Amman- 3 December 2017
Germany, Bonn November 27th-28th, 2017, The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) invited GJU Vice-President Prof. Dorit Schumann to present GJU and some ideas of intercultural experiences in its yearly Trans-National-Education (TNB) meeting in Bonn. Beside the GJU itself also its project office at the UAS Magdeburg-Stendal was invited with Rector Prof. Anne Lequy and Director Dr. Monica Heitz.
This year all project offices from Germany were invited to attend the meeting; next year all international partners will be invited to a Trans-National-Education conference in Berlin.
The conference was opened by Dr. Stephan Geifes, who is responsible in the DAAD for all TNB activities and who is a member in the GJU Board of Trustees. In a joint presentation with Anne Kathrin Jansen, he introduced TNB with some background information and data.
From all TNB activities worldwide GJU is ranked second out of approx. 60 worldwide (following the GUC in Cairo) with view to the students enrolled. There are similarities between the TNB activities, but also differences in the concepts. The conference and its workshops combined presentations, workshops, discussion rounds with a broad spectrum of topics from DAAD itself and universities with TNB activities.
Prof. Schumann presented GJU and its intercultural experiences in three parts: First telling a story about GJU and its establishment from “1001 nights”, followed by her own experiences in education with GJU students in Germany and Jordan and finally by presenting a video about the new study programme Social Work for Refugees.
She highlighted the very special intercultural experiences between students from Jordan, exchange students from Germany and in addition refugees from different countries, mainly from Syria. Refugees and parts of the Jordanian students are DAAD scholarship holders.
In the end, she summarized the presentation with the idea, not to focus on the differences when speaking about intercultural topics, but more on the similarities of humans with different cultural background.
Beside the GJU presentation also Rector Prof. Anne Lequy enriched the evening slot with a bright presentation from a French-German background and Prof. Mario Neugebauer completed the contributions from the UAS Zwickau with a special view from Germany to Kazakhstan.
The slot was moderated by Susanne Kammüller from DAAD, who opened an active discussion about all presentations with the participants.
