Water and Coastal Management

There is a thirty-year tradition of co-operation joining the universities of Groningen and Oldenburg. Hanse-Law-School, European Graduate School for Neurosensory Science, Systems and Application, and Diploma of Product Technology are highlights of this track record. As a guarantee for our quality and for your success, there is a particular agreement on the cooperation for the WCM-Master.

Groningen

RuG University of Groningen

The University of Groningen provides high quality research and education, is internationally oriented, respects differences in ambition and talent, works actively with business, the government and the public, and ranks among the best universities in Europe.

The University of Groningen has a long academic tradition extending back to 1614, which makes Groningen the oldest University in the Netherlands after Leiden. Many very talented people in a variety of disciplines have studied or worked at the University during the 390 years of its existence, including a Nobel Prize winner, the first female university student in the Netherlands and the first female lecturer, the first Dutch astronaut and the first president of the European Bank. They share their academic roots with more than 200,000 other people who have attended the University of Groningen as students, lecturers or research workers.

Research

The University of Groningen is at the forefront in a number of fields of scientific research. The University wants to emphatically strengthen its position in this respect. The RUG creates and stimulates a working environment for top researchers and top lecturers practicing at the cutting edge of their respective fields. Permanent and systematic quality improvement is the dominant principle not only in research at the RUG, but in education too.
The University of Groningen encourages students to develop multifacetedly. Knowledge increase and innovation blossom in an interdisciplinary and international environment. Therefore, the RUG desires that its Dutch students push beyond the boundaries of their own studies and country, placing a significant number of them abroad.

University of Groningen
FRW: Faculty of Spatial Sciences
The Faculty of Spatial Science is the only independent faculty in its kind in the Netherlands, with almost 900 students and about 80 members of staff.
The academic staff of the FRW is organized into four departments: cultural geography, economic geography, demography, and planning. These departments are primarily responsible for the disciplinary quality of the content and efficiency of research and teaching of individual members. Research is organized through the Urban and Regional Studies Institute (URSI). Education is organized through curriculum committees. Each programme has a programme director responsible for daily matters.
The FRW offers two bachelor and eight master courses, of which three are taught in English. The faculty sees the provision of academic teaching in geography, environmental and infrastructure planning, planning and demography as one of its two primary responsibilities. The other key responsibility is conducting research in these disciplines. This interlinking of teaching and research is a hallmark of the academic character of the FRW. The FRW’s activities reflect the complexity of society, especially the composition and development of the population, the spatial organization of residential and work areas, the spatial processes underpinning them and the spatial intervention – including in a technical sense – that is required.
In its work, the FRW aims for quality of a high international standard. The emphasis is on acquiring multidisciplinary knowledge because it is precisely at the interface between disciplines that progress is made.
Scholarship can only thrive in an atmosphere of academic freedom and the universal exchange of ideas. For this reason the FRW maintains close contacts with sister institutions at home and abroad and promotes staff and student exchanges. In the same spirit, the FRW enters into strategic alliances with foreign sister institutions in order to maintain this cultural diversity and the structured exchange of ideas.
The FRW believes it has a special responsibility for the cultural, social, economic and above all spatial development of its own region. This is expressed through active participation in social activities where its expertise can be of use. Research is organized by the Urban and Regional Studies Institute (URSI) which participates in the Graduate School of Housing and Urban Research, NETHUR.
Research at URSI focuses on the following four themes:

• Explaining spatial-economic change
• Planning for environmental quality
• Determinants of population dynamics
• Making places

Each theme consists of a broad range of research projects. Some focus mainly on empirical research while others are of a more theoretical and methodological nature. Both the scientific relevance and the contribution to the understanding of societal problems are important dimensions of the URSI research projects.
The Faculty is one of the most international oriented faculties of the University of Groningen, with an exchange programme in which students from all over the world participate.

Oldenburg

Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg

The University of Oldenburg is one of the young German universities. Throughout its more than 25-year history, it has maintained its openness and readiness to take on new challenges. With over 11,000 students and nearly 1800 faculty and staff members, it is an accessible, well-equipped university with remarkable architecture concentrated in two locations. The University of Oldenburg was established in 1973 as part of Germany’s reform and expansion efforts of the University system. Today, the university substantially gives the structurally weak Northwest Region an economic and cultural boost. In the summer semester of 1974, the university introduced an education curriculum with 2400 students. The basis for this was the teachers` college that became integrated into the new university.

Faculty Spectrum

The University currently offers 40 study courses. 75 percent of students seek a Diploma, Magister, Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree, while 25 percent strive for a teaching certification.
Along with social sciences and the humanities (languages, business and economics, psychology, education, political studies, sociology, philosophy, history, sports sciences, etc.) the university also offers an art and music course for the teaching certification and Magister tracks. These are two subjects important and formative for the surrounding region and cultural life of the city of Oldenburg.
The natural sciences (biology, physics, chemistry) attract great importance, and are housed together with mathematics at the Wechloy campus.
Scholars at Oldenburg started the studies of energy and the environment much earlier than other universities. A testament to these efforts is the energy laboratory built in 1981 and the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) established ten years later, which employs nearly 100 worker.
Computer science, added in 1984, had a profound impact on the university’s faculty spectrum. The outstanding significance of this faculty is made clear through OFFIS (Oldenburg Research and Development Institute for Computer Science Tools and Systems), established in 1991 and currently employing more than 150 people.

ICBM: Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment

The scientific concept of the ICBM is based on the realization, that research of the seas, being one of the most manifold global systems, can only be successful using interdisciplinary methods. Comprehensive research of marine habitats being vital points for the development of the bio-planet earth, demands multiple interdisciplinary research work. The research of the Institute can roughly be divided into the following areas:

• Mathematic scientific basic research and global ecology
• Practical environmental research in marine eco- and climate systems
• Development of biotechnologies

Basic research is oriented on the theory of geo-physiology. According to that theory, earth is an inhabited planet, whose development is geo-physically describable and whose feed-back processes are chemically, biologically, and physically comprehensible: all phenomena in geological and modern times are documents of the biologically formed processes in all areas and at all times of the bio-planet earth. Therefore, the resulting complex systems and their theoretic description as well as their analysis and modelling are the main elements of the basic research of the institute.
The second comprehensive area of the Institute’s scientific activities is the research of marine eco- and climate systems with regard to increasing contamination of the seas and the global and regional change in climate. Most important in this respect are natural processes and anthropogenic influences in the southern North Sea, especially in the elementary systems of tidal flats and estuaries. The main point of this research project is to explore structures, characteristics, and results of various parts of marine eco- and climate systems and to realize their significance for the whole system. As a result of its high variability, this research of coastal and shallow water eco-systems is especially important.
More than ever, environmental research is depending on its results being made appropriately clear to the public. In addition, scientific projects must be adapted to social problems in a reasonable way. This means, studies on environmental explanation work are an integral part of interdisciplinary research.
When tests and developments of marine biotechnologies are being carried out, studies of material destruction and protection, on acquisition and enrichment of material, and on pollutant decontamination are the main focus. The setting-up of aquacultures as well as tests on biological sewage sludge reduction are also part of this area. In future, special developments of equipment for use in marine sectors will be the main point and will be carried out in close cooperation with the partner institutions.