Teaching

The interdisciplinary, practice-oriented orientation of the courses as well as the individual support of the students in small study groups are of great importance at Ostfalia. Particularly noteworthy are the dual study programs, or the “study programs in the practice group”, in which two vocational qualifications - a university degree and the completion of in-company vocational training at a partner company of the university - can be obtained in a short period of time. Over 100 international university partnerships on all continents not only enable the exchange of lecturers, but also offer students in particular the opportunity to gain international experience.

Research

In research, Ostfalia has set itself the task of addressing current issues from operational and social practice and developing scientifically sound, feasible solutions. The prerequisite for this is specialist know-how that is pooled and applied in the university's institutes. While the Ostfalia is expanding the scope of action for companies with technical equipment and specialist knowledge, it benefits from the direct reference to practice both in teaching and in other research projects.

History

The history of the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences goes back to the years 1853 (Suderburg), 1905 (Braunschweig) and 1928 (Wolfenbüttel) through its predecessor institutions.

At the Braunschweig site, the Christian Social Women's School, founded in 1905, developed into the Higher Technical School for Social Work in Lower Saxony. Twenty-three years after the establishment of this facility, the technical center was built in Wolfenbüttel. This private educational institution offered a degree as well as state-recognized final exams in the fields of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. In 1968 the technical center became a state engineering academy before it achieved the status of a technical college in 1971. With the merger with the higher technical school in Braunschweig, the Braunschweig / Wolfenbüttel University of Applied Sciences was created in the same year. The university's successes can be seen, among other things, in the steadily growing number of students and the establishment of numerous other departments: From 1971 to the present day the number of students has grown from 850 to around 13,000. And with its twelve faculties, the university is now also represented at three other locations - in Wolfsburg since 1988, in Salzgitter since 1993 and in Suderburg since 2009.

Since September 2009, the university has been operating under the name "Ostfalia", and thus does justice to both the result of its steady growth and its regional identity - because all four locations (the Faculty of Social Work has now relocated its headquarters from Braunschweig to Wolfenbüttel) are in Ostfalen, a region of the old Sachsenland between the Weser, Lüneburg Heath, Elbe and Harz mountains.