Learning, discussing and discovering new perspectives together: The FAUST Guest Student Programme at the Hochschule Niederrhein (HSNR) is once again inviting people to get a taste of university life and exchange ideas with students and other guest students in the coming winter semester. Registration for the winter semester is open from 31 August to 18 September. No prior knowledge is required. In addition to face-to-face sessions, selected courses also offer the option of digital participation via Zoom.
The FAUST programme enables those interested in education to attend more than 200 lectures and seminars at the HSNR campuses in Krefeld and Mönchengladbach. Participants attend the sessions alongside students. “As well as subject-specific content, the focus is also on personal interaction. This brings people of different ages, with varied professional and personal experiences and from different walks of life, together in conversation,” says Miriam Grates, a gerontologist at the HSNR’s “Competence Centre for Resource-Oriented Age(ing) Research (REAL).”
The winter semester kicks off with the official term opening on 29 September from 2.00 pm to 4.30 pm at the Mönchengladbach campus (Webschulstraße 41–43, Building S, Room 304). As well as an introduction to the FAUST programme, guests can look forward to a keynote talk and a reading on the topic of happiness, as well as a tour of the campus.
Alongside the regular course catalogue, the expanded FAUSTplus programme offers additional lecture series, seminars and events. The lecture series ‘Happiness and Unhappiness – To what extent can we plan our lives?’ will take place on several Thursdays from October to January, exploring what constitutes happiness and unhappiness and to what extent people can influence their own happiness in life. The events will take place in a hybrid format from 2.15 pm to 3.45 pm on the Mönchengladbach campus (Building S, Room 301). Among other things, the series will explore whether misfortune can be avoided and happiness achieved through education and the acquisition of knowledge, or whether one’s own life path is more predetermined than one might think.
The event ‘Trumpism as a collective state of emergency: violence, the media and the crisis of democracy’, led by Professor Dr Frank Mehring and Professor Dr Hermann Strasser, will examine the relationship between the media, violence and democracy. On 20 October from 2.00 pm to 3.30 pm, participants will gather at the Future Work Lab in Mönchengladbach to discuss, amongst other things, how media spectacle and political mobilisation are transforming democratic cultures. The starting point is the question: “What links mass shootings, gun culture, media outrage and the rise of Trumpism?”.
From 28 October to 18 November, the student project from the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences invites you to the World Café in Mönchengladbach between 12.00 and 14.00 (Building S, Room 301). Under the motto ‘Generations in Dialogue – World Café for Young and Old’, students, guest students and staff can exchange views across generations over a coffee on various topics, ranging from values and differing perspectives to quality of life and working environments. The focus will be on how different generations can learn with and from one another, and what experiences, viewpoints and life contexts shape them.
Participation in the FAUST programme costs 125 euros for external participants. Registration can be done online, in writing or in person using the registration form.
Further information on the full course catalogue, any restrictions on participation and registration can be found at: www.hsnr.de/faust
