Funding heiSPARK Project: Innovation Strategy for Student Affairs and Teaching
Press Release No. 43/2025
8 May 2025
Heidelberg University receives millions in funding from Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre
In order to best prepare students for a changing world, Heidelberg University wants to tread new paths in teaching. Its project heiSPARK: Shaping Learning for Transformation aspires to give strategic impetus to student affairs and teaching, and to promote the communicating of transformative competences through innovative teaching-learning formats. Designed to run for six years, it is a joint project of the Vice-Rectorate for Student Affairs and Teaching and the Teaching and Learning department of heiSKILLS, the university’s competence and language center. The Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre – the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education – has now selected it for funding. The university applied for finance amounting to just under 6.5 million euros in the “Teaching Architecture. Shaping the University of the Future” program line.
The world in the 21st century confronts complex challenges such as climate change, digitalization or societal transformation processes that are interlinked in a multitude of ways at the social, economic, environmental and geopolitical levels. The urgent question for higher education providers is how the students of today need to be trained so that they can generate sustainable solutions for unknown problems of tomorrow. “With heiSPARK we are creating an innovation strategy for student affairs and teaching that especially emphasizes the empowerment of students to take responsibility in a changing world,” underlines Prof. Dr Silke Hertel, Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching at Heidelberg University.
According to Prof. Hertel, university teaching should be organized thematically, pedagogically and structurally in such a way that students acquire transformative skills, independently of their subjects. These include responsible action, the ability to analyze complex issues and the qualification to develop possible new solutions for future challenges. “Through new, pathbreaking teaching-learning formats we want to convey insights, knowledge and values that take up topics of great societal relevance, can apply in different contexts and form the basis for work as an agent of change,” says the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching, who is an educationist herself.
The heiSPARK project is based on three pillars. The heiSKILLS College aims to establish an interdisciplinary teaching community. This involves setting up a fellowship program for innovative teaching projects and formats for international visiting lectureships. Under the heading “Together4Transformation” new models for teaching are to be developed based on dialogue with students and external partners from society and the world of work, for example at summer and winter schools. The priority of the third pillar “ScaleUp2Innovate” is continuing to develop the curriculum with the aim of teaching transformative skills in the courses, which is also to be documented through awarding certificates.
The six-year project is located in the heiSKILLS Competence and Language Centre, in order to strengthen the center’s role as an incubator for teaching innovations, secure the integration of cross-cutting dimensions such as equality of opportunity, sustainability and diversity, and build up a community of practice. “With heiSPARK we want to dynamize the area of student affairs and teaching so that university teaching can continually develop in and of itself, and innovation can have a lasting impact,” underline the project leaders Petra Eggensperger and Silke Hertel. With the project, Heidelberg University not only wishes to set new standards within the university but also to demonstrate new ideas for other universities at home and abroad – not least in the context of the 4EU+ European University Alliance.
Launched in 2021, the Stiftung für Innovation in der Hochschullehre funds projects that continually strengthen capacity for renewal in teaching. It receives a budget for this purpose from the federal and state governments. The “Teaching Architecture” program line is designed to strengthen teaching and learning practice. Funding goes to projects in which innovations are trialed and established in structural form.