Junior University Wuppertal
| Junior Uni Wuppertal Children's and Youth University
for the Bergisches Land gGmbH |
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|---|---|
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| founding | 2008 |
| Sponsorship | gGmbH |
| place | Wuppertal |
| Website | www.junioruni-wuppertal.de |
The Wuppertal Junior Uni for the Bergisches Land - in short: Junior Uni - is an extracurricular, privately financed and non-profit educational and research institution for children, adolescents and young adults from four years to high school. 150 honorary lecturers impart practical knowledge in small groups in the five subject areas of natural sciences & mathematics , technology & engineering , economics , humanities and social sciences, and art & culture . The sponsor is the Junior Uni Wuppertal Children's and Youth University for Bergische Land gGmbH.
description
The patrons are the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Armin Laschet and the Mayor of Wuppertal Andreas Mucke . In October 2015, he took over the patronage, which is linked to the office of Lord Mayor, from his predecessor Peter Jung . The shareholders are the Jackstädt Foundation, the E / D / E Foundation and the Friends of the Junior University. The junior university is supported by a commercial / organizational and an advisory scientific / educational advisory board. There are cooperation agreements with the Bergische Universität and various commercial enterprises.
In contrast to initiatives in some other university cities , which also use terms such as junior studies or children's university , this is an independent, year-round institution with its own teaching and administrative staff and its own campus directly on the Wupper. That makes them unique in Germany.
The company's budget is financed exclusively from private funds. The shareholders are the Jackstädt Foundation , the E / D / E Foundation and the Association of Friends and Supporters of the Junior Uni. The gGmbH is managed by Ernst-Andreas Ziegler (chairman of the management board), Ina Krumsiek (managing director) and Ariane Staab (authorized signatory).
Offer and target groups
The offer, which is divided into a summer and winter semester and three vacation programs, is aimed at children and young people between the ages of four and twenty. The aim is to introduce young people to scientific, technical and economic subjects as well as to the humanities and social sciences and art & culture without tight curricula and performance pressure, and to awaken the joy of lifelong learning and discovery. Among other things, this is intended to increase interest in the relevant professions and thus counteract the shortage of skilled workers. The initiators hope that the project will also make the region more attractive for young families. The declared aim of the junior university is also to make education accessible to children from all walks of life. Evaluations have shown that this goal is achieved. The Junior Uni program essentially consists of courses, each consisting of 4–8 individual sessions of 90 minutes each. The course fees are deliberately kept very low in order to allow access for every child. The maximum number of participants per course is 15 girls and boys. In addition, lectures for the whole family are regularly offered on Sundays.
The junior university supports girls and boys in their preparations for various scientific competitions such as “ Students experiment ”, “ Jugend forscht ”, “freestyle-physics” or “ GYPT ”. The German Physical Society DPG has chosen it as a NRW-wide base for the competition preparation of schoolchildren.
The junior university has a partnership with the primary and secondary schools in the Bergisches Land. As a platform for new teaching and learning models, the Junior Uni - with technical support from the Bergische Universität - is developing and testing new forms of skills and knowledge acquisition with teachers from all types of schools and practitioners from various companies and institutions in the Bergisches Land. Modern knowledge transfer and practice-oriented further training go hand in hand for the teaching experts. For example, master craftsmen from Wuppertal accompany a course in which third graders from two elementary schools develop, test and analyze various drive options based on a basic model made by each student. In cooperation with the German Röntgen Museum in Remscheid, the students take more than a “look into the body”. In a “research group”, the junior university offers schoolchildren the opportunity to develop their own experiments and learn research methods.
Day care centers for children in the Bergisches Land make intensive use of the morning offers for groups. Each semester, more than 70 groups come from the Bergisches Land to attend courses with four dates.
history
opening
The facility goes back to an initiative of the journalist and former Wuppertal press office manager Ernst-Andreas Ziegler ; Burkhard Mönter, physics professor and screenwriter of the children's program Löwenzahn , special school teacher Hildegard Mönter and for administrative support Jochen Siegfried. The initiator team gained a large number of supporters, financiers and co-organizers. The course started on the day of the official opening by the then Prime Minister Jürgen Rüttgers on December 3, 2008 with a little over 40 courses for 600 students from four age groups. After one year, around 3000 young people had already taken part in the seminars offered. By summer 2016, over 43,000 course places had been taken in over 3,600 courses. When registering for the 2017 summer semester, the extracurricular educational institution “cracked” the 50,000 course places.
New building
For the initial phase, a location was temporarily set up on Friedrich-Engels-Allee . The location was relocated to a new building on a former factory site on Wupperufer Am Brögel in November 2013 . It was particularly necessary because of the insufficient space and lack of laboratories compared to the demand. The new building cost around EUR 5.0 million and was financed exclusively with private funds. The Wuppertal architects Hans Christoph Goedeking and Josef Johannes Niedworok erected the building in 9 months, below the planned budget. The main advantages of the location on the Brögel were the easy accessibility, the lower long-term costs and the proximity to the Wupper , which is to be integrated into teaching. Construction work began in September 2012 and the foundation stone was laid on December 1, 2012.
The new building with 16 specialist and seminar rooms, including four laboratories, was opened on December 7, 2013. Up to 4,700 children were expected annually, mostly from the city and the Bergisches Land. The Junior Uni now offers 8,000 course places per year.
Awards
The project "Kick with Physics" was awarded in 2018 by the German Academy for Football Culture in the learning impulse category ( football education prize ).
literature
- Tanja Heil, Junior Uni. The joy of learning and discovery , in: Ralf Putsch, Tanja Heil (Hg): Original from the valley. Wuppertal Innovations and Pioneering Achievements , Wuppertal 2019, pp. 102-109, ISBN 978-3-939843-93-1
Web links
- www.junioruni-wuppertal.de
- Sculpture by Sir Tony Cragg for Junior Uni , article at rp-online.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Junior Uni: Mucke now patron. www.wuppertaler-rundschau.de, accessed on November 16, 2015 .
- ↑ Analysis: Research for the new Wuppertal Westdeutsche Zeitung (online) from March 13, 2008
- ↑ Children's and Youth University is now called Junior Uni , Westdeutsche Zeitung (online) from May 12, 2008
- ↑ Evaluation of the Junior Uni in Wuppertal. Bergische Universität Wuppertal , accessed on October 23, 2017 .
- ↑ 215 courses are offered in the current semester program (February 2012)
- ↑ Carolin Seidel: The topic of fire brigade means adventure at the junior university . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . March 27, 2017 ( wz.de [accessed October 23, 2017]).
- ^ Wuppertaler Rundschau: Junior Uni: “Researcher AG” started successfully. Retrieved October 23, 2017 .
- ^ The vision of the future university at the Brögel , Westdeutsche Zeitung (online) of October 29, 2009
- ↑ Excavators create space for the new junior university building , Westdeutsche Zeitung (online) from November 10, 2009
- ↑ The new building for the junior university should set standards in the Westdeutsche Zeitung of December 31, 2012
- ↑ Junior Uni Wuppertal: A university for four-year-olds in Westdeutsche Zeitung of December 5, 2013
- ↑ German Football Culture Prize 2018: “Kick with Physics” wins the “Learning Impulse” educational award. Kicker , September 27, 2018, accessed October 27, 2018 .
- ↑ www.junioruni-wuppertal.de: Kick with physics - the junior university in football fever
Coordinates: 51 ° 15 '59.4 " N , 7 ° 11' 13.3" E