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Festive farewell for Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach

7/3/2017
The Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) and the University of Bamberg bid farewell to the former Director of the Institute and Chair of Early Childhood Education with a joint ceremony in the auditorium of the university celebrating his retirement.

On Friday, June 30, numerous companions as well as former colleagues gathered together in the old Dominican Church of Bamberg, which now functions as the auditorium of the university, in order to bid Roßbach farewell. He held the Chair of Early Childhood Education at the University of Bamberg for more than 15 years. In addition to his role as university professor, Roßbach also managed the transition of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) to the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, thus making a significant contribution to the establishment of NEPS as part of the academic landscape. Since its foundation in 2014, he presided over the Institute as its Director and as Principal Investigator of the NEPS.

During the event, Roßbach handed over the proverbial baton to his successor Prof. Dr. Sandra Buchholz, who has been holding this position since the beginning of Roßbach’s retirement on March 31, 2017. In the course of the ceremony, numerous highly respected researchers honored the outgoing Director with greetings and farewell addresses.

Click here for the press release of the University of Bamberg and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (German only).

1) Prof. Dr. Maike Andresen, Vice President of Research at the University of Bamberg, delivered greetings. 2) Staff Representative of the LIfBi, Dr. Michael Bayer, paid tribute to the former Director of the Institute. 3) Ministerialrat Dr. Georg Brun, Bavarian State Ministry of Education Science, and the Arts, emphasized Roßbach’s great achievement of implementing the transition of the NEPS to the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories.

4) Prof. Dr. Frithjof Grell, Chair of Early Childhood Education at the University of Bamberg, presented the development from the “invention” of early childhood education up to its present status. 5) With her tongue in her cheek, Dr. Susanne Kuger, former doctoral student, German Institute for International Educational Research, presented a new measuring instrument for evaluating the quality of scientific mentoring and, thereby, showed her appreciation for Roßbach’s support. 6) Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Tietze, Managing Director of PädQUIS® gGmbH, reminisced about the path that he took together with Roßbach in the 1980s when they provided empirical monitoring for the development of early childhood education in Germany.

7) Handover: Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach with his successor in office, Prof. Dr. Sandra Buchholz. 8) Prof. Dr. Rudolf Tippelt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and Chairman of the LIfBi Board of Trustees, looked at the development from the beginning of the NEPS to the present-day Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories. 9) Roßbach himself as well as the LIfBi Board of Directors particularly thanked the family of the outgoing Director.

10) In her function as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Bamberg, Prof. Dr. Cordula Artelt bid farewell to Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach. 11) Prof. Dr. Kathy Sylva, Honorary Research Fellow and Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Oxford, one of Roßbach’s long-term companions, highlighted the importance of the roots of the NEPS for its unique significance today.