The history of the FAUST guest auditor programme is an excellent example of the self-dynamics of developing activities for older people - once interest has been aroused.
Under the auspices of the Competence Centre for Resource-Oriented Age(ing) Research (REAL) at The Hochschule Niederrhein, which has been in existence since 1993 (formerly known as the core research areas "Competence in old age between routine and new beginnings"), professors held an extracurricular, interdisciplinary course (lecture series) on issues relating to ageing and old age in 1994. In addition to regular students, older citizens were also invited to this lecture series.
At the end of this lecture series, the needs and wishes of the older audience were not yet satisfied and the lecturers were asked to continue to open lectures and seminars to older guest students.
It was possible to fulfil this request, as the universities in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia passed and still pass the option of taking part in courses with guest auditor status - after consultation with the lecturers.
The competence centre headed by Professor Dr Engelbert Kerkhoff and Sigrid Verleysdonk-Simons developed a concept to put together a course catalogue from the university's faculties that would open up a variety of educational opportunities for guest students.
The concept was a success: From an initial 15 interested guest students, we now proudly look at a number of participants of up to 300 guest students per semester. With this number of guest students, The Hochschule Niederrhein is one of the top universities of applied sciences in NRW.