Arnd Steinmetz kept his old office when he became president.

Otherwise, it's not like a new world is opening up to him.

The computer science professor, who was born in 1966, has been part of the management team at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences since 2013, most recently as Vice President for Digitization and Internationalization.

The fact that he has been at the head of the former university of applied sciences since April 1 is something he realizes above all from the large number of e-mails he receives every day.

That doesn't put him under too much stress: the messages are easier to work through than before because he can now delegate more.

Sasha Zoske

Sheet maker in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Steinmetz' unpretentious demeanor matches the unadorned furnishings of the presidential department on the 14th floor of the high-rise building on the Darmstadt campus: The most impressive thing there is the beautiful view of the Odenwald and Taunus.

But even if the new boss doesn't tend to be high-pitched like his colleague Frank Dievernich, who has just left the Frankfurt office, it quickly becomes clear when talking to him that he has ambitions.

Two things are particularly important to him: more internationalization and more autonomy – although for him both are closely related.

Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences has been a partner of the Allianz European University of Technology (EUt+) since 2020 and is funded by the EU Commission.

"Compared to other European universities, the universities here are very restricted by regulations," notes Steinmetz.

"I want to work on that.

We need significantly more legroom.”

Strengthen European networking

Right next door in the city he has a model for greater independence from ministerial specifications: the Technical University, which has enjoyed service and building owner rights since 2005 as a Hessian model university.

"I wish for the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences to have autonomy based on the model of the TU Darmstadt," says the President.

He is convinced that the construction autonomy in particular would help to eliminate the renovation backlog that the university has been suffering from for a long time.

Half of the buildings on the main campus in Darmstadt have to be renovated, and two years ago the renovation costs for the Dieburg branch with the departments of media and business were estimated at 120 million euros.

More independence should also be helpful for the second major project that Steinmetz is pursuing: His goal is to convert the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences into part of the European University of Technology.

"Ideally, it will be the Darmstadt campus of EUt+ in ten to 15 years." Courses and performance records of the participating universities are to be aligned to such an extent that students can easily switch between countries: summer semester in Darmstadt, winter semester in Riga.

Steinmetz wants to quickly create the necessary conditions in-house: "We're starting this year with a pilot department." Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences is supposed to be a mere branch of a European educational company, in which in the end only more or less good English is spoken everywhere will not be, as the President assures.

“We will continue to offer programs in German.

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are exactly what defines Europe.”

Student initiative wants civil clause

Steinmetz hopes to be able to increase the proportion of exchange students in Darmstadt to 80 percent.

Overall, in his opinion, the university should not continue to grow.

“We have reached a plateau with around 17,000 students.

It wouldn't make sense to increase this number." The sentence "We're not aiming for big numbers" also applies to Steinmetz with regard to the right to award doctorates, which the university currently enjoys in the field of applied computer science.

The President asserts that the universities do not want to compete with the universities in terms of the number of doctoral students.

However, he can imagine striving for the doctorate privilege for other subjects.

For example, for those from his own Media department, where the previously common criteria for research strength such as publications and third-party funds are difficult to apply.

And even though the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, with 50 percent of students in non-MINT subjects, is no longer purely a training center for technicians, Steinmetz would like to be able to award a doctorate in engineering at some point: "It's our turn."

A student initiative, which visited the president shortly after he took office, hopes to make efforts in another area: they want the university to have a civil clause that excludes research for military purposes.

The TU Darmstadt, for example, has such a clause, whose former president Jan Wörner, as president of the German Academy for Technical Sciences, is now demanding the abolition of such requirements in view of the Ukraine war.

Steinmetz, on the other hand, considers self-restraint conceivable, even if he knows how difficult it is to draw the line between purely civilian research and research that can be used for the military.

He agreed with the students: "Civil clause only if we don't just build a paper tiger." The Star Trek poster hanging in the office of the declared fan Steinmetz can also be interpreted as a commitment to peaceful internationalization.

As is well known, the spaceship Enterprise is not only multicultural but also well armed.