To the delight of all participants, it was possible to hold this year’s scholarship celebration as a small face-to-face event in the university foyer. Our editor and architecture student Valentin Ruf reports about this festive evening:
Outstanding academic performance, good grades, exceptional social commitment or difficult life circumstances – if you meet one of these requirements as a student of SRH University Heidelberg, you can apply for a scholarship. And yet there are various forms of support available: the Deutschlandstipendium, for example, provides students with € 300 per month, supported by private and public sponsors. In addition, SRH awards 16 SRH Scholarships of its own each year. In this case, tuition fees are waived in full within the standard period of study until the scholarship holder completes their degree. In 2020 and 2021, SRH also awarded four start-up and emergency aid scholarships to support students who had been hit particularly badly by the pandemic. An internal scholarship committee at the university decides on the allocation of scholarships, taking all relevant aspects into account.
This year, a total of 39 students from the university were awarded a scholarship. In addition to the aforementioned scholarships, two students from the Universidad Paraguayo Alemana (UPA) received the STIBET Matching Funds scholarship, which is awarded to international students with the participation of third-party sponsors. The BIDS Motivation Scholarship, awarded to a business administration student from Colombia, also has an international background. The aim of this DAAD scholarship is to support school-leavers from German schools abroad as they embark on their studies in Germany.
Kamilla Prutek, Head of the Admission Office and the Student Advisory Service, and Hannes Werning, responsible for strategic partner management at the university, opened the event. Besides welcoming the sponsors and representatives of the university management, they naturally also gave a warm welcome to the stars of the evening: no less than 39 scholarship holders.
In his welcoming address, the president Professor Dr. Carsten Diener expressed how appreciative he was of the students who were about to receive their scholarships in the course of the evening. In a moderated round of talks, both sponsors and scholarship recipients were given the opportunity to talk on stage. Sponsors explained what motivates them to fund the Deutschlandstipendium, for example; and students described what it means to them to receive a scholarship.
These talks were followed by the highlight of the evening: the award ceremony, where the various scholarships were presented to the individual students. Music therapy student and SRH scholarship holder Jihoon provided the musical backdrop to the evening, delighting the audience with her guitar and voice.
The champagne toast ushered in the less formal part of the evening, featuring a flying buffet and friendly chats. Although there are diverse reasons for receiving a scholarship, all of the scholarship holders had one thing in common: they are delighted and grateful for the support.
For me, the scholarship is a kind of appreciation of my activities to date. It motivates me a lot and opens up many new possibilities, not only financially but also in terms of ideas.
Without the scholarship, it would have been difficult for me to finance my studies.” Lee was unsure whether she had enough talent to receive a scholarship: “But for me, talent has a lot to do with motivation, so I just went for it and applied.
I was delighted that we were able to be together tonight, face to face. It felt really good!
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