SDAC Workshop Series “Balancing academic knowledge ‘in the wild’” provides insights into a range of professional fields 

The organ­izer of the work­shop series and for­mer guest pro­fessor of the pro­gram Prof. Tijo Sal­verda was able to win over vari­ous pro­fes­sionals from sci­ence, poli­tics, and busi­ness to meet with the SDAC stu­dents to talk about their expe­rienc­es and the prac­tical appli­cation of aca­demic knowledge. 

The first guest was Lena Jakob from the Envi­ron­men­tal De­part­ment of the city Er­langen. In light of cli­mate change and the grow­ing de­mand for sus­taina­bility, envi­ron­men­tal topics are cov­ered in the SDAC Mas­ter's de­gree, mak­ing a career in this field ap­peal­ing to stu­dents. Meet­ing a pro­fes­sional from the city of Er­langen who deals with bal­ancing sci­entific in­sights about envi­ron­men­tal change with other con­cerns on a daily base was there­fore very inter­esting. 

The sec­ond guest was Kris­tine Bis­chof from Sci­ence Communi­cation of the Frie­drich-Alexan­der-Universi­ty. She pro­vided a well-appreci­ated per­spec­tive into how sci­ence is com­muni­cated to broader audi­ences – and how this re­quires the bal­ancing of the de­tails of scien­tific re­search with to-the-point com­muni­cation attrac­tive to non-academic audi­ences. 

The final guest of the se­mes­ter is Dr. Sim­ing Bayer from Sie­mens and FAU. In Janu­ary, she will exam­ine the pro­cess of inno­vation man­age­ment in a corpo­ration oper­ating worldwide with the stu­dents. This is ex­pec­ted to shed light on how scien­tific knowledge inter­acts with other busi­ness opera­tional dy­nam­ics for the pur­pose of im­ple­ment­ing inno­va­tion, which is a key foun­dation for the suc­cess of firms like Sie­mens.

The work­shop series builds upon one that Prof. Sal­verda organ­ised at SDAC in the sum­mer se­mes­ters of 2024 and 2025. Sev­eral ex­perts from vari­ous pro­fes­sional fields were invit­ed to ad­dress the high level of inter­est among stu­dents in gain­ing in­sights into poten­tial career paths. Among these guests were Prof. Dr. Markus Plomberger, direc­tor of the IAB re­search area on job­less­ness and social inclu­sion, Aki Arráez Ramón, vice presi­dent of Peo­ple & Cul­ture at Jack Wolfskin, Erik Mun­diger of the Um­welt­bank, Dr. Wieke Schol­ten, direc­tor and owner of BR In­sights, Dr. Na­tascha Eck­ert, (then still at) Sie­mens, and Jo­han­nes Ehrn­sper­ger, direc­tor and owner of Lammsbräu brew­ery. 

The work­shop series has con­tinued in a slight­ly dif­ferent for­mat, as stu­dents highly ap­preci­ated the op­por­tunity to ex­change ide­as with pro­fes­sionals who have a back­ground in the social sci­ences or who can offer expert in­sights into the skills and quali­ties need­ed to ad­vance one’s ca­reer. The work­shops proved a great help to them, as the range of possi­ble career paths out­side of aca­demia is fre­quent­ly not the focus of atten­tion in social sci­ences. They cher­ished the guid­ance and in­sights from pro­fes­sionals. It is, there­fore, highly likely that the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram “Standards of Deci­si­on-Making Across Cul­tures (SDAC)” will con­tinue to offer simi­lar work­shops in the fu­ture.

Text: Tijo Salverda & Jessica Wengel, Elitestudiengang “Standards of Decision-Making Across Cultures (SDAC)”