maternity leave would affect the terms of my employment, but in today’s talks a few important legal issues were addressed again and explained in more detail – that was very helpful.”

The assistant professors Linda Hildebrand and Anja Richert from RWTH Aachen University equally appreciate the event. “You are right in the middle of a qualification phase and at the same time you have a fixed-term contract. Hence the job uncertainty is immense, and the need for information and advice is quite high,” Hildebrand explains during the lunch break of the second day of the Advanced Talents Days. “I am also interested in the international aspect of this event – the opportunity to exchange ideas and network with others, particularly with people from universities in the so-called ‘border-triangle’ between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.  Being based in Aachen, this is highly valuable for me,” Richert adds.

The afternoon of the second day is all about ‘getting to know each other’ and ‘networking’. The Vice-Rector for International Policy of KU Leuven, Professor Danny Pieters, explains this slightly different model of academic cooperation: “This first Cologne–Leuven Day is intended as the start of a fantastic joint venture for the research activities of our universities. Today and on all future Cologne–Leuven Days, we would like to do things off-road, maybe even off off-road, like today’s science speed dating and the science slam. So, these events should first and foremost be fun, but eventually the fun should come from the possibility of working together in a global network and collaborating in joint research projects, while at the same time taking advantage of the fact that the universities are exotic to each other, located in different countries, embedded in different cultures and operating in completely different surroundings, yet geographically close.”

And indeed, the participants seem to hugely enjoy the afternoon’s activities: in the course of the next hours, the atmosphere in the Neuer Senatssaal grows increasingly lively, entertaining and even amicable. Sascha Förster, a research associate at the Cologne Institute for Media Culture and Theatre, expertly hosted the science slam, encouraging his audience to reward the protagonists with a thunderous applause that echoes far down the corridors of the main building.