Proposal for interim President – special Senate meeting on 5 February 2025

No. 3 - 23.01.2025

Dear students and employees
dear members of the University,

Today we would like to inform you about current developments in the management of our University.

Following the Senate meeting on 22 November 2024, a working group had been working on a timely answer to the question of who should lead the University until the regular election of a new President. The group consisted of representatives from the Senate, the Deans, the Presidential Board, the University Foundation Committee and the Ministry of Science and Culture.

This week, the working group agreed on Professor Axel Schölmerich as interim President of the University of Göttingen.

Axel Schölmerich was Rector of Ruhr-Universität Bochum from 2015 to 2021. He was appointed Professor of Psychology in Bochum in 1997, having previously spent five years at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA, and two years at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. He has focussed in particular on the social and emotional development of children in different cultural contexts. In the course of his work, he has been involved in various roles in academic self-administration.

The Senate will discuss this recommendation in a special meeting open to the University public on Wednesday, 5 February 2025 at 13:00 in the Aula (great Hall) on Wilhelmsplatz and vote on the proposal to the Foundation Council to appoint Professor Schölmerich as interim President.

Information on this Senate meeting can be found from next week on the Senate's information pages (intranet, in German) and on 31 January 2025 in our next newsletter. Following a successful election, Axel Schölmerich could begin his term of office on 1 March 2025.

As members of the working group, we are confident that we have found a very experienced University leader in Axel Schölmerich, with whom we can tackle the important tasks ahead of us, prepare for the election of a new president and drive forward the necessary further development of our University.

We hope for the broad support of all University members and committees on this common path.

Professor Ramin Yahyapour
for the voting members of the Senate

Dr Valérie Schüller
for the Presidential Board

Professor Andreas Paulus
for the Deans

Ministry of Science and Culture: press release (in German)