State Teaching Award 2021 goes to HfG Associate Professor Thomas Rustemeyer
For his project "OPEN CAMPUS", HfG assistant professor Thomas Rustemeyer from the exhibition design and scenography department receives the State Teaching Award of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts and is honored as one of the best university teachers of the year 2021 in Baden-Württemberg.
Baden-Württemberg's best university teachers of 2021 teach in Karlsruhe, Constance, Nürtingen-Geislingen and Trossingen. Science Minister Theresia Bauer explains, "They are convincing with their innovative and creative approaches to teaching and are representative of the many teachers who inspire our students every day and take them with them into new worlds of knowledge."
Six prizes were awarded again this year: Five for special teaching personalities and concepts at the various types of higher education institutions - universities, universities of education, universities of applied sciences, colleges of art and music and Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University - and one special award for students. The award winners each receive prize money of 50,000 euros. The special award for outstanding student commitment is endowed with 5,000 euros.
"It is impressive how creatively teachers and students have dealt and are dealing with the pandemic," said Theresia Bauer. "They have come up with ideas and initiatives that meet the challenges of the times and make education possible and accessible for all. Thank you for that!"
Theresia Bauer added that the next generation of teachers and professionals should not only be excellently educated professionally, but also encouraged to take responsibility in society. "The award winners have taken up this challenge and implemented it with outstanding concepts that make a practical contribution to teaching and society."
"OPEN CAMPUS" is a concept that is as innovative as it is pragmatic, with which students at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe were also able to hold courses as social gatherings in public outdoor spaces. An intensive interdisciplinary collaboration of students across all subject groups (exhibition design, art science and media theory, scenography, communication design and product design) thus developed into a "space" in the public realm that created not only learning and encounters but also a city-wide visibility for the university.
The pilot project of the HfG Karlsruhe combines university education and a dialogical, artistically redesigned relationship between the spaces and their users. Initiated by the Corona pandemic, the Open Campus is a place that re-enables (working) together, learning and meeting, and creates city-wide visibility. As a nucleus for generating knowledge and meaning, it invites students, faculty and staff to participate and is socially and structurally open to everyone and everything. The flexible infrastructure creates a space for all university activities, such as seminars, presentations, screenings, or exhibition openings, and offers points of connection with cooperation partners, such as the Effekte science festival or the Centre Culturel Franco-Allemand Karlsruhe.
Thomas Rustemeyer (born 1984 in Freiburg) studied architecture and urban planning at KIT Karlsruhe and UdK Berlin. In 2012/13 he was a research assistant to Prof. Klaus Overmeyer at the Department of Architecture at the University of Wuppertal and conducted research on spatial enterprises. Since 2014 he has been teaching at the Department of Scenography and Exhibition Design at the HfG Karlsruhe. In his work, Rustemeyer deals with questions about living together in the city. He designs, creates and questions image and discourse spaces and develops action and discussion formats for spaces in transformation. In doing so, he operates in the field of tension between scenography, communication in space, and urbanism in the context of culture and research. In this way he creates exhibitions and discourse situations as experimental spaces, as well as drawings and publications.
The 2021 award winners:
Universities of Art and Music Thomas Rustemeyer, Karlsruhe University of Art and Design (HfG), for the project "OPEN CAMPUS".
Universities Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer and Prof. Dr. Stefan Hauser as well as Dr. Jan Behnstedt-Renn, Prof. Dr. Steffen Diefenbach, Dr. Ulf Hailer, Prof. Dr. Alessia Mistretta, Prof. Dr. Sven Reichardt and Prof. Dr. Falk Schreiber University of Constance, Prof. Eberhard Schlag, University of Applied Sciences Constance and Prof. Florian Clemens Käppler, University of Music Trossingen, for their teaching concept "Medial Ausstellungsgestaltung" (Media Exhibition Design)
Universities of Education Prof. Dr. Sebastian Wartha, Karlsruhe University of Education, for his course "Zahlen und Operationen 2" (Numbers and Operations 2)
Universities of Applied Sciences Prof. Dr. Michael Roth, Nürtingen-Geislingen University, for his teaching of the entire student life cycle as a key factor in sustainable learning processes
Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) Prof. Dr. Kay Berkling, DHBW Study Academy Karlsruhe, for a digital network of students for cross-course and cross-year exchanges
Special prize for outstanding student commitment Jennifer Haiges, Antonia Stetter, Yauheniya Karchahina and Leo Buchholz, representing the planning and management team, Ludwigsburg University of Education, Ludwigsburg Summer Camp 2020 - attendance offer for students aged 6 to 12 years old
State Teaching Award
With the State Teaching Award, the state recognizes exemplary and particularly good achievements in teaching every year. It is intended to stimulate a competition of ideas and implementations of good teaching within the universities and thus contribute to an overall increase in quality. Since it was first awarded in the mid-1990s, the State Teaching Award has led to a fundamental debate at the state's universities on the subject of teaching and the criteria of good teaching. To date, more than 400 university teachers have received the award.
All award winners have submitted short videos in which they explain why they received the award. These will be played out on the MWK's social media channels in the coming days.
