“Togetherness” is one of the guiding principles under which the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences (WiSo Faculty) of the University of Cologne has summarised its core values in order to concretely define and implement them in an organic way. The fact that this philosophy is not merely theoretical but produces concrete, forward-looking initiatives for students, researchers, partners and prospective students is demonstrated particularly impressively by a recent achievement:

At the annual reception hosted by the University of Cologne’s Rector Joybrato Mukherjee, the PACO core team from the WiSo Faculty, led by Faculty Managing Director Gerold Gnau, was presented with the University Award in the category “Administration and Science Management”.

PACO offers digital academic advising on an entirely new level. The WiSo Faculty’s artificial intelligence system answers all fact-based queries regarding studies at the Faculty – from course content and application procedures to study conditions at the University of Cologne – in real time. Prospective students in management, economics, social sciences or political science receive immediate, reliable guidance – anytime and anywhere. Together with personal contact via “Chat with a Student”, the WiSo Student Service Point, and the University’s central advisory service, a modern and closely integrated information infrastructure has emerged that sets a nationwide benchmark.

With the implementation of PACO, the WiSo Faculty has achieved far more than creating the first chatbot at a public university in Germany, which already delivers an outstanding level of response accuracy. Its integration with the WiSo Student Service Point also supports a more in-depth active learning process. This pioneering achievement has now been duly recognised with the University Award of the University of Cologne. Gerold Gnau, Nicole Kienel, Nelson Marambio, Daniel Scheu, Peter Krauss, Ulrich Thonemann and Thomas Zab were able to celebrate this recognition on behalf of the many colleagues involved in its development and implementation. “We are truly delighted by this award! It demonstrates how administration and science management can make a real difference through technological innovation on one hand, and interdisciplinary collaboration on the other,” said Faculty Managing Director Gerold Gnau.

This year’s University Award also demonstrated that “Togetherness”, in the spirit of the WiSo Faculty, leads to excellence not only in administration and management. The Faculty also won the award in the category “Teaching and Learning”.

Doctoral candidate Johannes Melsbach, from the Department of Information Systems and Information Management, was recognised for his lecture “AI Information Management”, which uses various interactive tools to provide students with low-threshold access to complex AI technologies. Originally developed as a fully online course, the lecture now incorporates a wide range of teaching formats – including, for example, a programming competition. A cloud-based development environment accompanying the lecture, which provides all teaching materials, overcomes common obstacles in teaching AI-related content. This cloud solution enables students to engage actively without the burden of setting up their own development environment, which often entails considerable hardware costs.

That the WiSo Faculty’s “Togetherness” philosophy is also a lived reality in research was impressively demonstrated when the University of Cologne awarded the honorary senator title to Professor Dr Bettina Rockenbach, who this year became President of the Leopoldina – the German National Academy of Sciences. A professor of behavioural economics at the WiSo Faculty since 2011, she has rendered outstanding service to the Faculty and the University. In his laudatory speech, Professor Dr Matthias Sutter particularly praised Rockenbach’s commitment as Vice Dean for Research and Early Career Researchers at the Faculty, as Vice Rector for Research and Innovation, and as the University of Cologne’s first Vice Rector. According to Professor Sutter, Betttina Rockenbach‘s exceptional ability to bring people together across institutional boundaries was especially evident in her leading role in founding the Reinhard Selten Institute – a joint research institution of the Universities of Cologne and Bonn that consolidates all research activities of the Excellence Cluster ECONtribute, the only cluster in the federal Excellence Strategy focused on economics and adjacent disciplines.

• PACO - The WiSo Faculty's artificial intelligence
• UoC University Award 2024 - Category ‘Administration and Science Management’
• Seminar of Information Systems and Information Management
• UoC University Award 2024 – Category ‘Teaching and Learning
• Professors of the WiSo Faculty: Prof. Dr Bettina Rockenbach
• Excellence cluster ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy
• WiSo Values | PARTicipate