A new semester and new opportunities! I would like to welcome you to the lectures of the autumn semester 2019 and I look forward to the upcoming semester’s activities. University staff have created great studying conditions for you, and thus we all hope that you will approach your studies with lots of energy and maximum motivation.
I regard the University of Lucerne as dynamic and multi-faceted – a small cosmos that is constantly growing and developing. The various cooperations we have, allow us to be effectively anchored in the world and in the realms in which our work takes place. This autumn, our neighbouring canton of Uri will open a new research institute in Altdorf. The institute will be dedicated to studies on ‘Cultures of the Alps’ and will be led by three academics of the University of Lucerne.

For you as students, this new initiative has more relevance than you might think, at first sight; and indeed, the same can be said for all members of the university and for the university itself. Our work is interregionally- and internationally networked, thanks to scientific cooperation and thanks to the mobility that is essential for students and lecturers. At the same time, however, education is a process of acquiring professional and societal reflective competence in relation to one’s respective cultural environment. Those of us who get involved, become actors of our own life, and take on responsibility for the process described will seize the opportunities that arise and will, in turn, make their own demands. Students who take this approach differ from those who simply want to 'consume' information and or to just collect the necessary credit points. It is the former type of student who will best be able to relate to the region, to the people living here and to the cultures present.

Prof. Dr. Markus Ries, Vice Rector