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THE EMPLOYEE PORTAL

Between dress rehearsals and costume fittings, the final brushstrokes for the stage set and arrangements for the big anniversary celebration, Mario Vietmeyer found an hour to tell me about his great hobby - the OTTOJANERN. (in German) The carnival club was founded in 1954 as a student carnival at the university's predecessor institution. In 1982, Mario Vietmeyer began his work at the Technical University in what is now the central workshop at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and has been involved in the OTTOJANER carnival ever since - initially as a guest and later on stage as a participant and club member. In the early 1980s, tickets were only available to students and members of the university. "They were highly coveted and if someone from 'outside' wanted to attend an OTTOJANER carnival, they had to be sponsored by a student or member of staff from the university," recalls the OTTOJANER.

His wife shares his enthusiasm for carnival. In 2011, they sat on stage together as the prince and princess with the Elferrat. "Not only did we have to open the kissing ceremony, I also had to give a speech," Mario Vietmeyer tells me. "I wanted to speak freely and my wife practiced with me every free minute - whether I was driving or cooking in the kitchen - to speak slowly, clearly, with emphasis and loudly." But his heart really belongs to dancing in the men's ballet. Preparations for the upcoming carnival season begin in late summer. The motto is decided, a song is chosen, the choreography is worked out, then rehearsed weekly and the costumes are selected. "Unfortunately, I've never danced Swan Lake before," the OTTOJANER tells me somewhat wistfully. "We had already rehearsed it, but then Corona came along." Over the years, the all-male ballet has become a mixed ballet troupe. The "girls" from the show ballet joined them. The now 63-year-old no longer has stage fright. But there is still a tingling in his stomach, he admits, as there is only "one chance and every step has to be right the first time, with hundreds of people watching on stage".

I want to know what he thinks the work of the carnival club is all about. "The sense of community, the organizing and being able to get involved." And it's not just OTTOJANER's dancing skills that are in demand. He likes to use his manual skills to set up, dismantle and repair the stage sets. When the conversation turns to the stage sets, I can sense his enthusiasm. He talks about the painting weekend where all the OTTOJANS meet and raves about the painter of the decorations, who is a true artist. Under his guidance, an A4 sketch becomes a 10 x 8 meter stage set this weekend. This impresses Mario Vietmeyer again and again, year after year. This artistic skill can also be seen on the 40-ton truck that the OTTOJANERs design and with which they take part in the big Rose Monday parade in Köthen. They will be there again this year.

And there is the social gathering that is part of club life and the pride at the end of the session when everything went well and all the guests were satisfied and had a great party night.

But until this feeling sets in, not only the dancers, but all OTTOJANER are eagerly awaiting the big 70th anniversary event on January 20, 2024 at the AMO Kultur- und Kongresshaus. Invited to "Otto's wild 70th" are foolish companions from 70 years from friendly clubs, the city and region and, of course, from the university. As in the previous 70 years, the Rectorate will hand over the regency for the fifth season to the jesters and fools with the symbolic key at the opening of the session. From 8:11 p.m., guests can expect a show program, carnival speeches and songs as well as Scottish bagpipers and Japanese taiko drummers. And Mario Vietmeyer will also be on stage again, contributing to a mega colorful carnival night. Incidentally, tickets are still available, he tells me at the end of our conversation. Well then: Otto, Otto Alaaf!

OVGU has joined the nationwide DEAL agreement with the academic publisher Elsevier. This means that members of the university have had access to a large part of Elsevier's electronic journal portfolio since January 1, 2024. They will also be able to publish specialist articles as open access as a corresponding author under the agreement at no additional cost. Thanks to the Open Access Fund (excluding FME), this also applies to first publications in Gold journals. More than two thirds of all publications with OVGU members as "corresponding author" were already freely available worldwide in 2022, i.e. published as open access. The University Library supports this through transformative contracts with publishers such as ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), ACS (American Chemical Society), Springer Nature and Wiley. In the past three years, Elsevier has been one of the top 3 publishers with which OVGU researchers have publishe.

"The Elsevier-DEAL contract will once again significantly increase the proportion of open access," says Deputy Library Director Dr. Christine Lücke. "The contract is of great importance to us. The negotiations with Elsevier have dragged on for a very long time. Since 2017, users of the University Library have not had comprehensive access to Elsevier publications. This was a considerable restriction for our academics. They repeatedly asked us to provide access to journals and journal articles from Elsevier. We at the University Library are therefore all the more pleased to be able to expand our services for researchers." The idea of open access is very firmly anchored in the University Library. Wherever possible, the University Library enters into transformative agreements to enable worldwide free access to research articles by OVGU academics.

The background

Ten years ago, the German Rectors' Conference initiated the DEAL project, now known as the DEAL Consortium. It deals with the negotiation, conclusion and practical implementation of Germany-wide transformative open access agreements with academic publishers. The aims of these agreements are to enable scientists in Germany to publish open access in order to achieve greater visibility and reach for their research results, and to improve access to research literature that is not freely available. In addition, the costs of scientific publishing are to be contained and a sustainable remuneration model established.

Read more about Open Access publishing on the University Library website.

Dear colleagues, dear employees, dear students,

It was with great pleasure that we received the decision of the German Research Foundation DFG on Friday to invite the SmartProSys research initiative to submit a full proposal as part of the Cluster of Excellence funding line. On behalf of the university management, I would like to congratulate the entire team around Prof. Kai Sundmacher on this great research success and thank everyone for their great commitment!

This success is a joint effort by Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems. It was certainly also made possible because it is clearly a topic of the future with great social relevance. But above all, it is the extraordinary scientific expertise and outstanding interdisciplinary collaboration of the researchers involved that contributed to this success.

Scientists from the fields of process engineering, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, logistics, political science, economics and psychology are working together to replace fossil raw materials with renewable carbon sources and to transform energy-intensive process chains into completely closed cycles in the long term. The end result is a chemical industry based on biogenic residual and waste materials as well as recycled plastics and whose processes are powered exclusively by renewable energies.

The full application must be submitted by the end of August 2024, the final funding decision would be made in May 2025 and cluster funding would begin one year later, initially for seven years. It must be clear to the international jury that OVGU as a whole supports the application and sees it as a great opportunity for strategic development. The university management and the university committees will give the team their full support.

However, I would of course also like to take this opportunity to thank those who did not progress in this funding round. The term "failure" is completely out of place in the jury's decision last week. Out of 143 applications, only 41 reached the next round and many renowned university locations came away empty-handed. The Cognitive Vitality research initiative is an excellently positioned interdisciplinary research network with enormous potential. Here, too, a central social problem is being addressed and the team will place parts in other funding programs. We are also confident that the Productive Teaming initiative will further develop the collaboration between the central German universities of Chemnitz, Ilmenau and Magdeburg into a Collaborative Research Center/Transregio.

A clearly structured process and state funding in recent years have proven successful. The commitment of many university members, which was evident at all times, is also likely to have contributed to the success of this round of the Excellence Strategy. And finally, a little bit of luck is always needed in competitions of this magnitude. Let's keep our fingers crossed together!

Sincerely

Yours, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jens Strackeljan

Sustainability, a shortage of skilled workers, work intensification, constantly changing market requirements, increasing customer demands, diversity in the team, the new work model, project work instead of routine - change processes that accompany our everyday working lives. How can managers cope with their complexity and uncertainty? What makes managers who already have both feet on the ground fit for this? The part-time Master's degree program "Project Management and Team Development" (in German). Course director Prof. Dr. Michael Dick from the Department of Vocational and Corporate Education introduces it.

What does the "Project Management and Team Development" course offer?

The current world of work is in constant flux: changes in structures, work intensification, complexity, uncertainty. Many development processes are realized through projects. New teams constantly have to come together for a project, adapt to each other, work together in an interdisciplinary, multi-perspective and flexible way. The project results in turn have an impact on the organization, structures and processes, on products and market movements. On the one hand, managing a project means tapping into and planning all the resources required to achieve the set goal. On the other hand, it also means recognizing the importance of the project for the further development of the organization. Project management is therefore both an operational and a strategic management task. This is why the course includes topics from the social sciences and psychology, as well as project organization, leadership and how learning and development processes can be initiated and sustainability promoted. Specific topics such as working atmosphere, teamwork and cooperation within the company also play a role.

Who is this course aimed at?

The course is aimed at specialists, junior staff and managers from all areas. We have administrative staff, engineers, employees of the railroads, at clinics or in science management and research projects, and teachers on our courses. Our courses are aimed at people who work as project managers or in interface positions in companies and organizations, as well as people returning to work, master craftsmen and women and working bachelor graduates.
Your motivation? You would like to acquire a sound understanding and methods of leadership and team development, as well as their interaction, and to underpin them once again theoretically and scientifically. You would like to make a personal career change, the professional demands on you have changed, as a leader you would like to take people with you in the change process, or as a career starter you have ideas that you would like to implement in your field but are constantly confronted with the "we've always done it this way" mentality.

How is the course structured?

The course comprises four semesters and is divided into five modules and the Master's thesis; three modules in which theoretical and practical qualification as a project manager takes place, methods, models and tools are taught; a module on team development, leadership and conflict management; a module in which research methods are taught and the Master's thesis is written under supervision. Graduates complete the course with a Master of Arts degree.

The course is part-time. What effort can students expect?

The program is very open and offers a lot of freedom. There are flexible ways of getting started, what prerequisites you need to bring with you, how you structure and organize your studies and which degree you choose. After the first year, for example, you have the option of obtaining a "Project Management" certificate and going back into practice.
We have designed the program in such a way that it is feasible in all life situations and professional contexts. This flexibility is geared towards different work-life constellations, and the blended learning approach enables a high degree of location- and time-independent learning.

One requirement is a professional activity. What do you expect from this?

The participants come from a wide variety of professional fields, as I have already mentioned. In the group work, they enrich each other with their very different wealth of experience and bring a wide variety of approaches, perspectives and reflections to the discussion. We expect a reciprocal relationship between science and practice. As teachers and course participants, we always receive the latest trends, challenges and problems in companies, organizations, administrations and society on a plate, so to speak. This is mutually beneficial. At the end of the course, a group identity, a network and a lively exchange of ideas often develops over many years.

What can graduates do after completing their studies?

The course is accompanied by a process of self-reflection, which we initiate and set in motion. Who am I as a project manager or as an employee in an organization? Where do my team and I stand in the company, in the organization, in the office? So it's not just about the operational view, the tools that can be used in the short term, methods and models, but about sustainable long-term analysis.

At the end, graduates of the Master's course should be able to recognize critical situations in projects and manage them. They will be able to assess the development of a project and its various dimensions and focus on the essentials. They are able to report convincingly on the objectives, results and developments of a project, both orally and in writing, and they have the ability and willingness to take on leadership roles.

Professor Dick, thank you very much for the interview.