U!REKA in Action

We can look back on an eventful U!REKA week in early April 2025, which took us from the Frankfurt cultural campus to the DGHD university didactics conference at Frankfurt UAS and the International Days in Ghent, the university brewery and the impressive premises of the HOGENT art academy.

U!REKA Intensifying Education (Challenge-Based European Education Meeting)
At the beginning of the week, colleagues from the U!REKA education workpackage from Amsterdam, Ghent, Helsinki and Lisbon were guests in Frankfurt and we had a packed programme of exchanges, discussions and planning meetings. One highlight was the excursion to the Kulturcampus Bockenheim (former campus of Goethe University), whose development we are supporting as part of a New European Bauhaus (NEB) funded project with our university, municipal institutions and citizens’ initiatives. This place, where U!REKA students, teachers and researchers come together to work on a more sustainable and social future of urban spaces, will certainly provide positive impulses for the further integration of the network and contribute to achieving our goals.

Representing U!REKA @ DGHD Conference 2025
We were also able to represent U!REKA in two presentations at the DGHD conference on higher education didactics, which was hosted by Frankfurt UAS this year. In international teams of teachers and students, we presented our educational agenda and practical projects and discussed them with experts from other European University networks. In particular, the students’ contributions – in words and a video of the intensive exchange [COMMON GROUND] – showed the strength of international and interdisciplinary projects to promote the personal development and professional identity of students.

International Days @HOGENT
In the second part of the week, representatives of Frankfurt UAS and other U!REKA universities were guests of our partner HOGENT. In addition to exchanging experiences on international projects and participating in the first staff training sessions of the U!REKA Change Drivers, the focus here was on familiarising ourselves with the university. This took us to the university brewery, where experiments are being carried out on very low-alcohol beer, and to the impressive premises of the KASK & Conservatorium, the HOGENT art academy housed in a historic hospital building.

Raul Gschrey, 01.04.25