The official starting signal for the winter semester 2024/25 was given today with the enrolment ceremony and the traditional reception hosted by the City of Eberswalde on Eberswalde's market square. The Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) is delighted to welcome more than 500 new students, including 80 students from 23 countries. The new Bachelor's degree programme in Social-Ecological Forest Management also starts at the beginning of the semester.

For the majority of first-semester students, getting to know each other began at the start of the induction week on 23 September 2024, with the enrolment ceremony at the end of the first-semester week being the highlight. University President Prof Dr Matthias Barth, the student vice presidency with Pia Witte and Sander Claes and the Mayor of Eberswalde, Götz Herrmann, welcomed the new students in style at Haus Schwärzetal and heralded in the new academic year. Antonia Bartning, alumna, co-founder and co-director of systainchange, addressed the students in her speech.

In his welcoming speech and in view of current political developments, Prof. Dr Matthias Barth emphasised that HNEE stands for a diverse and cosmopolitan society and that there is no place for nationalistic and inhumane thinking, extremism, anti-Semitism and fundamentalism in any form at the university. In her speech, keynote speaker Antonia Bartning impressively expressed what it really means to recognise and seize opportunities.

The Bachelor's degree programmes in Forestry as well as Landscape Use & Nature Conservation are among the most popular this year. Among the Master's programmes, the Forest Information Technology, Forestry System Transformation and Biosphere Reserves Management degree programmes are among the frontrunners.

It is also a successful start for the Bachelor's degree programme in Socio-Ecological Forest Management. After an approximately two-year set-up and development phase, the first students can look forward to another ceremonial start to their studies on Monday, 30 September 2024, together with Steffi Lemke, Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, Peter Wohlleben and many funding and practice partners.

Honouring the best with the DAAD Prize and the Sustainability Award of the City of Eberswalde

The DAAD prize of 1,000 euros for the best foreign student(s) went to Sander Claes from the Master's study programme Global Change Management. The Master's student has his roots in Belgium and came to HNEE after spending a year volunteering on an eco-farm in Slovakia. Sander Claes has been committed to social justice, sustainability and community since his arrival at the university. Through his involvement in academic peer counselling for international students, as student vice president, in the food sharing initiative and in the global COPx initiative, he shows how valuable and necessary strong social cooperation is. HNEE Vice President for Studies and Teaching, Prof. Dr Uta Steinhardt, presented the certificate and emphasised in her laudatory speech: "Sander Claes is someone who always seeks dialogue, who takes the experiences of others seriously and who always builds bridges between people. He has used his time here in Eberswalde, which was not without its challenges at the beginning, to develop personally and academically and to enrich our community in the process."

For the fifth time in a row, Silke Leuschner, Head of the Urban Development Office, presented the Sustainability Award of the City of Eberswalde, which is also endowed with 1,000 euros. The prize is aimed at students who demonstrate possibilities for sustainable urban development in exemplary theses. This year, the prize was awarded to the thesis by Lina Balcke, a graduate of the Landscape Use and Nature Conservation bachelor's degree programme, entitled "Initial commissioning of a pilot plant for the nitrification of separately collected urine. Design, implementation and suggestions for system optimisation." In her thesis, she examines the question of how separately collected urine can be stabilised by nitrification and thus made usable as fertiliser. As part of her work, Ms Balcke commissioned a pilot plant for urine treatment and supervised the test procedure.

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