Dr. Comrie will review his experiences with the Excellence Initiative based on visits to numerous universities in Germany. The Excellence Initiative is a wide-ranging effort across German graduate research institutions to transform the graduate enterprise and strengthen research. Over 2 Billion euros are being invested over a decade by Federal and State governments via the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) and the Wissenschaftsrat (German Council of Science and Humanities). Three funding lines have seeded a range of innovative new programs and approaches that, in addition to scholarly excellence, also promote interdisciplinarity, gender diversity, and integration with independent research institutes. These programs are challenging the traditional German model of doctoral education and are changing the greater academic landscape.
Dr. Andrew C. Comrie is Associate Vice President for Research, Dean of the Graduate College and Director of Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs at the University of Arizona. Dr. Comrie provides academic leadership for graduate education at the University, and provides oversight and stewardship of fourteen Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs, which involve over 600 faculty members from more than a dozen colleges. A special focus is to design and lead strategic growth of graduate programs at the University. Dr. Comrie is a climatologist with a primary appointment in Geography and joint appointments in Atmospheric Sciences, Arid Lands Resource Sciences, Global Change, and Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis. After receiving his undergraduate education at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Comrie joined the University of Arizona in 1992. Since then, he has conducted broadly interdisciplinary research in climate variability and change, with particular interests in the connections between climate and air quality, health, and environmental policy. He has been a visiting fellow of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and served for many years as the Director of Graduate Studies in Geography at the University of Arizona. Together with an active lab group, he continues to carry out funded research and publish. He is currently Americas Editor of the International Journal of Climatology. Dr. Comrie is a partner in Climate Appraisal Services LLC, a University of Arizona technology spin-off company that is pioneering address-level climate impact reports.
Image Source: http://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/inu/network-university/excellence-initiative/index.html
