Common Good Campus Höxter
Why the common good? Background information on the campus reorientation
As part of its strategic university development, TH OWL wants to realign its Höxter campus. The common good serves as the guiding principle for implementing the transformation toward sustainability in an innovative way and with broad social participation.
What does that mean? The campus should be a place for everyone and has the “common good” as an important social goal in mind: Everything that happens on campus should have an impact as positive as possible on people, the environment, and the economy. Common good means that everyone in society is doing well and can live together harmoniously. In the future, the campus will work harder to initiate social change and to better understand it. All of this will happen in collaboration with many different groups: citizens, local authorities, and business partners. In this way, the university can achieve more for society.
At the federal level, such an approach was already politically anchored in 2023 with the “National Strategy for Social Innovation and Public Welfare-Oriented Enterprises” (SIGU). The implementation of this new strategy is also relevant for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and in particular for the district of Höxter, which wants to position itself as a “public welfare region.” This was laid down in the district development strategy in 2024.
Goal: Establishment of the Höxter Campus for the Common Good (GCH)
- The Common Good Campus in Höxter aims to establish an internationally significant center of excellence for networking, research, and education on the SIGU strategy.
- The aim is to systematically integrate regional, state-specific, and national perspectives on promoting the common good.
- New opportunities for lifelong and transdisciplinary learning on topics related to the common good are also to be developed and implemented throughout the entire education chain.
- The nucleus of the site's development is to be the new “Common Good Institute (GI),” in which interfaces between politics, science, civil society, the public sector, and business are institutionalized for the common good.
Learning, cooperating, and leveraging transfer potential
New transdisciplinary courses and “research-based learning” are designed to involve students at TH OWL and partner universities in issues of public interest in the region.
Developing and implementing together through dialogue
The success of the Common Good Campus depends largely on broad participation by relevant stakeholders. Discussions are currently underway with potential strategic project partners.
To finance the project, a funding strategy is to be developed with these partners for the targeted acquisition of third-party funds from the EU, the federal government, the state, foundations, other institutions, and the business community.
Do you have an idea on how to promote the development of the Common Good Campus? Then use this template and send it to the following contact details.
Contact
Project management for the development of the Common Good Campus
Dr. Christoph Harrach
Email: christoph.harrach(at)th-owl.de