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Graduates from more than 50 countries attended today’s graduation at IUB. The Class of 2006 is the third class to graduate from the young private university. For the first time, after being in academic operation for five years, more than a third of the class are graduate students: 56 received their MA’s and 39 were awarded a PhD. With a passing rate of about 90 percent, the 158 BA and BSc graduates have again secured the IUB a top rank among German universities. The average age of BA and BSc graduates is 22.
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A highlight of the graduation ceremony was the address of the German Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel, which was read as a surprise to the assembled guests by Max Kaase, Dean of IUB’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Merkel congratulated IUB's students graduating in 2006 on the successful conclusion of their studies and imparted her best whishes for their future. She also acknowledged the accomplishments of IUB’s founding president Fritz Schauman: “With IUB you have created a university which consistently focuses on internationality and academic excellence and in which students are central figures. For these reasons IUB is one of the best universities in Germany; and gives valuable impulses to the ongoing reform of Germany's state-run university system.”
The parting IUB president Fritz Schaumann thanked the IUB community for their commitment and support in creating a brand new, successful university out of the former Bremen Roland barracks. The five-year period of building, which already saw many academic and political visions concerning higher education come true, should now be followed by a period of consolidation, Schaumann said. This would fall to his successor, Joachim Treusch, who would have to help IUB balance between its uniqueness as an innovative academic institution based on the Anglo-American university system on the one hand and its integration into the continuously changing German and European academic landscape on the other. Joachim Treusch, to date chairman of the Research Center Jülich, will take over the IUB presidency starting July 1, 2006.
The valedictorians Ashleigh Lynn Ferris, BA and Bassem Bassil, MA, pointed out on the unique and very intense experience of IUB life. “For the past three years, we have lived and studied in a center of diversity, and having gone through so many unique experiences here, the extraordinary has become quite ordinary and will stay with us as a lasting, forming impression,” said Ferris, a 22-year-old from the U.S. Bassil, a 28-year-old from Lebanon encouraged his fellow graduates to use all of their new academic and personal skills to help their school attain its rightful place among the world’s top universities: “Amaze whoever you meet! Turn heads around, be the center of the universe if you have to but let these 2 or 3 or 5 extra years flourish in the most colorful and best sensing experiences for the rest of our lives.”
Keynote speaker Heike Kunstmann, Director General of the German Association of Metal and Electrical Industry Employers ‘Gesamtmetall’ used the occasion to appeal to the newly-made graduates to use their knowledge and intercultural experience gained at IUB to meet the ever increasing conflict of corporate financial performance necessities and corporate social responsibility head on in their future professional lives: “I would like to encourage you all to shoulder personal responsibility, not only in matters of ethics and morals but first and foremost in the developing the economic centers of the western and eastern hemispheres – the responsibility of helping to safeguard our future in freedom and prosperity.”
The future of the members of the Class of 2006 is just as bright as it was for members of the first two graduating classes. Among the soon-to-be-employers of the IUB 2006 graduates are international companies such as E.on, Google und Shell. A lot of graduates have offers to join graduate or PhD programs at leading universities, such as Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Rice, London University College or the Max Planck Research School.
DOWNLOAD INFOS, GRADUATION 2006:
1. Address Dr. Angela Merkel (PDF, click here)
2. Welcome Speech Dr. Fritz Schaumann (PDF, click here)
3. Keynote speech Dr. Heike Maria Kunstmann (PDF, click here)
4. Speeches of Ashleigh Lynn Ferris, undergraduate representative (PDF, click here)
and Bassem Bassil, graduate representative (PDF, click here)
5. Up-to-date graduate statistics of the IUB Class of 2006 (in German, PDF, click here)
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Background info on the Classes of 2004 und 2005 |
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Two thirds of the 330 graduates to the Classes of 2004 and 2005 joined graduate programs at internationally renowned universities including Berkeley, Cambridge, Cornell, the Leipzig Graduate School of Management, the London School of Economics, Oxford University, the Collège des Ingénieurs in Paris, Stanford or the Technische Universität München. The others are employed at international companies including Accenture, Agilent Technologies, Commerzbank, DaimlerCrysler, the Lürssen Shipyard, Infineon, Masterfoods, McKinsey, Novartis, Procter & Gamble, Röhlig, Shell und Wintershall. Almost 90 percent of the IUB-alumni are willing to work in any country round the world, but many are preparing to return to their home countries at some point during their careers. Most IUB alumni are now residing in Germany, the UK and other countries of the European Union, and the USA.
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