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Congratulations to the winners of the Kuratorium sponsorship competition!
25 submitted applications, 8 invitations to pitch and 3 award-winning projects - this is the result of the competition, which the Board of Trustees, as the central funding body of the UW/H, announced for the second time at the beginning of the year. The competition was looking for exceptional scientific projects and larger projects from student initiatives. The grants were awarded to:
Category Economy and society
Charlotte Glienke, research associate at the Reinhard Mohn Institute of Management (RMI), won in the Economy and Society category with her project "Divergence of Aspiration Levels and the Glass Cliff Phenomenon: A Behavioral Theoretical View of Companies" .
The research project is dedicated to the phenomenon of the glass cliff - the tendency to appoint women to management positions when companies are in crisis. Unlike previous research, which explains such decisions primarily in terms of prejudice or symbolic politics, this study examines the influence of pressure within a company. It looks at the extent to which a company's performance deviates from its own expectations or social standards - and whether this influences the decision to appoint a woman to the top. With the help of quantitative data analysis, the study aims to deepen our understanding of the structural causes behind the glass cliff - and thus provide new impetus for gender equality strategies in business and politics.
Category Health
In the Health category, Prof. Dr. Stefan Westermann, holder of the Chair of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy IV, and Prof. Dr. Thomas Ostermann, holder of the Chair of Research Methodology and Statistics in Psychology, received funding for the project "Therabits - A Personalized AI-Powered Psychotherapy Skills Lab".
With Therabits, the two professors are launching an innovative project at Witten/Herdecke University: an AI-supported learning platform for prospective psychotherapists. With the help of generative AI, students will be able to train their therapeutic skills with realistically simulated patients - safely, flexibly and in a personalized way. The platform is based on the principle of deliberate practice and allows video exercises, self-reflection and feedback from experts. This enables hands-on learning independent of real patients. The pilot is starting in Witten, with plans to expand to other healthcare degree programs in the future.
Special prize for student commitment
The Board of Trustees has awarded the special prize for student commitment to the student initiative Future Doctors Network (FDN) - for the project "surgical skills - students for students".
The Future Doctors Network, a student initiative at Witten/Herdecke University, aims to establish a sustainable surgical training platform for students of human medicine and dentistry. One aim is to offer practical courses in three levels of difficulty (Basic, Advanced, Expert) using modern suture pads - as an ethical alternative to animal materials. The second aim is to prepare students for real clinical scenarios. Surgical skills are to be improved with devices for practicing and learning minimally invasive surgical methods, so-called laparoscopy trainers. All courses are organized by students and supervised by licensed physicians to guarantee high quality. The initiative has been doing pioneering work in surgical training at student level for years and is committed to practice-oriented, high-quality teaching.