FIVE QUESTIONS TO ... President Professor Peter Benz

Professor Benz, 8 June 2023 was your 100th day in office. We’re curious to know what your impressions of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar are so far.

I found rediscovering the Bauhaus-Universität interesting, exciting, insightful and simply fun. It’s a real pleasure to learn more about the work at the university and the people behind it – though I must also say that many of these projects deserve greater visibility overall. It shouldn’t be that only the president has an overview of how great their university is. We’ll have to work on that. In short though: I thought my first 100 days were good, but I would expect the university community to have its own thoughts on this.

When you began your term as president, you announced that you wanted to get to know all of the departments and professorships in person. Have you made any progress with this endeavour? Do you still have many meetings in your calendar?

So far I’ve visited about 70 of our 84 or so of the professorships, though opinions do diverge as to who and what should actually count as a professorship. Of those I’ve not yet visited, I’ve at least met most in other contexts – through committees, for example. There are only a few I’ve not met at all.

I’ve visited almost all of the departments otherwise and most areas such as the library and the SCC. I’ve met with all of the faculty councils, the Staff Council and attended personnel meetings, been to the Stuko and at several staff meetings. I’ve also tried to attend a great many public events (topping-out ceremonies, openings, parties, potluck dinners, etc.), above all to give students the opportunity to meet me in person. And of course I go to the Mensa as often as I can.

In this respect, I think I’ve really used the first few months quite well to gain a new perspective on the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. I will of course nonetheless need to not only make contact once now at the start of my time in office, but also to keep on maintaining and expanding this contact.

On 7 June, the Senate confirmed all three of your candidates for the vice presidencies in office, so the new team has now been set. What have you already resolved to do and which tasks are at the top of your agenda?

For me, it’s not really about what I wish to achieve but rather how we as a university community need to have an idea of where we are heading. Like myself, all three vice presidents are new to their roles. While I had a few months’ head start, both we and the Chancellor nonetheless still need to organise ourselves as a team – to allocate tasks, decide on our positions and set priorities.

The plan is for us to hold Presidium meetings in mid-August to which we’ll invite other guests from the university in order to bring together the tasks that we’d like to begin in this Presidium term in an “action plan”. We’ll lay out the priorities in this that we wish to tackle by the end of 2023. I don’t want to speculate what exactly these will be. However, some points have also been set externally, such as renegotiation of Framework Agreement VI, external target and performance agreements, the working group on innovation in teaching and learning, etc. And the vice presidencies have of course already set a few emphases now.

One thing I’d really already like to tackle over the summer, though, is the committee compositions, responsibilities and plans. I feel that these could be leaner and more effective. Ideally, we should attempt to do this before the next semester so that we would already experience some relief in the next lecture period. But we’ll have to see how far the university wants to go with this.

The vice presidency for social transformation is new. Why did you introduce this role and what areas of responsibility will this vice presidency cover?

Within the Presidium, the vice presidencies for research and for studies and teaching are essentially set; minor adjustments can be made here and there, but on the whole these are actually a must – for good reason. This means that a third vice presidency can be used to set a programmatic focus, so to speak. A signal both internally and externally as to what the central topics should be at the university in the coming three years. Given the social processes and multiple crises we are currently experiencing, I think it’s imperative that we use the opportunities and resources of the university to understand, offer and reflect on problems and solutions. Ultimately, we want to position ourselves within this structure.

There are of course also concrete fields of action for the vice presidency for social transformation though: knowledge transfer and communication, sustainability, etc. If we do not simply want to react to external requirements in these fields, we must manage to interpret them appropriately and to influence them through content.

“Transfer” is generally understood relatively simply as “applied technology/knowledge transfer for commercial exploitation in the economy”, for example. We will of course implement such projects – and we’ll do it well, too. But I think that the university has far more, considerably more diverse and more interesting opportunities to foster its impact across society. We’ll have to work out these approaches for ourselves, then get other stakeholders and partners on board.

I’m convinced that, in combination with our other activities in research and teaching, we can significantly refine and refresh the profile of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar with this vice presidency.

Last but not least: it has been noticed that you often and gladly go to the Mensa am Park for lunch. Do you have a favourite food and what’s the most important part of the Mensa routine for you?

For me, it’s quite clear that at lunchtime, between noon and 2 pm, you go to the Mensa. I’ve been doing this since I started in Weimar as a student back in 1996. However, it’s also clear that people don’t just go to there for the food, but also for the social experience. That’s why I don’t really have a favourite food, but there are a few dishes that I associate certain memories with and therefore hold special “sentimental value” for me: rice pudding with melted butter, yeast dumplings with vanilla sauce and calamari rings. Somehow it’s all of the less healthy dishes ...