She studied together with her best friend and appreciates how important a good learning partner is to support each other and successfully complete the studies. The constant exchange, also with the other students from her year, teamwork, working through problems together and preparing for exams together were enormously important factors during this time. In addition, Berit Schuster also worked as a student assistant or academic staff member and worked on exciting research topics with Prof. Strehmel, getting to know many measurement methods and working with scientific texts.
Much of what she learned during this time is now proving extremely useful in her professional life at ALTANA AG. The Hochschule Niederrhein offers a very good foundation course, and she can always find helpful information in her old documents from her student days. ALTANA AG, like many other companies in Germany, not only supports students like Berit Schuster financially through the Deutschlandstipendium scholarship, but also provides a deeper insight into the professional world during the scholarship. Here, it quickly became clear to Berit Schuster that the studies at the Hochschule Niederrhein offered real practical relevance. She then wrote her master's thesis at ACTEGA Terra in Lehrte, a subsidiary of the ALTANA Group, and subsequently joined the company as a developer in the field of printed electronics.
Today, she is a team leader in the "Printed Electronics" department at ALTANA subsidiary ELANTAS Europe GmbH in Hamburg, and it is not surprising that she would "naturally study the same thing again". For her, it was an advantage that the number of students in the lectures was quite manageable, especially at the end, so that she felt more like she was in a seminar. She also enjoyed the free allocation of time in her studies, so that she could party during the week. Overall, however, free time was more of a luxury, because oral examinations took place throughout the year, especially in the master's program. She now appreciates the fact that she can actually enjoy her free time on weekends. She also has fond memories of the faculty's study trips, which included a week-long visit to a wide variety of companies in the coatings industry in Germany, which was a great enrichment for her not only professionally, but also on a personal level. "Great studies, financial security through the Deutschlandstipendium scholarship and a super job," is how Berit Schuster sums it up, and so finally only one wish remains for the Hochschule Niederrhein: "Congratulations on its 50th anniversary!"
