Today, at around 8, my friend and colleague Matthias and I are welcoming our students to our class in “E-Democracy – Opportunities for Participatory Democracy?“.
We look forward to learning (and so much more …) with them for the next two and a half months, here at Deutsche SchülerAkademie in Brunswick. For me, it’s the mother of all summer schools.
Here’s the teaser with which we’re beginning our teaching tonight.
Learn more about our course here.
North Atlantic Council, Bremen International Model United Nations 2007. Bremen State Parliament, Spring 2007.
Today was the last day of Bremen International Model United Nations (BRIMUN) conference, a simulation of international affairs for students, hosted by Jacobs’ own Model United Nations society. I had the pleasure to chair the North Atlantic Council, together with my colleague and friend Matthias. After five days of intense debating, international diplomacy, military confrontations and resolution drafting, the conference has today culminated in its closing ceremony, held in Bremen’s state parliament, the Bremische Bürgerschaft.
Matthias and me much enjoyed working with the 12 dedicated, competent and, well, probably most pacifistic delegates that a military alliance has ever seen.
Blood donation truck at Jacobs University Bremen, Winter 2007
Today, Jacobs University hosted its second annual Red Cross blood drive, organized by me and a few colleagues of Jacobs former Lions Campus Club. The Jacobs community’s support made the blood drive again very successful. 89 people registered to donate blood yesterday. 31 liters of valuable blood were collected.
Unfortunately we fell a little bit short of last year’s record of 98 donors – we blame it on the flu that is currently plaguing the community. The missed record notwithstanding, we could not be happier with the blood drive, which by now, seems to have evolved into a social event, that offers a welcome – and charitable – diversion during the busy everyday life for many members of our community.
Special thanks go to those people who had to wait for some time until they could actually donate. The Red Cross is very sorry for this inconvenience, that some donors have experienced (especially with the rain). The Blood Donation Truck Team was simply at times overstrained by the enormous turnout. We will look into setting up larger facilities so as to accommodate more donors at future blood drives.
We would also like to recognize those community members who were willing to donate and registered, but were finally excluded from the donation. The Red Cross understands that these exclusions may sometimes seem arbitrary and discriminatory. The Red Cross representative asked me to forward his thanks to those students and to ask for understanding: for the Red Cross, the security of blood recipients always comes first. Please also understand that we cannot release information on the exclusion criteria in advance of the blood drive. These decisions are always subject to the discretion of the physician on site and are, in principal based on merely probabilistic considerations. We hope that the great food was at least a small compensation for everyone’s efforts!
Jacobs students enjoying the food home-prepared by Red Cross volunteers
More coverage of the event is found on the Jacobs newspage as well as in this article in Jacobs’ own student newspaper, Pulse (thanks to Christine for the article!).
Berlin, Summer 2006
Country Information Days (CIDs) are one of those traditions reflecting and cherishing diversity at Jacobs University Bremen, regularly hosted by Mercator College and initiated by its College Master, Dr. Klaus Böhnke. Roughly once a month, a group of students from one of the 85 countries represented at IUB take the stage of Mercator Common Room and deliver an entertaining yet informative performance about their homeland’s culture and history. The CID performances are usually followed by a nationally inspired feast and a party at Jacobs’ own Student Bar.
For the first time in my three years of studies at IUB, it is now our turn, the German community on campus, to host our own CID.
I am happy to be on the team organizing the event and looking forward to sharing some of our perspectives on our country with the IUB community. Maybe most importantly, we want to put on a show that, in an entertaining way, promotes intercultural communication and that challenges the dominant, maybe not always positive image of what Germans are like, at IUB and beyond.
… coming to Mercator College Common Room on February, 2007 (originally scheduled for November 31st, 2006)
