University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

The University

The foundations of the University of Regensburg were laid in 1962. Today, the university comprises twelve faculties, providing the full range of academic subjects and degrees except for engineering and technology, areas traditionally taken care of by the polytechnic schools (Fachhochschule) in Germany. Moving with the times, the university has steadily established new degrees as well as broadened its offer of graduate programs and research projects.

Looking beyond Upper Palatine borders, the University of Regensburg has soon become part of a large network of international partnerships and co-operations. Integrated transnational study programs, international summer schools and several exchange programs with more than 200 partner universities on students’ as well as staff level can serve as indicators for the scope and intensity of the university’s international commitment.

The trans-regional attractiveness of RegensburgUniversity is easily perceptible to those interested in the university life behind and beyond its faςades. The campus with its wide offer of virtually everything that is essential to students’ life (from well-stocked libraries to excellent computer facilities, from bookstores to the Uni-Pizzeria…) and the short distances between buildings are conducive to a comfortable and efficient way of studying.

In their leisure time, students can further draw on a multitude of extra-curricular activities on campus. They can take free courses in foreign languages, get involved in sports teams, join musical ensembles or get engaged in not fewer than eleven student theater groups (benefitting from the fact that the Regensburg is one of two German universities with an own theater).

Finally, it is also the picturesque charm of the – more than 2000 year-old – medieval city and the beautiful surrounding landscape, which attract students and scholars from all corners of the country ( - if not the globe -) to come to Regensburg.  

Teacher education

Due to the decentralized nature of teacher education in Bavaria, there is not <one> independent institute or even faculty of teacher education in Regensburg. Rather, the guidelines stated in the Bavarian “LPO” (rules and regulations for the education of teachers for state schools) are applied and concretized by the individual subject faculties in cooperation with the institutes of pedagogy (school pedagogy especially) and psychology.

Basically, students who aim to become a teacher in state schools decide at the very beginning of their studies for which school type and, in the case of secondary education, for which teaching subjects (at least two), they would like to be educated. They are then students of the faculties of their two teaching subjects and attend subject content-, methodology- as well as subject didactics courses there. In addition, they are to take courses in educational sciences, offered by the faculties of psychology and pedagogy.

As teacher education in Regensburg is not institutionalized as one integrated institute, but conceptualized as the interdependent task of rather independent faculties, the JoMiTE initiative, too, has been undertaken in an interdisciplinary approach. Since its launch in 2007, the local project team has been led by Prof. Dr. Jochen Mecke (Institute for Romance Philologies/ Chair of Romance Literatures).

Contact

If you want to have any more information about the participation of the University of Regensburg in the JoMiTE initiative, please contact Ms. Katja Zaki.