In-House News Elisabeth Hoffmann moves to the University of Cologne

On 28 February, I will be leaving Carolo-Wilhelmina to take over as Chief Communication Officer of the Department of Communication & Marketing at the University of Cologne. After almost 26 years, I am leaving behind my work at our TU Braunschweig, in a very efficient, dynamic, sympathetic and collegial team and in a generally wonderful environment. In other words: I am leaving a comfort zone of the highest order and starting anew, because it is now possible and because I want to experience something new.

During “my” time here, we published thousands of press releases, later also magazine articles. Together we invented TU Day and introduced the Children’s University, established the School-network (AG Schule-Uni), celebrated spring festivals and helped welcome 25 first-semester cohorts. I was able to celebrate the “City of Science” with you, the city of Braunschweig, the other research institutions and many companies in 2007 and contribute to the establishment and enormous success of the Haus der Wissenschaft Braunschweig. I have been able to contribute in an advisory capacity to the Executive Board meetings for over 25 years. We developed the corporate design (in a bottom-up process!) and “relaunched” the website (several times), really well most recently. We have established thriving social media channels with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram and Youtube. In the last application for excellence, we were able to put our best foot forward and literally make a big difference. We introduced “The Week at TU Braunschweig”. With the onset of the pandemic, we were able to co-organise the “We care” platform, which has just been commended by the German Rectors’ Conference as part of its “Hochschule mittendrin” award. And Corona communication has been part of our permanent repertoire of tasks ever since. We have also mastered a few other crises. Now we are taking a new approach with integrated communication to bring together and promote the communication activities from the focal points, institutes, faculties, clusters and facilities of our diverse university.

What I enjoyed most were the visits to the institutes and the conversations with the researchers, the work in the Core Group and in the Role Models Team during the last application for excellence – and the “de-briefing” following TU-Day and TU-Night with the team from GB3. And there were many more highlights. They are all based on the inspiring cooperation with you, and for that I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The picture was taken by Jonas Vogel. It was taken in 2016 under the “direction” of Anne Hage.

I already know that I will miss the solution-oriented, cooperative spirit of our Technische Universität enormously, as well as the resistance and controversy, for example when we tried to oversimplify complex science for the sake of readability. Nec aspera terrent – I still think that’s a great motto. Also in this respect: Let’s see what awaits me now at the University of Cologne. I’m really looking forward to it.

Don’t be surprised: In the new year, I’ll be in the office for a few more days. My private, family centre of life remains Braunschweig, and so I hope that we will stay in touch.

Kind regards
Elisabeth Hoffmann