300 Euros a month will go to the sponsored students who will receive the Deutschlandstipendium during the summer semester 2018 and winter semester 2018/19. During the official ceremony on 8th May in “Haus der Wirtschaft” they met up with their patrons: companies, foundations and private individuals. As is the case each year the event centred around the presentation of the certificates, the exchange and the promotion of mutual acquaintance.
Responsibility to the power of three
In his welcoming address, Chancellor Jan Gerken thanked all patrons for their commitment and highlighted the fact that this commitment was an act of responsibility. Ultimately it was about supporting those people who already bear responsibility now and who will have to bear responsibility in the future as well – in particular the responsibility of finding answers to questions and challenges of our time, including globalisation, digitalisation, mediatisation and “the very dangerous ideologisation“. Gerken emphasized the fact that the University of Stuttgart, thanks to its broad spectrum of subjects, has the potential to convey to its students the know-how for this and made it clear that beyond this the University also sees it as a task and has therefore anchored in its mission statement the task of educating personalities “who think globally and interactively and act responsibly for the sake of science, society, and the economy”.
Using contacts and finding the time to catch our breath
Representatives of the sponsoring companies resp. foundations as well as two of the scholarship holders addressed the guests with short welcoming speeches.
The HR Division Manager of the company Stihl AG & Co. KG, Markus Dörle, encouraged the students to also use the Deutschlandstipendium for making contacts with their patrons.
Winfried Theweleit, authorised regional representative at the BBBank Foundation, described what motivated his foundation to particularly sponsor students who are training to become teachers: this focus indirectly stands for an investment in pupils and with this in “our entire society”. The students were to be given the feeling of being able to “catch their breath” again thanks to the scholarship.
Rolf Kleppe, Head of the Technical Service and Internal Sales at the Stuttgart Agency of Ed. Züblin AG, knows what his company needs and what is worth supporting, namely “the sound knowledge of the students at the University of Stuttgart“.
Pride, gratitude and freedoms
The scholarship holder Sarah Graf appealed to her fellow students: it was indeed important and right to be pleased with having received the Deutschlandstipendium and to be proud of this award; however added to this for her personally was also being aware of being lucky and a feeling of gratitude: “maybe there are many more who deserved to be awarded this scholarship and who didn’t receive it“.
The fact that it is reassuring while studying to have time when there is no need to “earn money” but “simply to concentrate on other things you are interested in“, was something the scholarship holder Max Tannheimer made clear in his welcoming speech. This makes it much easier for example to also spend “several hours really getting to grips with an additional task“.
Contact:
Andrea Biallas, Department Studies and Doctorate, Tel.: 0711/685-82228,
Email: andrea.biallas[at]verwaltung.uni-stuttgart.de
Bettina Neumann, University of Stuttgart, University Communication,
Tel. 0711/685-821925, Email: bettina.neumann [at] hkom.uni-stuttgart.de