The Senate of the Hochschule Niederrhein has awarded the Senate Prizes, each endowed with 1000 euros. The Senate thus honors outstanding theses in four categories. "The theses show how diverse the university is. What particularly stands out is that all of the theses deal with sustainability," said Deputy Senate Chair Prof. Dr. Saskia Drösler at the ceremony.
Students cannot apply directly for the Senate Prize: Their respective examiner proposes the work to the Examinations Board in the faculties, which submits one proposal per category to the Senate. The latter then decides on the award winners based on the evaluation by a jury. "However, today we are not only honoring the achievements, but above all the people behind them," said Prof. Dr. Stegemerten, vice president for studies and teaching education.
The prize in the "Economics" category went to Yasmin Gassner. In her Bachelor's thesis at the Faculty of Mechanical and Process Engineering, she developed a monitoring system for heat exchangers. These are used in companies that operate process engineering processes. They are used to heat or cool products or auxiliary media. The monitoring system determines the optimum time for cleaning. With minimal investment costs, economic efficiency can be significantly increased and energy requirements reduced.
In the "Science" category, Franziska Schubert from the Faculty of Food, Nutrition and Hospitality Sciences impressed the jury. In her work, she dealt with the topic of food waste in inpatient care. During an internship semester, she developed a method for forecasting consumption quantities and thus systematically recording and reducing the amount of food waste. In a pilot residential area, the waste rate was reduced from 46% to 35%. The Senate particularly appreciated the extraordinarily extensive source work and the scientifically structured approach.
The prize in the category "Society & Ecology" was awarded to Elisabeth Wagner from the Faculty of Textile and Clothing Technology. In her master's thesis, she developed an upcycling concept to reuse occupational personal protective equipment (PPE). PPE is difficult to recycle and may not be reused as protective clothing after it is discarded. Elisabeth Wagner developed a concept to categorize PPE, analyze typical damage patterns and develop utilization paths for high-quality reuse, for example as furniture or functional clothing.
Setare Behbahani from the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences was awarded a special distinction. In her Bachelor's thesis, she dealt with the still fairly new concept of "translanguaging", the alternating and equal use of different languages using the example of multilingual daycare centers. Children with a different "family language" experience in monolingual daycare centers that they can only use part of their expressive abilities. In her work, Behbahani examines the concept to see if it offers a way to adequately support multilingualism in daycare centers.
