Fruitful cooperation continues

The many years of fruitful cooperation between the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences and the district of Görlitz will be continued. District Administrator Bernd Lange and the Rector of the university, Professor Friedrich Albrecht, signed the modified cooperation agreement on April 4 at the Görlitz District Office. "The university continues to be an extremely important partner for us, not only in terms of securing skilled workers, but also in order to cope with the far-reaching structural change we are facing and to support the companies in our district," said District Administrator Bernd Lange. 

Rector Professor Albrecht emphasized that such cooperation is the explicit demand of politics. "We believe we are well positioned here. We are in contact with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Chamber of Crafts, the cities and also with Brandenburg and we are happy to get involved," said Albrecht.  

In future, cooperation is to be even more targeted. For example, all specialist departments in the district administration were involved in advance under the direction of the district development office. The university did the same. 

Another new feature is that there will be a task and financial plan as part of the contract, in which specific cooperation projects between specialist departments and the faculties will be defined for a two-year period and the budget will be planned accordingly. "This provides planning security and creates transparency," said Holger Freymann, Head of the District Development Office. This task and financial plan is currently in progress.

The new contract will initially run until 2021 and the results will be presented to the district council every two years.

Close cooperation between the district of Görlitz and the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences has existed since 2010. However, intensive collaboration had already been cultivated in the old districts of Löbau-Zittau and the Niederschlesischer Oberlausitzkreis.

The range of cooperation extends from specific joint projects, supervision of practical and specialist work, supervision of diploma and bachelor theses, internships to speaker exchanges and translations. The main areas of focus include demography, social issues, transport, the environment, education, border regions, strategy development and citizen participation.