The former carpentry and metalworking rooms on the ground floor of building A03 are bustling with activity. First-semester medical students at 64 workstations look intently through the eyepieces and search for flat, cubic and cylindrical epithelial cells on the specimens. Instead of heavy tools, there are modern microscopes on the tables in two of the three newly renovated rooms; instead of being characterised by craftsmanship, this area is now dominated by histology. A large partition wall in the centre has been pushed back so that the two almost identically designed rooms merge into one large microscopy room for this event.
The special feature: each of the 16 four-person tables has a monitor on which the image of each microscope can be transmitted. This makes it possible to look at and discuss specimens together with fellow students and lecturers. The image could also be sent to a large projection screen behind the lecturer's desk. At the moment, however, anatomist Prof Dr Anja Bräuer has this surface firmly under control. She uses a small, mobile control unit to control which film is shown there.
More space for growing degree programme in human medicine
"This is one of the most modern histology rooms in Germany," says the scientist happily. Dean of Studies Prof. Dr Karsten Witt, who visited the first event in the new premises, praised the "ingenious combination of classic microscopy and state-of-the-art technology". Thanks to the partition wall that can be opened, the room offers sufficient space for the increased number of medical students in the winter semester.
When planning the rooms, it was important that they could be used as flexibly as possible for various courses outside of medicine - not only as a microscopy room, but also as a multifunctional seminar or laboratory room. Among other things, the former workshops are also the new "home" of the Oldenburg Teaching-Learning Rooms (OLELA). Student teachers meet pupils there in didactic seminars and learn from each other. OLELA offers students the opportunity to try out and develop teaching and learning sequences without having to manage an entire school class at the same time. The young guests from the schools learn exciting things about physics, ethics, textiles and chemistry, for example.
Different groups have different requirements
Ajana Milanovic, a civil engineer from Division 4, and her team have come up with a lot of ideas to ensure that the three neighbouring rooms, which together cover around 340 square metres, meet the needs of these very different groups. For the two microscopy rooms, for example, she developed a cupboard system that was built by the university carpentry workshop. The expensive microscopes are safely stored in drawers and locked away when not in use. She has even thought of a drawer within a drawer, where the specimens for the histology courses are stored.
Despite numerous electrical connections, the group tables can be moved so that they can be pushed together to form larger units or put to one side when students are trying out new teaching methods in the teaching-learning room. There are special chairs in the new rooms so that primary school pupils' feet don't dangle in the air: not only is their seat height-adjustable, but the ring-shaped footrest is too.
Workstations in the library have been upgraded
In the third and smallest room, power and HDMI connections are attached to arms that can be folded down from the ceiling. This enables a free-flowing room concept and also allows experiments with water, as there are no pipes in the floor. There is also modern media technology. A large monitor at the head of the room also serves as a smartboard and projection screen. Students who connect their laptop to one of the technology arms on the ceiling can project their image onto it. All they have to do is press a button on a touchpad embedded in the wall.
Construction and renovation work has also been carried out in several other places on campus in recent months. Work such as the replacement of windows, the installation of LED lighting or fire safety refurbishments are important, but often not immediately visible. For example, extensive electrical work in the library took almost a year and a half: the power supply to the group workstations was replaced on all four floors. After all, when the building was constructed in the 1970s, it was not foreseeable that 50 years later hardly anyone would work there without their own computer.
New floor for A07 is ready
The staff of the Department of Psychology are particularly pleased that the extension of building A07 above their heads has finally been completed. The west wing has been given a new floor. After a year of construction, more than 600 square metres of new office space is now available, which is shared by Division 3 and School V - School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Outside the campus, opposite the Botanical Garden on Philosophenweg, a major construction project is also in its final stages. In two former buildings of the State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, new laboratories and associated offices provide the necessary space for the research groups of General and Visceral Surgery, Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and Gastroenterology. The laboratories of the University Institute for Medical Microbiology and Virology already moved in last year.
