Welcome to our new page addressing all international students @ TU Chemnitz! Internationals make up about 20% of all the students at the TU Chemnitz, most of them doing degrees in technical disciplines. While mathematic formulae, computer programmes and engines may be the same worldwide, learning settings and scientific systems in which these are studied and developed greatly vary across different
cultures and societies. Our project sponsored by the European Social Fund (ESF) was called into existence in order to facilitate and promote academic integration of international students at the Technische Universität. What does ‘academic integration’ mean and why is it important? Starting a study stay at a foreign university is a significant step in your professional and personal development. Not only language and country are new; so are the unwritten rules of daily communication and life on the campus, too. You may get perplexed by the teaching style in the courses, be at a loss as to how write a proper essay, feel disappointed by never receiving a reply to your e-mail from a professor, or find the demand of your German fellow students to start preparing an oral presentation a month before it is due truly ridiculous. These, and many other situations may indeed present a challenge for someone who has undergone primary academic socialisation in a totally different cultural and educational system. Yet one has to find out how a new learning environment works in order to perform to one’s best abilities and score academic achievements leading to the study success. Our main objective is to help you navigate safely around many obvious and less-so obstacles resulting from differences between academic cultures and learning settings across the world, making your study stay @ TU Chemnitz not only an instructive experience but also an exciting adventure. Starting from winter term 2016/17, our project team organises, among other, regular intercultural workshops, trainings and courses, in which we discuss the ways in which culture affects our way of thinking, feeling and behaving, reflect together on the study-related situations that you might find puzzling, find solutions to practical issues of campus life, and altogether learn to know and appreciate cultural diversity in academia. In cooperation with our partner project TU4U, we also provide advice and further assistance on faculty- or discipline-specific questions. We hope to help make your stay here a positive experience.
