At the start of the summer semester of 2022, Prof. Mona Riemenschneider took over the leadership of the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies. She was elected by the Faculty Council to replace Prof. Konstantin Ziegler, who had held the post since March 2019.
“I am happy to take on the exciting task as dean,” says Riemenschneider, who has been teaching at the university since autumn 2019 and is responsible for engineering education as a course director. The faculty’s colleagues played a major role in the decision to take over the post. “Support in the faculty environment has led me to take up this new challenge.”
Maintaining a family faculty environment
The faculty is still set for growth. Prof. Konstantin Ziegler has been very committed to driving forward the development of the faculty over the past three years. Four new degree programmes have been added, and another is expected to start in the winter semester. “I’m happy to continue that now,” says Riemenschneider. “I attach particular importance to attracting new colleagues and students, to expanding the interdisciplinary research network and to maintaining the family environment in the faculty.”
Riemenschneider studied Computer Science in Münster and received her doctorate from the Leibnitz Institute for Arteriosclerosis Research. After positions as a data scientist in industry and interim professor for “Data Science” at the University of Marburg, she was appointed to the Landshut University of Applied Sciences. Riemenschneider is co-founder of the “Institute of Data and Process Science” (July 2020) and heads the research project “iGridControl”.
As the outgoing dean, Prof. Konstantin Ziegler can look back on a highly successful faculty structure. “Genuine interdisciplinarity requires strong disciplines,” Ziegler emphasises. The established degree programmes were all accredited for this purpose and the faculty opened up the important topics of health and media through new degree programmes. With this attractive offer of study, IDS became the faculty with the highest number of university entrants within three years.
Close contact with the students was particularly important to Ziegler, which is why he taught in almost all of the faculty’s degree programmes and occasionally directed several degree programmes. He was also responsible for the academic management of the university-wide General Studies programme. In this position, Prof. Konstantin Ziegler was responsible for the introduction of several new modules, such as “Service Learning”, “Gamification” and “Mindfulness and Meditation”. Following the end of his term in office, he is now concentrating on mathematical research and teaching again. As a start to this, he is currently in a research semester.
The application phase for the study programme at the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies started on 15 April. All information about this is available at www.studieren-in-landshut.de.
Photo: Landshut University of Applied Sciences
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