ZU’s new Vice Presidents: Professor Anja Achtziger and Professor Martin Tröndle
ZU has restructured its Rectorate. At the suggestion of ZU’s President, Professor Klaus Mühlhahn, the Senate has elected a new Vice President for Research – Professor Anja Achtziger, a social and business psychologist – and a new Vice President for Teaching and Didactics – Professor Martin Tröndle, a cultural scientist. Prof. Achtziger’s term of office will begin on June 1, and Prof. Tröndle’s on September 1. Both terms will run for three years.
“I am delighted that we have succeeded in recruiting Anja Achtziger and Martin Tröndle for these strategically and operationally crucial roles. Both have the professional and personal qualities that these offices require, and both will make significant contributions to the further development and reorientation of our university,” says Mühlhahn, adding: “At the same time, these appointments will lower the average age of our Rectorate and increase its female membership.”
Both new vice presidents have been with ZU for about a dozen years and initially came to Friedrichshafen as promising young researchers. Anja Achtziger had accepted an interim professorship for the Chair of Strategic Communication from September 2010, before accepting an appointment to the Chair of Social and Business Psychology in 2012, which she still holds today. She received offers from other universities during this time, including invitations to accept management roles, but has remained loyal to ZU. In September 2009, Martin Tröndle accepted the junior professorship for Cultural Business Operations and Art Research; since 2015, he has been a full professor and has held the WÜRTH Chair for Cultural Production. Both vice presidents have since established themselves as internationally renowned experts: Achtziger in the fields of motivation and interdisciplinary decision research, Tröndle in the areas of cultural organizations and their visitors and non-visitors, cultural policies, and cultural financing, as well as the impact of specific performance and exhibition formats.
The Rectorate is the university’s senior governing body. In addition to the President, who is also its chairperson, it includes the Vice President of Research and the Vice President of Teaching and Didactics as well as the Student Vice President. The tasks of the Rectorate include strategic structural and development planning, further development of research and teaching, representing the university in fundamental external affairs, and quality assurance.