Technische Hochschule OWL


The Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe is a state university of applied sciences in Ostwestfalen-Lippe in Lemgo, North Rhine-Westphalia. Further campus are in Detmold and Höxter. About 6,600 students work closely with 173 professors and about 550 other staff members in research, teaching and administration.
For several years, the university has been one of the ten most research-intensive universities of applied sciences in Germany. Due to its research performance, it was admitted to the European University Association in 2010.

Locations

Historically, the locations have distinguished themselves as follows:
Lemgo is the engineering focus of the TH OWL. The departments of Media Production, Life Science Technologies, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics, Production and Wood Engineering as well as Economics are located on the campus in Lüttfeld in the south of the city, which was newly created in 1971. Most of the study courses of one location as well as the three research institutes of the university are located there. As part of the Innovation Campus Lemgo initiative, the university and players such as the Fraunhofer Institute IOSB, CIIT and SmartFactoryOWL form part of an urban development project that continues to include the neighboring vocational colleges, various student residences and the Phoenix Contact Arena.
Detmold is home to the Detmold School of Architecture and Interior Design, and Civil Engineering, and thus shows a clear focus on the construction industry. The departments are housed in the buildings of the former Emilia barracks. In addition to the old barracks buildings, another institute and laboratory building designed by professors, employees and students has been in existence since 2008.
Höxter concentrates on technical environmental and landscape design topics with its departments of Environmental Engineering and Applied Computer Science as well as Landscape Architecture, and Environmental Planning. In addition, it is possible to study Applied Computer Science with a major in Business Informatics / Business IT Systems.

History

Already in 1891 there was a technical college in Lemgo, where one could also study electrical engineering.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Lemgo had an engineering school as its successor, which was closed in 1938 because most students and lecturers switched to the german army. In the course of the establishment of new state engineering schools, the "State Engineering School for Mechanical Engineering Lemgo" started operations on October 1, 1964, with 36 students of mechanical engineering. This state engineering school was to replace the private engineering school Lage. The accommodation took place first in the Lindenhaus, and in the facilities at the Echternstraße. On October 1, 1965, the second department was set up, specializing in mechanical engineering and production technology. Today, it is the department 7 "Production and Economics", and on April 1, 1966, the third department is the department "Electrical Engineering", today the department 5 "Electrical Engineering and Computer Science".
In the course of the university reorganization in the state North Rhine-Westphalia, and the associated abolition of the universities as a whole, the Höxter department of the University of Paderborn became part of the Lippe University of Applied Sciences on January 1, 2002. Since then it has been called "Fachhochschule Lippe und Höxter" and had three locations: Lemgo, Detmold and Höxter. In 2007, the Senate decided to rename the university "Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe" with effect from 1 January 2008. This was justified by the breadth of the range of courses on offer, and the resulting fading specialisation, as well as the commitment to the region. In September 2018, it was announced that from April 2019 the OWL University of Applied Sciences would be known as the TH OWL.

Research

Profile areas
At the TH OWL, research is carried out in various fields, but especially in the field of industrial automation technology and food safety. These two profile areas were funded as competence platforms by the state of NRW. From these competence platforms, the Institute for Industrial Information Technology was established at the end of 2006, and the first research institute for food technology in NRW at the beginning of 2011. The third institute, Future Energy - Institute for Energy Research at the university, was founded in 2017.
The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the TH OWL is one of the strongest research faculties at German universities.
Due to third-party funds acquired, which are often based on cooperation with companies from the region, some professorships at the university have a large staff of research assistants.
Fraunhofer Institute
Fraunhofer IOSB-INA was founded at the Innoation Campus Lemgo at the beginning of October 2009. At the beginning of 2012, it was expanded into the first Fraunhofer Application Center in cooperation with a university of applied sciences in Germany. Following a successful evaluation, it was upgraded to the IOSB institute location for industrial automation in 2017.

Technology and knowledge transfer

Based on its research strength in the profile areas, the TH OWL sees itself as a partner of medium-sized businesses and society. Together with other actors from science and industry, special infrastructures for research and research-based technology and knowledge transfer have been created at the campus in Lemgo in recent years.
Centrum Industrial IT
In 2010, the Centrum Industrial IT was established on the campus in Lemgo as part of a public-private partnership. As an registered association the CIIT is an independent research and transfer centre that aims to shape industrial automation technnologies. More than 350 experts from companies and research institutions work under one roof. CIIT, together with the university institute inIT and the Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, forms one of the three regional centres of the leading edge technology cluster "Intelligent Technical Systems Ostwestfalen-Lippe ", which prevailed as the BMBF's top cluster in the third round of funding at the beginning of 2012.
SmartFactoryOWL
Together with the Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, the TH OWL has been operating the SmartFactoryOWL research factory on the Innovation Campus Lemgo since 2016. The aim of the facility is to establish a manufacturer-independent real-world production environment as a research and demonstration center in the area of Industry 4.0 and Work 4.0. At the same time a test field is realized.
IoT - Smart City Living lab Lemgo Digital
Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, in cooperation with the TH OWL and other partners, has been operating the living lab Lemgo Digital as a reference platform for the application of IoT technologies in medium-sized cities since the beginning of 2018. The inner city of Lemgo will be developed into a living lab for digitization. The goal is innovations for mobility, retail and the environment. The participation of citizens and other users in the entire innovation process is an important goal of this initiative, which is financially supported by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
SmartFoodTechnologyOWL
The successful development in the field of ICT-based automation is to be continued by bringing together industry 4.0 competencies, and food technology know-how from the university and partners. In 2016, the university became one of 10 universities of applied sciences in Germany with the strategy concept "SmartFoodTechnologyOWL".
Innovation Campus Lemgo
2016 with Innovation Campus Lemgo a new major regional urban development project was announced. The aim is to create a new ecosystem for the digital economy in OWL that links existing and new players throughout the innovation chain education - research - economy. The two vocational colleges Lüttfeld and Hanse, the Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, the TH OWL, technology centres and innovation centres will work closely together. With the Phoenix Contact Arena, a multifunctional event location is available on campus. Existing areas are to be upgraded, new places with a high quality of life are to be created and further research facilities and companies are to be established.
On the Innovation Campus Lemgo, the Landesverband Lippe offers more than 300 partially furnished apartments in several student residences. Starting in 2013, further student residences with more than 100 apartments have been privately built on the Innovation Campus Lemgo.
The Innovation Campus Lemgo can be reached by public transportion services via line 1 of the city bus or with the RB73 of the Eurobahn at the stop Lemgo-Lüttfeld.

Departments

The Technische Hochschule OWL offers 32 Bachelor's, 19 Master's and 1 Doctoral degree programmes.
Study programmes by study location
The following abbreviations are used in the following:
Detmold
Höxter
Lemgo
In June 2011, an agreement was concluded between the Computer Science Department of the University of Paderborn and the Institute for Industrial Information Technology of the TH OWL for the execution of a cooperative phd programme. In April 2013, the Institute for Industrial Information Technology and the University of Paderborn founded the International Doctoral College Intelligent Systems in Automation as a joint scientific institution. In this institution, one professor each from inIT and one of the University of Paderborn scholarship holders with a topic from the field of intelligent automation will lead to the doctorate in a structured manner.
Graduate Center.OWL
Since December 2015 there has been an interdisciplinary Graduate Centre at the TH OWL. It is a service facility that bundles the phd projects carried out in research-strong departments. In addition, there are various offers for financial and content support as well as the possibility of networking internally and externally with other doctoral students - for example through series of events, further education measures and an annual graduate celebration.

Rankings

The Electrical Engineering study programme at the TH OWL has already received several awards and is one of the best Bachelor's courses of its kind in Germany. In the 2010 CHE ranking, it was one of the most research-intensive courses of study in Germany and in the 2013/2014 CHE ranking one of the three best courses of study in Germany.
In the CHE Ranking 2015/2016, the bachelor study programme of Computer Engineering occupied top positions in six categories and bachelor study programme Applied Computer Science in two categories. In the CHE Ranking 2016/2017, the Bachelor degree programmes Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering again occupy outstanding positions.

Predecessor institutions

University council

The University Council of the OWL University of Technology currently consists of the following members:
The Technische Hochschule OWL maintains an international partner network with over 100 universities.
As with many universities, tuition fees were introduced at the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Technical University in the 2006/2007 winter semester at a maximum rate of 500 euros. The student body submitted an application to the university's Senate to reduce contributions to 350 euros. On 2 December 2009, the Senate voted with 13 "Yes" votes, 7 "No" votes, and one abstention in favour of the proposal by the students; in the summer semester 2010, corresponding contributions of 350 euros were levied. In the winter semester 2011/2012, the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia abolished tuition fees.

Student lead projects

In 2008 the OWL-Racing-Team was founded as Formula Student Team of the university in Lemgo. This team takes part in the international Formula SAE design competition, in which student teams from all over the world compete against each other in self-made racing cars.
Campus radio Triquency is broadcast terrestrially at all three locations. There is also an Internet stream. In addition, Dreist.tv is a student-run university station.
On the Höxter site, a metrological station Campuswetter is operated, which makes it possible to teach the topic of metrology or process informatics with practical relevance. The data of the station are presented in real time on the Internet.