Last Saturday, Hof University of Applied Sciences bid farewell to its graduates of the past year. At a festive ceremony, they received their Bachelor’s and Master’s certificates from the hands of University President Prof. Lehmann and were then able to celebrate their successful graduation with friends and families. A total of five prizes and awards for special achievements were also presented at the ceremony.
Image: Hof University of Applied Sciences;
University President Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Lehmann was delighted to welcome around 1400 guests to the Great Hall of the Hofer Freiheitshalle and thanked the former students for entrusting Hof University of Applied Sciences with their academic education. Hof’s Lord Mayor Eva Döhla, District Administrator Dr. Oliver Bär and Member of the State Parliament Kristan von Waldenfels were invited guests of honor at the event. Eva Döhla and Dr. Oliver Bär praised the graduates’ achievements in their speeches and encouraged them to stay or return to the Hof region:
We have strong businesses and are well positioned for families, leisure and enjoyment!”
Eva Döhla, Mayor of the City of Hof
District Administrator Dr. Bär also agreed:
“We are celebrating you and we are celebrating your future. But we are also celebrating our university, because as the most popular university in Germany, it is creating a future for this region.”
Dr. Oliver Bär, District Administrator of the district of Hof
Appreciation for members of the student representatives
At the event, which was moderated in a relaxed and confident manner by Lea Schmidt and Anton Sack, the audience first enjoyed the graduation speeches by Denise Bohrisch and Noah Lehmann, who looked back with a pinch of humor on their time at Hof University of Applied Sciences, which included the coronavirus pandemic. The student representatives in the person of Amy Rehde and Patrick Kuxhausen then paid tribute to the outstanding achievements of their members, who had shown enormous additional commitment as the “heart of the university community” – both through their participation in committees and through the organization of many events. The awards ceremony for outstanding personal achievements by graduates then took center stage.
Personal awards
The prizes from the “Hans Viessmann Technology Foundation”, each endowed with EUR 1000, were presented by Board member Rainer Schmidt and went to Hubert-Nikolas Neubauer (Master Mechanical Engineering) and Isabell Michaela Waas (Bachelor Media Informatics). They were honored by their lecturers Prof. Dr. Tobias Plessing and Prof. Dr. Sven Rill. In her thesis, Isabell Waas dealt with the “Efficient development of a RESTful web service based on modern frameworks”. Hubert-Nikolas Neubauer wrote his master’s thesis on a “Potential analysis of flexibility marketing and the integration of renewable energies in the Wiegand-Glas Group”. He worked for the latter as a dual student.
The prize of EUR 1000 awarded by Women’s Representative Prof. Dr. Anett Matthäi went to Veronika Trapp from the Innovative Textiles Bachelor’s degree course. Prof. Dr. Claus-Ekkehard Koukal gave the laudatory speech for her outstanding work on the development of innovative nonwovens.
The “Gesellschaft der Freunde und Förderer der Hochschule Hof e.V.” also presented awards. Deputy Chairman Michael von Hertell presented EUR 500 each to the prizewinners Maximilian Gebhardt (Bachelor of Business Law) and Noah Christopher Lehmann (Master of Computer Science). Gebhardt had written a remarkable thesis on “Customer Protection in the Telecommunications Modernization Act” (laudator Prof. Dr. Beatrix Weber), while Noah Lehmann dealt with the integration of a special robot into the university ecosystem (Prof. Dr. Christian Groth).
International Award of the City of Hof
The “International Award” of the City of Hof, presented by Mayor Eva Döhla, went to international graduate Baki Can Öztepe. As his academic supervisor Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heym from the Master’s degree course in Software Engineering for Industrial Applications explained, he had achieved a highly acclaimed achievement for the development of a reporting system for the management of virtual commissioning projects. The prize is endowed with EUR 500.
The final award of the day went to Katharina Deubzer from the Global Management Master’s program for her work on market analysis in the competitive German food retail sector. She had prepared a potential analysis of how a relevant market position could be achieved in this environment and was awarded the Master’s Prize of the European Management Institute emi e.V., which was presented by its Chairman, Prof. Dr. Friedwart Lender. The laudatory speech for Katharina Deubzer was held by Prof. Dr. Jens Kirchner, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at Hof University of Applied Sciences.
