Science Afternoon
An essential basic for successful forest ecosystem management is an understanding for the multidimensional problems and challenges. Also, we regard networking with national and international partners as key process in modern science. As a consequence Assoc.Prof. Dr. Rupert SEIDL and Dr. Marcela VAN LOO combined both aspects and founded the so called "Science Afternoon".
The Science Afternoon is a periodical seminar (nearly 1 per month) and designed as platform for scientific discussions and exchange.
Cultural Break
Cultural differences
... can be a major source of misunderstanding and misreading which negatively impact the working atmosphere. Naming simple examples: differing greeting habits or a differing notion of punctuality can be crucial in an Austrian working environment and also in a workshop or meeting abroad. In order to mitigate such problems - and to get to know each other better - a monthly-based intercultural training named Cultural Break was started.
This Training has two major aims:
A: strengthen cultural sensitiveness and
B: provide cultural knowledge
The cultural sensitiveness is approached by theoretical input in the first part. This contains e.g. the explanation of cultural dimensions by various authors and their relevance for international project work. The cultural knowledge is brought by country presentations of colleagues. They do not only show their land and culture but also major and minor challenges of living abroad. Additionally we try to answer questions on Austrian culture and history.
As movies and books are good mediators of culture, we made/make a collection of the respective presented culture.