left to right: Professor Monika Gross, Professor Birgitta Wolff, Professor Bernd Scholz-Reiter, Professor Johanna Weber
The General Assembly of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) has elected Professor Birgitta Wolff as new member to the HRK Executive Board. Wolff will be in charge of “Research and Early Career Researchers (including Research Infrastructures)”. Birgitta Wolff has been the President of Goethe University since 2014. She was Minister of Culture in the state of Sachsen-Anhalt in 2010, and also Minister for Science and Economics in Sachsen-Anhalt from 2011 to 2013. She is also a member of the Senate of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and Chair of the German Academic Association for Business Research.
“I would like to thank the members of the HRK for their confidence. I really looking forward to working in André Alt’s team. Right now, various pacts with the federal government are in the process of being negotiated, where the issue is not just establishing programmes over the long-term, but university funding. This is an important distinction, because without permanent funding, as opposed to project piecework, we cannot move beyond an endless cycle of applications and temporary employment,” Professor Wolff stresses.
The new HRK vice presidents’ terms of office begin on 1st December. The German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) is a voluntary association of public and government-recognised universities in Germany. The member institutions are represented in the HRK by their executive boards and rectorates. The HRK currently has 268 member institutions, in which around 94 per cent of all students in Germany are enrolled.