MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear DHBW family,

in 2024, DHBW celebrates the 50th anniversary of its dual degree programme. We look back on this courageous innovation and investment in Baden-Wuerttemberg with gratitude. The dual study model has existed since 1974 and has become a national and international success. In this annual report, we take a look back on the 2022/2023 academic year and at what lies ahead in this anniversary year.

With 32,000 students, DHBW is now the largest university in Baden-Wuerttemberg, producing the most Bachelor’s graduates in Germany. The student numbers for the new academic year show that our transfer university has emerged stronger from the pandemic years with its sustainable mix of cooperation and regionality and remains highly attractive for Cooperative Partners and prospective students. In the past academic year 2022/2023, we made preparations for the anniversary year ahead of us and, above all, laid the foundations for many more successful years to come. We made several new nominations, welcoming a total of 45 new professors who will help us to further develop the dual study model together with our 9,000 Cooperative Partners.

With the election of Prof. Doris Nitsche-Ruhland as Vice President for Dual Study Programmes and Teaching and Prof. Martin Plümicke as the new non-executive Vice President for Digitalisation and Processes and the re-election of our Chancellor Dr. Wolf Dieter Heinbach, the university management is well positioned for the coming years with new areas of responsibility.

Read about the highlights in our core areas of teaching, research and academic training in our annual report. You will be interested to see that we have made great progress in all of our strategic, cross-cutting issues, such as sustainability, internationalisation, diversity and, last but not least, digitalisation.

The DHBW Research Day in Stuttgart and the DHBW-AI Transfer Congress in Heilbronn demonstrated the broad spectrum of our research achievements. In association with eight other cooperative universities from nine countries, DHBW, has received the academic accolade of being designated a European University by the EU. This enables us to make students, tutors and employees more internationally mobile. It also enables us to offer joint international research projects and courses at all different levels from micro-credentials to Master’s programmes. Furthermore, “studienkolleg” (a two semester preparation class for international students) at the Bad Mergentheim campus successfully prepared the first year of prospective international students for a dual study programme.

We are particularly proud to be developing an explicit sustainability strategy using a broad-based participation process. Through participation in the Stifterverband’s Diversity Audit, we intend to put diversity in everyday life into practice for dual study students, and with a new guiding principle of digitalisation, we want to pick up speed and make every necessary digital service available to every student, lecturer, employee and Cooperative Partner at every location.

I would like to thank everyone who contributed to these and other highlights of our 2022/2023 academic year at DHBW. I look forward to continuing our success story with you in our anniversary year and beyond.

Your President

Prof. Martina Klärle