Rent a Prof – Bringing the University into the Classroom

As part of the "Rent a Prof" project, Prof. Dr. Albrecht-Birkner visited the Evangelisches Gymnasium Bad Marienberg on Thursday, November 7. You can find a report on the school's website.

(Text and pictures by Ibrahim Kaddoura, teacher at the Clara Schumann Comprehensive School)

Update 15.04.25 - Read also: Interview with participating pupils in the magazine "Integrierte Schulen Aktuell" (issue 1/2025)

On October 2, 2024, Prof. Dr. Daniel Stein from the University of Siegen visited the Clara-Schumann-Gesamtschule in Kreuztal and gave an impressive lecture on the upcoming US presidential elections. The event took place as part of the long-standing cooperation between the University of Siegen and the comprehensive school and was organized through the "Rent-a-Prof" program, which offers schools the opportunity to integrate expert lectures into lessons.

Prof. Dr. Stein, Professor of American Studies, is an expert in American cultural studies and offered the students an exciting insight into the significance of elections in the USA. He began with an overview of the global political and economic role of the United States and explained why it is important to pay close attention to these elections. Particularly fascinating was the explanation of the US electoral system, the Electoral College, which Prof. Dr. Stein highlighted both its strengths and weaknesses. He managed to present the complex structures in an understandable way and convey the historical significance of presidential elections.

His lecture focused on the current issues shaping the election campaign, in particular the economy, immigration policy and reproductive rights. Prof. Dr. Stein also explained the political approaches of the two leading candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and gave the students an insight into how the election could affect the future of the USA and its foreign policy.

The Q&A session that followed showed how inspired the students were by the talk. They asked questions about the possible changes in US foreign policy and the importance of gender and ethnicity in politics, especially in light of the fact that Kamala Harris could potentially be the first female president and person of color in office. Prof. Dr. Stein answered the questions in detail and gave the students deep insights into the political dynamics of the USA.

© Ibrahim Kaddoura

This lecture was part of the University of Siegen's "Rent-a-Prof" program, which offers schools in the region the opportunity to bring expertise directly from female academics into the classroom. The aim of the program is not only to give schoolgirls exciting insights into research and science, but also to arouse their interest in university teaching and academic topics.

The collaboration between the Clara Schumann Comprehensive School and the University of Siegen is a wonderful example of how schools and universities can work together to broaden pupils' horizons. The Q2 students thanked Prof. Dr. Stein with a small gift for his engaging lecture, which had a lasting impact on their perspective on the US elections and international politics.

The University of Siegen is looking forward to continuing such valuable collaborations in the future and providing schoolgirls with exciting insights into the world of science. If you, as a teacher or school principal, are also interested in an expert lecture in your classroom, the "Rent-a-Prof" program
is available to help you find a suitable date for a lecture.

On 20 September, Professor Dr. Markus Lersch visited the Stift Keppel grammar school as part of the "Rent a Prof" program and spoke with pupils on the topic of "Protestant - Catholic: What connects us and (still) distinguishes us".

Prof. Lersch on the experience:

"Rent a Prof is a great format from which all sides can only benefit: The students take a look ahead at university teaching and professionalism, the teachers look back on their studies and possibly receive exciting updates and the "profs" have never been harmed by leaving the academic ivory tower...

On 6.12.2024, theoretical philosophy came to the 12th grade (Q1) at Bertha-von-Suttner-Gesamtschule Siegen

The inviting parties - Dr. Christian Prust and Lisa Grübener, who have been active in philosophy didactics at the University of Siegen for many years and teach philosophy at Bertha-von-Suttner-Gesamtschule - lead the two philosophy courses with around 50 students, who were now to be confronted with university philosophy. Prof. Cord Friebe and WiMi Anna-Lisa Nußbaum first introduced the subject in general, but then above all with its interdisciplinary focus on the examination of current sciences such as cognitive science, biology and physics. The discussion about the Libet experiments in brain research and their challenge for the understanding of our free will, which is also known to the general public, had been the subject of the philosophy courses in the weeks before. Now Friebe took up the conception of time in modern physics and worked out the tension between this rather static representation and our dynamic experience of time on the blackboard and in dialog with the students. How does our idea of time passing, of change in the world, fit in with the world view of physics, in which movement processes are represented by coordinate systems in which time and (static) spatial axes do not differ in any way? According to the message, philosophy of science has the important goal of developing possible solutions to such tensions. The pupils were thus given an extremely interesting insight that aroused curiosity and interest.