Prof. Dr. Eva Schmitt-Rodermund elected President

The University Senate initiated the appointment procedure for the position of President in summer 2023. The search committee met for its inaugural meeting in September 2023. A total of five applications were received, from which Prof. Dr. Eva Schmitt-Rodermund was the only candidate recommended for election. The Senate of the FHP unanimously re-elected Prof. Dr. Eva Schmitt-Rodermund as President in the first ballot. 

The election was preceded by a public hearing on the 24^th of April 2024, in which the President presented her goals for the coming years: "The University of Applied Sciences Potsdam has developed very well. With its 32 attractive, application-oriented degree programmes, it has been able to buck the state trend and maintain its student numbers. The university's third-party funding has almost doubled in recent years. Its efficiency and innovative creativity are also demonstrated by a large number of start-ups and exciting transfer and organisational activities. From this solid basis, we will now move forward together. We will tap into new, international student groups, address social issues such as sustainable construction by offering appropriate courses, further develop teaching and research across university and subject boundaries in an interdisciplinary manner and make our structures fit for analogue, digital and AI-enhanced forms of teaching and learning. Finding the time we need to do this will be our first priority. I am very pleased that I will be able to accompany this extraordinary university on its path in the future."

Tasks
President Prof. Dr. Eva Schmitt-Rodermund has been in charge of the university since the 1^st of January 2019 and represents it externally. She chairs the Executive Board, which at the FH Potsdam is made up of the President, the Chancellor and four Vice Presidents. It provides initiatives for the development of the university, drafts the principles of university policy objectives and has the authority to issue directives. The President is the superior of the academic staff and exercises domiciliary rights. Prof. Dr. Eva Schmitt-Rodermund will lead the university together with Chancellor Gerlinde Reich for a further six years.
Gerlinde Reich took up her third term of office in the spring of this year. She heads the administration, is a member of the Presidential Board and the line manager of the non-academic staff. She is responsible for the budget and all properties and represents the President in legal and administrative matters.

Personal details
Prof. Dr. Eva Schmitt-Rodermund (*1964 in Herne) studied psychology at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and is a developmental psychologist and science manager. After completing her doctorate and habilitation at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and research stays at Pennsylvania State University (USA), she was Professor of Psychology, Head of Academic and Student Affairs and Deputy to the Chancellor in Jena. Her research topics, which are reflected in many years of third-party funding, lively teaching activities and more than 80 publications, are in particular start-up and entrepreneurship, career development across the lifespan, acculturation processes in young immigrants and developmental transitions in adolescence. Her main interest for many years has been in science management. Due to the special combination of a scientific and an administrative perspective, she has broad experience in science management and specialises in change processes against the background of strategic goals at universities.

University of Applied Sciences Potsdam
Innovative, future-oriented and practical: at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, we are working to help shape the world of tomorrow in teaching, practice and research. More than 3,600 students study and conduct research in the five departments of Social and Educational Sciences, CITY I BUILDING I CULTURE, Civil Engineering, Design and Information Sciences. The three strategic profile lines "Digital Transformation – Urban Future", "Educating Society" and "Design – Build - Preserve" address societal challenges and questions about the future across all faculties. Together with partners in the scientific and economic region of Berlin-Brandenburg as well as in Germany and abroad, a wide range of ideas and innovative solutions are developed.