Our Mission Statement: Truth. Knowledge. Change. Since 1402
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg is a place where more than 30,000 people study, research, teach and work. Our university is the place where the X-rays were discovered and a place where 14 Nobel laureates have worked. And for centuries, it has been a place where research findings are made that change the world.
We will continue this history together. True to our motto ‘Truth. Knowledge. Change. Since 1402’, we develop academically sound solutions to global challenges that will benefit present and future generations. What we strive for is excellence in research and teaching. And our efforts to deliver on this aspiration are guided by a desire to find truth, a curiosity for the unknown and the courage to change.
Our Vision
We are one of Germany’s leading comprehensive research universities and cover a highly diverse range of disciplines. Our research provides important impetus, expands our knowledge, empowers people to forge new paths and initiates societal change in a responsible manner.
Our Mission
Delivering excellent research and teaching, we expand people’s knowledge, provide guidance on issues of the future and develop sustainable solutions to today’s challenges. We bring together the points of view of different disciplines and in this way generate new findings and ground-breaking ideas.
The University of Würzburg is an enabling space for people who help advance research and move society forward. We foster their professional and personal development and encourage them to be critical thinkers, take on responsibility and venture into new territory. We commit to our country’s democratic basic order, advocate its values and work towards ensuring that it is preserved.
We stand for free, excellent and responsible research and give people the freedom to be curious, forge new paths and have the courage to push the boundaries of knowledge. This is true for both basic and applied research.
We invest in an efficient research infrastructure to provide an environment in which excellent research can have maximum impact.
We combine our university’s research strengths across disciplines and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. We give people and their ideas room to grow and provide them with guidance at all stages of their careers. Maintaining a dialogue with non-university research institutions as well as local and international partners, we help open up new horizons and strengthen our university’s position as a centre for internationally visible research.
Our understanding of research is expressed in our Code of Academic Freedom and Responsibility: Research, as we understand it, is free, autonomous, unbiased and aimed at the generation of knowledge. Our research activities comply with high, internationally applicable standards, and we responsibly address the question of how research can help us build a good future.
We believe that education is more than just sharing knowledge. We teach our students to think for themselves and draw critical conclusions and equip them with the knowledge, skills and courage needed to act responsibly in a changing world. This includes both excellence in their disciplines and the ability to understand ecological, social and economic challenges and apply them to new problems. To us, research, teaching and society are inextricably linked.
Offering a wide range of degree programmes, we give our students the opportunity to both explore individual disciplines in their depth and approach issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. We create a teaching and learning culture in which curiosity, autonomy and different points of view are welcome. Our teachers accompany students on their personal learning journeys and bring both the latest research findings and modern teaching and learning methods to the classroom.
A special responsibility of ours is teacher training, as our teachers-to-be will shape the educational journeys of future generations of students.
We believe that universities and society are partners in dialogue. Research has an impact on society, and the concerns, experiences and viewpoints of society have an impact on research. We invite open exchange with the business community, political decision-makers, the cultural sector and civil society and create opportunities for thinking, researching and acting together.
We translate research findings into real-world applications and encourage innovations that support sustainable development. Patents, licences and spin-out companies create opportunities here as do partnerships with businesses, public institutions and partners from society.
We make research accessible and easy to understand and invite people to engage with it. In this way, we strengthen a society that is built on knowledge, critical thinking and open exchange.
The Principles that Guide us
The following principles guide us in how we work together, deal with responsibility and work across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.
We want to be a university that offers an excellent environment for people to research, teach, study and work in, both today and in the future. An environment that is built on mutual appreciation and openness. We want our university to be a place where students and employees unlock their academic, professional and personal potential. We encourage the people at our university to make a difference: in their disciplines, when different disciplines and perspectives come together, in academic self-governance and in society. Our university family brings people together across cultures, life stages and generations. The Uni Wü Community keeps students, employees and alumni in touch with each other and with our university – even when they no longer study or work with us.
We see internationality as part of our identity. Our partnerships and exchange programmes and our culture of welcome for people from all over the world make it a lived reality at our institution. We encourage the members of our university to participate in international mobility experiences and enable them to make an impact in an interconnected world. At the same time, we contribute our strengths to international networks in the research and educational sectors and cultivate long-term partnerships with universities and other institutions around the world.
Our diversity makes us strong. Our university is a place where people with different experiences, perspectives and biographies are welcome. Equity, equal opportunity and participation are three of our core principles. We treat each other with respect, provide a safe and healthy environment for people to study and work in and oppose any form of discrimination or abuse of power.
To us, being sustainable means developing in a manner that is ecologically compatible, socially balanced and economically productive, and we aim to establish a culture in which sustainability in all its dimensions is at the heart of everything we do.
Our administrative staff help ensure that our activities in the areas of research, teaching and knowledge transfer have maximum impact. They see themselves as partners of research and teaching, tailor their services to the needs of the members of our university and create reliable, straightforward and service-oriented structures.
We use digital tools to facilitate collaboration. We learn from experience, feedback and mistakes and continuously refine our processes. Ensuring that we have well-trained staff is important in this context as is cultivating a culture of responsibility and mutual trust.
We are part of the world, and, at the same time, we have deep roots in the city and region of Würzburg. Our graduates contribute their know-how, ideas and responsibility to society, both here and around the world. Collaboration with businesses and other partners as well as spin-out companies provide new impetus for innovation and the development of society.
Since 1402, we have been leaving an imprint on the city of Würzburg as a place of knowledge, education and encounter. Our university is part of the cityscape and plays an active role in the development of our community and our region.
Our Values
Our core values are ‘unifying’, ‘empowering’, ‘appreciative’ and ‘committed to the truth’. They describe what defines the way we treat each other and stand for the way in which we approach our research, teaching and work activities.
Knowledge is generated through dialogue. We bring together disciplines, generations and cultures, theory and practice, our university and society. Exchanging views with others, we generate new findings and jointly develop ideas further.
We have trust in the people at our university. We give them room to develop their abilities, take on responsibility and play an active part in shaping the course of our university. We encourage them to put their ideas into practice, forge new paths and stand up for democratic values and human rights.
We treat each other with respect and open-mindedness. We listen, take the experiences and viewpoints of others seriously and work together as equals. We remain fair in discussions even if we disagree.
‘Veritati’ – ‘committed to the truth’ – is both the inscription on the face of the main building of our university and the principle that guides our academic mission: the constant quest for truth. We use academically sound methods, ensure that our assumptions and findings are transparent and reproducible and allow them to be the subject of critical scrutiny. Our research is unbiased, and we revise our assumptions if new findings require us to do so.
