Expanding your competencies, checking out other disciplines, raising your profile: Ruhr-Universität offers a wealth of opportunities for interdisciplinary training.
The Ruhr-Universität has launched funding programmes to push ahead with the establishment and further development of degree courses.
Individualised, international, und interdisciplinary study at RUB
The “inStudies” project provides RUB students with more opportunities for developing individually specialised qualifications and to facilitate transitions, e.g. from school to university and from university to the professional world.
Together with RWTH Aachen University and TU Dortmund University , RUB has launched a project for excellence in teaching and learning in engineering called ELLI (Exzellentes Lehren und Lernen in den Ingenieurwissenschaften).
The project focuses on the development of virtual learning environments with the introduction, construction, and systematic integration of distance-operated lab facilities and computer-generated simulated experiments; another focus is international mobility. The universities are also striving to develop study formats that consolidate the professional competencies of engineers during their studies, which would include intercultural competence and interdisciplinary dialogue.
In order to concentrate competence on campus in a targeted manner, the university management and faculties have set up several central service centres. They pool services from certain subject areas that are aimed at members of all faculties at the RUB.
The languages you can learn at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) are as diverse as the flair on the campus is international. These services are concentrated at the Centre for Foreign Language Acquisition (Zentrum für Fremdsprachenausbildung, ZFA).
The centre offers a wide variety of courses, including introductory ones and the languages taught range from Arabic to Turkish. The courses do not form part of modularised degree programmes and all members of the university may attend.
The ZFA offers general and specialised language courses which concentrate in particular on inter-cultural communication in academic surroundings. Tandem courses and tandem mediation with individual language-learning counselling also enable the language resources of the Ruhr-Universität to be used for learning with and from each other on a partnership basis.
The Centre for Economic Education (Zentrum für ökonomische Bildung, ZföB) is a service facility of the faculty of Economics, which combines under one roof and coordinates all economics courses for students from other RUB faculties. The ZföB advises students on courses available and organises relevant exams. As part of the Gründercampus Ruhr, a joint project of local academic institutions and businesses, ZföB organises events on starting up new businesses. In addition, the ZföB advises on, arranges, and supervises internships specifically for double-major undergraduate students from any faculty.
The Faculty of Law has set up a qualification centre whose courses "Schlüsselqualifikation Recht" (“Key Qualifications in Law”) are oriented towards the training requirements of non-law degree programmes. Teachers from the Faculty of Law regularly offer introductory courses on the basics of public law (including European law), civil and criminal law, and law governing administrative offences.
Das fakultätsübergreifende Methodenzentrum für Geistes- und Gesellschaftswissenschaften ist eine zentrale Anlaufstelle für alle RUB-Studierenden mit empirischen Forschungsvorhaben.
Das Methodenzentrum bietet Zugang zu qualitativen und quantitativen Methoden der Sozialforschung und unterstützt mit eigenen Veranstaltungsreihen, persönlicher Beratung, E-Learning-Formaten und weiteren Angeboten die Anwendung und Umsetzung gesellschaftswissenschaftlicher Forschungsmethoden. Schwerpunkte sind dabei Datenerhebungs- und Auswertungsverfahren sowie Softwareschulungen. Plattformen wie die interdisziplinäre R-Nutzergruppe und die studentische Forschungswerkstatt vernetzen dabei die Fakultäten. Das Methodenzentrum ist Teil des Projekts inSTUDIES.
The Soft Skills Centre is a speciality of the Ruhr-Universität. It supports students in a targeted manner in acquiring additional and key qualifications as well as mediation competence that will facilitate later entry into the professional world. This provides a complement to the academic studies of the degree programmes. Optional modules also provide students with the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research, to explore research-related issues in more detail, and thus to acquire insights into areas beyond their chosen subjects.
With the American elite universities as a role model in mind, the writing centre aims at offering RUB students qualified training in academic essay writing. Because no one is born with this skill, you can and must learn how to do it.
The services offered by the writing centre are available to all faculties. They address students who want to expand their writing competence and optimise their writing strategies; researchers who want to become more professional in terms of their writing strategies; and teachers who pursue continuing education in the guiding and supervision of essay-writing.
