Time for vision - 15 years of communication psychology and management at DIU

28. Oktober 2020

Unbelievable how time flies. On Saturday, 26.09.2020, we celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of our DIU Master's Degree in Human Communication! A good opportunity to sum up, but also to vision.

A personal review and outlook of the scientific Director and course initiator Prof. Dr. Herbert Bock, of the scientific Director Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Frindte and the DIU Higher Education Manager Franziska Ramisch.

How do you appropriately celebrate a round birthday of a course of studies that is concerned with interpersonal communication? How do you acknowledge the many practical and personal experiences that students and lecturers have brought to our communication community during all this time? We have often asked ourselves this question in the run-up to the event.

The pandemic has not made this decision any easier. The board of directors of our course association, especially in the person of its chairperson Anne-Katrin Woort-Menker, has remained confident and convinced us to celebrate as planned in September despite great doubts - of course with the native distance regulation! After fifteen exciting master years together, there are numerous reasons to look back on this time and to be happy about what we have achieved together.

The club board has filled the day with life and organized an entertaining day workshop with a colorful bouquet of topics - according to the motto "HC in one day". About 30 alumni, students, but also interested people listened to our lectures at the workshop. HC lecturer Dr. Jörg Heidig presented and pointedly discussed his own empirical research results on the topic of employee retention and presented an intensive coaching method, which we were then able to experience in its full effectiveness using an example. The HC student and coach Theresa Hahn brought in her extensive experience in improvisational theater and loosened up the long day with intensive exercises in body awareness.

At the end of the workshop, the participants met again in a large plenary session - the last 30 minutes were filled with heated discussions. Everybody found the day a great enrichment - feedback was sought on what could be done better. The future of the course was also considered - because the 21st century with all its economic, social, media and digital challenges requires more than ever the competence profile of a well-trained communication psychologist. Alumni and lecturer Dr. Stephanie Rohac reported to the panel that she had just recorded a podcast for DIU and called on all graduates to see themselves even more strongly as ambassadors of the course. She also made it clear and appealed to the DIU how important it is, especially in this course of studies and for a large part of the training content, to come together live and in real life.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of celebrating DIU's summer festivals in 2018 and 2019 at the Kulturkraftwerk Mitte knows the talent of restaurant operator René Kuhnt in creating an atmospheric ambience. This summer, he opened the Kulturwirtschaft restaurant on the grounds of the Kulturkraftwerk Mitte. In this special ambience, a mixture of industrial charm and lavish baroque décor, we enjoyed the evening - welcoming the new HC students, paying tribute to two graduates and their completed master's theses and thanking HC graduate and lecturer Prof. Irene Schneider-Böttcher for her many years of commitment as the person responsible for the personnel module.

It was especially nice that Axel Stiller agreed to perform three songs from his singer-songwriter oeuvre in the ceremony - we were able to enjoy this, since Axel Stiller is a student in our course of studies in addition to his profession as a musician.

We were happy to see many old faces again on this day. For example Silke Clauß, who has been in charge of the course of studies as DIU project manager for many years and now heads the Dresden VWA.

Special thanks are due to the board of the HC Association around Anne-Katrin Woort-Menker, Tino Möhring, Kristina Rübenkamp, Kathrin Menz and Elisabeth Hahn. Not only did you put a lot of effort into the organization of the workshop and believed that we would all be able to see each other in September - you surprised us with an anniversary magazine "15 years of HC". The result is exciting in content and the professional layout made us all proud.

We would like to thank all those who have contributed to the program over the past 15 years - including students, alumni, lecturers and former DIU program managers who were unable to attend on September 26th - because every single piece of the puzzle is important and part of our lively HC community!

Above all, we took a lot out of this meeting of the different players of the study program: We are planning to hold such a workshop and subsequent celebration every September. We will try to involve the alumni more strongly as ambassadors for the program and we will work tirelessly on the content.

To the study program