New Head of Unit I

Legal, Academic & Student Affairs, Family-Friendly University: many topics are dealt with in Department I. There are 50 people employed there - many of them part-time. "Unit I has a total of eleven units, which can also have several areas of responsibility," explains Robert Tietze.

Among other things, Unit I looks after the entire student life cycle. That means everything from student counselling to application, admission, enrolment, leave of absence, examination office activities and exmatriculation. All of these student matters are handled by Unit I. In addition, there are all legal issues. "We look after both "external law", such as contract law or cooperation agreements, but also "internal law" (organisational law), i.e. the basic regulations, study and examination regulations and even the Corona statutes," explains Robert Tietze, who, like his deputy, is a fully qualified lawyer.

Room planning and booking, the course catalogue, university elections, scholarships and the family-friendly university are also located in Unit I. Despite the diversity, however, the new management duo has not yet come across anything they did not expect before taking office. "That's because I've already had contact with almost all departments during the two-year transition phase and Ariane Lange also took over Unit I/2 a year ago," says Robert Tietze. Laughing, however, he adds: "But who knows, I've only been head of department for two months, so who knows what's still to come."

Dr Robert Tietze has been at the University of Bayreuth since May 2020. First as head of department, then as deputy head of department with his own area of responsibility. Ariane Lange has been at the UBT for a long time, since summer 2013. Through her work as an assistant to the then Provost Dr. Markus Zanner, she was able to get to know the entire university. After further stations on campus, she found her current place of work as a unit group leader in Unit I.

There is no such thing as a typical working day for the head of department, the two reveal. Every day is different, always quite colourful. "Often it's meetings with the staff on current topics and issues, but often I deal with written and telephone enquiries from all areas of the department," says Robert Tietze. "In addition, there are enquiries from the university management or the faculties, but also personnel topics such as conducting job interviews, sifting through documents and so on are part of the job. It never gets boring.