The University of Potsdam - A portrait
Structure
Mediator between Theory and Real Life
The Human Sciences Faculty
Photo: Göran Gnaudschun and pigurdesign
With the Cognitive Sciences and the Educational Sciences, the Faculty of Human Sciences includes two of the interdisciplinary focus areas of the University of Potsdam that operate beyond faculty boundaries. The Cognitive Sciences' excellence is based predominantly on the Collaborative Research Centre "Information Structure: The Linguistic Means for Structuring Utterances, Sentences and Texts." Empirical research is currently being expanded in the educational sciences, and it is closely linked to teaching. In the education and training of aspiring teachers in all faculties, the Faculty of Human Sciences occupies a central role.
The "Area of Excellence Cognitive Sciences" and the "Focus Area Educational Sciences" are divided into further research clusters and teaching units. Instruction in the departments of psychology, linguistics, sports, and health science is organized into educational science and teacher training. The research emphases are language, action and behavior, health, professional and popular sports, school and classroom as well as teaching across the life span.
In the future, the existing potentials in the area of health sciences and prevention will be developed into another focus area. The research area in health is currently already well connected with the support systems for professional sports.
The Faculty of Human Sciences mediates between theory and real life in a variety of ways. It is a service provider for the city of Potsdam and the federal state of Brandenburg. It maintains several consultation centers for psychotherapy and speech therapy as well as a university clinic. The university clinic is currently licensed as an examination center of the German Olympic Sports Confederation. Ultimately, a regional health network will be developed in cooperation with other service providers.
Furthermore, the faculty is actively striving for more quality in training students by establishing national and international Master's and graduate programs and by developing a system of quality assurance in teaching.
Prof. Dr. Frank Mayer,
Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences
Photo: K. Fritze
