Editorial: Bernhard Ehrenzeller

We are rethinking the university

Rethinking the university? This is not really a thought with which a president should start an annual report. After all, annual reports are about reviewing the successes of the past academic year, thus justifying that we are going in the right direction. There are such success stories galore, from the wonderful return to the campus after months of online and hybrid teaching and the first day for prospective women students, Women*@HSG, to the promising start of our Master’s programme in Computer Science and the adoption of the Strategic Plan 2025. But one highlight of the year invites us day after day to rethink the university: the inauguration of SQUARE.

In February, we were able to celebrate the opening of SQUARE and guide several thousand guests from the city and the region through the new premises. However, SQUARE is more than “only” a new space; it is a marketplace for encounters and discussions, for innovative teaching and learning experiences – and precisely also for ideas about how we want to shape the university of the future. These visions are what we want to discuss in the anniversary year of 2023, also with you!

Future orientation is also a hallmark of our faculty, about which you will learn more in the following top stories. Even though they are set in different disciplines, they are still united by HSG’s claim: to move from insight to impact by means of application-oriented top-class research. Our values of responsibility and sustainability are also reflected in our research. We will remain true to these values as an entire university and will focus on them even more in the future.

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Ehrenzeller President of the University of St.Gallen (HSG)