The new head of the German Representative Office to the Palestinian Authority, Ms. Barbara Wolf, made her first official visit to Birzeit University on February 25, 2013. She was accompanied by the German Cultural Officer, Ms. Busch, and met with BZU President Khalil Hindi, Vice President for Academic Affairs Adnan Yahya, and Vice President for Administrative Affairs Adel Zagha.

 

Three professors in the German Academic Exchange Service Scholarship (DAAD) Program teaching at BZU also participated in the meeting. These were Political Science professor Helga  Baumgarten, who has taught at BZU since 1993, German language professor Ulrike Mitter, who has been at BZU since October 2012, and Carsten Walbiner, the new head of the DAAD Information Center in East Jerusalem.

 

President Hindi expressed his appreciation of the fruitful cooperation between BZU and Germany that is facilitated by DAAD, and hoped for its continuation. Vice President Yahya focused on the need to intensify institutional cooperation and Professor Baumgarten, who is also the former head of the DAAD Information Center in East Jerusalem, discussed the opportunity to increase the number of DAAD alumni teaching at BZU, given that 47 faculty members are now teaching at BZU and 23 students are currently studying in Germany

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Professor Walbiner expressed his enthusiasm over coming to teach history at BZU and agreed with the request for increased institutional cooperation with German universities. Professor Mitter spoke of the establishment of a new Bachelor’s degree program in teaching German as a foreign language.

 

All of the speakers emphasized the need for German academic and financial support for a new Ph.D. program in Social Sciences that will soon be offered at BZU.