Paderborn University has been awarded second place in the ‘Company of the Year’ category at the ‘Netzwerk Chancen’ Social Diversity Awards. This award recognises employers, managers and mentors who actively work to promote social diversity in the workplace and, in doing so, foster greater equality of opportunity. The university particularly impressed the judges with its support programmes for first-time university students.
“As a university, we see ourselves as a key driver for greater equality of opportunity,” explains Laura Maring, Diversity Assistant at Paderborn University. “An above-average proportion of our students are first-generation university students. That is precisely why we are committed to creating opportunities, fostering potential and actively promoting social mobility through education.” This is achieved, for example, through talent scouting for sixth-form pupils in Ostwestfalen-Lippe, through the “NRWTalente” scholarship programme and by integrating diversity-related aspects into mentoring and doctoral programmes to support the academic career planning of first-time university students through the Graduate Centre of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. In everyday campus life, the General Students’ Committee (AStA) and the Studierendenwerk (student services association) also provide support through various services and initiatives centred on the diversity dimension of ‘social background’.
Diversity also plays a central role in research at Paderborn University. The ‘Doing Vielfalt’ project, for example, brings together internal and external advocacy groups as well as initiatives from the university and the city of Paderborn to jointly identify exclusionary practices in the transition from undergraduate study to doctoral research. The aim is to develop guidelines and measures to promote diversity. In addition, a digital knowledge platform is being established to collect existing knowledge, make it accessible in the long term and strengthen the exchange of knowledge.
This text was translated automatically.
