25 Ideas for Future for 25th Anniversary

In autumn, the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences celebrates its 25th anniversary.

However, the UAS does not use this occasion to dwell in the past but to explicitly look into the future. As of today, over a course of 25 weeks, the St. Pölten UAS will be presenting 25 innovative Ideas for Future of students, lecturers and staff members at www.fhstp.ac.at/25years, thereby allowing insights into its wide range of subject areas and its innovative force.

The campaign culminates in a final gallery of ideas during the opening of the Campus St. Pölten in October.

Numerous Submissions to Ideas Competition

Research and development is an inherent part of the daily routine at the St. Pölten UAS – be it within the framework of student projects or at the total of seven research institutes. This constantly creates new ideas and visions for our future.

For our 25th anniversary, we invited students, lecturers, researchers and administrative staff to submit their “Ideas for Future” to an idea competition. A total of 48 teams and individuals followed this call and presented their ideas for our future.

Ranging from Sustainability to Digitalisation and Inclusion

A jury of four – consisting of Verena Judmayer (Pioneers Innovation GmbH), Ursula Steiner (accent Inkubator GmbH), Alois Frotschnig (Chairperson of the UAS Board, St. Pölten UAS) and Hannes Raffaseder (Chief Research and Innovation Officer, St. Pölten UAS) – evaluated the submissions at the beginning of this year and selected the top 25.

“It was not easy to choose the top 25 ideas from such a broad range of creative approaches to solving relevant, big problems by talented teams. But in the end, the criteria were quite straight-forward: Ideas for Future are shaped by a clear and strong vision – a vision with a sustainable impact on people, profit and the planet”, explains jury member Verena Judmayer, Senior Innovation Consultant, Pioneers Innovation GmbH.

“What I found particularly impressive was the consistently strong innovative force and the social relevance of the submitted ideas as well as the broad topical range with fields such as sustainability and digitalisation on the one end of the spectrum and ideas for the healthcare and social sectors on the other”, says Hannes Raffaseder, Chief Research and Innovation Officer at the St. Pölten UAS. “The majority of ideas addressed interdisciplinary topics and were submitted by teams of different study or research fields. Once more, this highlights our strong interdisciplinary focus on teaching and research.

Idea of Week 1: Penguins Who Help Us Learn How to Write

As of today, the St. Pölten UAS presents one of the 25 “Ideas for Future” every week over a course of 25 weeks and gives students and staff members a platform for sharing their visions for our future. Students of the master degree programme Digital Healthcare kicked off the 25-week series with their project “PENguin”. Their vision: the gaming app PENguin is designed to support children in training graphomotor movements and using a pen in a playful way to help them learn how to write. In the game, children adopt the role of a penguin who is controlled by a special pen on a tablet.

For more information go to: www.fhstp.ac.at/25years.

The team of PENguin: Erwin Cetl and Erik Sommer (Credit: private)

Gallery of Ideas at the Campus Opening

The campaign culminates in a final gallery of ideas within the framework of the Campus St. Pölten opening in mid-October. The teams will have the opportunity to present their ideas to a wider public and connect with important decision-makers from politics, research and the business world. 

“The St. Pölten UAS has been consistently growing over the past 25 years and has become a major institution in the fields of education and research. We are a dynamic higher education institution offering a range of forward-looking education programmes, which are all strongly oriented towards labour market demands”, says UAS Executive Director Gernot Kohl. “As an innovative educational institution, we always look ahead. Therefore, we gladly dedicate our anniversary to putting our students and staff members’ rich variety of Ideas for Future in the spotlight.” 

25 Years of the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences

With one study programme (“Telecommunications and Media”) and around 60 students, the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences came into formal existence in autumn 1996. Since then, the St. Pölten UAS has evolved to become a leading education and research institution and one of the most important employers in the region. Today, the St. Pölten UAS has more than 3,500 students in 25 study programmes and employs around 370 full-time staff members and more than 900 part-time lecturers. With a research volume of over 3.1 million euros, the St. Pölten UAS demonstrates its research strength, which has been continuously expanded in recent years. Last year saw an important success in the field of internationalisation when the St. Pölten UAS was selected as a European University: the St. Pölten UAS will be the first Austrian university of applied sciences to head a European University with a project volume of five million euros. It convinced with its focus on the European regions, and now, it is one of five further higher education institutions working on the further development of the European Higher Education Area together with five other higher education institutions.

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