University of Oldenburg

The Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (German: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg) is a university located in Oldenburg, Germany. It is one of the most important and highly regarded educational facilities in northwestern Germany and specialises in interdisciplinary and sustainable development studies and renewable energy studies with focus on solar and wind energy.

MENU

0:00

German pronunciation

Contents

  • History
  • University Profile
  • Departments
  • Cultural and political life
  • Canteens
  • nternational partnerships
  • Awards
  • Notable faculty and alumni
  • See also
  • References
  • External links
  • History

The first teachers training was held in Oldenburg as early as 1793, launched by Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig. A garden seminar for teachers training was created in 1882. During the Weimar Republic, the establishment of the Pedagogical Academy (Pädagogische Akademie) in Oldenburg in 1929 enabled the vocational training of teachers. On 1 October 1945, the institution reopened in postwar Germany. In 1948 it was renamed the Pedagogical College Oldenburg (Pädagogische Hochschule Oldenburg).

The first step towards the university was taken on 23 February 1959 with the decision of the city council to launch a university project, which was followed in 1970 with the Memorandum establishing the University of Oldenburg from the Minister of Culture of Lower Saxony. The university was finally founded in 1973. Enrollment and teaching started in the summer semester of 1974, with an education curriculum for 2,400 students. In 1991, the university was officially named after pacifist, writer and Nobel laureate Carl von Ossietzky, having been denied to take on his name by previous (both left-leaning and right-leaning) state governments.[3] That same year, the number of students passed the mark of 10,000. The eleven departments of the university were reorganized into five faculties in 2002. By the end of 2011, there were about 11,325 students.

In 2012, the university founded the faculty of medicine and health sciences, introducing a 12-semester course in human medicine, which leads up to the German state examination, Staatsexamen, a prerequisite to practice as a physician. The new faculty is part of the European Medical School Oldenburg-Groningen (EMS), a cooperation between the University of Oldenburg, the University of Groningen (Netherlands), and local hospitals.

University Profile

The main building of Uhlhornsweg campus

The main building of Wechloy campus, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science

The university offers 95 courses of study. Due to the Bologna Process, in 2004 Oldenburg adopted Bachelor and Masters degrees in place of the former Diplom and Magister. One main focus of the university is teacher training, which was established during the 1970s and remains a strong presence with master's degrees in teaching offered in all faculties. The PhD program Didactical reconstruction is especially renowned, as is the research in sustainable development, encompassing several academic disciplines. The university is also allowed to confer Doctorates and oversee Habilitations.

The campus is split into two locations, the major one being Uhlhornsweg, where the main library, the mensa and the administration along with most of the departments is housed. Having used the buildings of the former teaching college during the first years, the main buildings of the university were inaugurated in 1982, with ongoing extensions since then, including the main lecture hall in 2001. The Wechloy campus, also first opened in 1982, is home to the studies of natural sciences as well as the library of natural sciences.

As part of the Universities Excellence Initiative, the university was awarded a Cluster of Excellence for its initiative Hearing4all. The cluster deals with research into the improvement of speech understanding in background noise and has a funding of €34 million.

Departments

Faculty I: Pedagogy and Education

Institute of Education

Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation Paedagogy

Institute of Social Sciences

Faculty II: Computer sciences, Law and Economics

Department of Computer science

Department of Economics and Law

Faculty III: Linguistics and Cultural studies

Institute of English and American Studies

Institute of German Studies

Department of Dutch Studies

Institute of Slavic Studies

Institute of Art and Visual Culture

Institute of Material Culture

Department of Music

Faculty IV: Social Sciences

Institute of History

Institute of Protestant Theology

Institute of Philosophy

Institute of Sports Science

Faculty V: Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences (IBU)

Institute of Chemistry

Institute of Physics

Institute of Mathematics

Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM)

Faculty VI: Medicine and Health Sciences

Department of Psychology