Confidential, Open, Client-Centered

Anyone crossing the street at the intersection of Templergraben and Pontstraße in Aachen, has been looking straight at an institution of RWTH Aachen University for the last many a decade now – namely the Student Advice Centre. This first point of contact for all prospective students, high-school students, and enrolled students, but also for parents, teachers, and others, celebrated its 50th anniversary in September 2022.

The center’s inception in September 1972 with only a few staff members was a rather quiet affair. In the early years, the main focus was establishing a counseling center with an independent profile, and – like everywhere else in West Germany – many initiatives were tried to support prospective and enrolled students in Aachen.

The Student Advice Centre, usually called ZSB by RWTH members, has grown enormously over time. Today, a multi-professional team of nearly 40 employees, led by Dr. Mandana Biegi, takes care of all kinds of student concerns. The counseling is always confidential, open-ended, and client-centered. The team of student advisors, psychological counselors, coordinators for the countless programs for high-school students offered at the University, and other employees provide a wide range of counseling services on a daily basis to help prospective students find their path, or assist enrolled students who have doubts about their chosen degree programs or have run into difficulties with their studies. The staff is happy to provide guidance not only with learning problems but also with personal crises and stresses.

says Dr. Mandana Biegi, who has headed the ZSB since October 2014. In 2021, about 16,000 individuals received information about studies at RWTH, and 3,100 were given detailed and individualized counseling at the ZSB.

Individual Counseling as a Core Task

The ZSB is also involved with other projects and measures which – particularly in a nationwide comparison with other universities – reveal a vast range of tasks. In the talent scouting project, for instance, high-school students from non-academic families are assisted and bolstered in their decision-making on whether to go to university. The new state program “NRWTalente” awards scholarships to high-achieving adolescents whose parents have not attended university. In the “STEM for schoolgirls” project, young women are encouraged and supported to choose degree programs in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). There are a variety of offers for enrolled students who have doubts about their chosen program. Furthermore, the team offers countless workshops and training sessions for students facing learning challenges and even produce films on various approaches to studying from a psychological perspective. “Individual counseling remains our core mission, and we spend most of our time offering confidential, one-on-one advising. Nevertheless, in our role as an advising institution, we must and also want to offer a very diverse range of services because the lives of prospective and enrolled students have become so much more confusing and complex. To address this situation, we now provide many tailor-made offerings and have added virtual access channels,” explains the head of ZSB.

Diverse Projects in the Anniversary Year

A 50th anniversary is often a perfect reason to look back and remember the past. However, in the dynamic ZSB team, the anniversary is seen more as an occasion to look to the future with enthusiasm and confidence. So many new projects and tasks are on the agenda: A newly developed podcast format, “PsyTalk,” is currently being released on familiar platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcast, and Amazon Music. In these podcasts, psychological counselors talk about common issues brought up in sessions with students.

The team that counsels high-school students on finding the right course of study is on the road every day to visit schools in the region, but they also maintain contacts with schools in other areas of NRW and beyond. For example, there are long-standing and diverse cooperations with German schools abroad, which are either visited in person or connected to the Student Advice Centre via digital channels. And the Student Advising Team has strengthened the WieLaS measure (reintegration coaching for students with long-term illnesses) to help young people find their way back into their studies after a break due to illness.

RWTH’s Student Advice Centre is pleased to present various exciting events and activities throughout its anniversary year, capping it off with a symposium on “Counseling and Equal Opportunities” in September 2023, targeted at student counselors employed at universities that have German as their language of tuition. So things never get boring at the Student Advice Centre – every day, there are new people to meet and help. But that’s how it should be at an institution whose heartfelt wish is to provide young people with the best possible guidance and support on their path to a university degree.

– Author: Mandana Biegi