After a night of rumors and speculation dispersed and hotly debated on our mailinglists, Prof. Treusch, President of my alma mater, International University Bremen has confirmed the big news: the Swiss Jacobs Foundation will invest 200 million Euros over the next 6 years in the young university. Not only does this private excellence initiative help IUB to overcome financial difficulties, this record-breaking donation may also encourage other German businesses and private actors to make more commitments to higher education.

It was announced today that, as a sign of gratitude, IUB will be renamed to Jacobs University Bremen.

Jacobs University Bremen (Germany), Summer 2006

By and large, the news have been received enthusiastically by students.

I am curious how the development of IUB will continue in the light of this investment. Above all, I hope that the university will strengthen its efforts to maintain and promote the values it once so ambitiously claimed, when it was founded in 2001: fruitful transdisciplinarity, scientific excellence and cultural diversity.

For me, it is those values that characterize “the spirit of IUB” that President Treusch has cited so often recently.