Ask me anything – communication format for junior professors Launch with President Angela Ittel

“Ask me anything” (AMA), the new communication format for junior professors at TU Braunschweig, has started. The format offers academics in the qualification phase the opportunity to talk to successful professors and exchange views on academic and science management topics. President Angela Ittel was a guest at the launch.

At the AMA launch event in the Neuer Senatssaal, scientists in the postdoc phase or on tenure track professorships discussed topics such as digitalisation, diversity, excellence and internationalisation in higher education with TU Braunschweig President Angela Ittel. “Conversations like these motivate me and show that academia at Technische Universität Braunschweig is on a good path and has a great future. Thank you for the opportunity to get to know us,” says President Angela Ittel.

Photo credit: Kristina Rottig/TU Braunschweig

Jun. Prof. Thekla Cordes from BRICS and the Institute of Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics welcomes the new format: “It became clear that we junior professors play an important role in the internationalisation, digitalisation and research strategies of the university with our innovative approaches. Other topics of the exchange were the visibility of junior professors at TU Braunschweig and the career prospects for W1/tenure-track professorships.

Tenure-track professorships as a reliable career perspective

In the Federal-Länder programme for the promotion of young academics (WISNA programme or tenure track programme), 1,000 new junior professorships with tenure track were created throughout Germany. TU Braunschweig was able to secure a total of 18 of these junior professorships, all of which have now been filled. While funding through the WISNA programme is limited to six years per junior professorship, TU Braunschweig also wants to use the junior professorship in the long term to make academic career paths easier to plan and more transparent. To this end, it has committed itself to permanently filling 20 per cent of the professorships initially as “tenure-track professorships”, which after a successful probationary phase immediately become tenured professorships.

“Ask me anything” goes into the next round

“The AMA communication format was successfully accepted by all participants and will be firmly established,” says the coordinator of the “Prof. Programme” Susanne Sandau from Professional and Personnel Development. In future, it will take place once a semester. The junior professors’ desired topics for the coming events are attracting third-party funding, public relations and communication with a high media impact.