The 2019 European Language Label Award
The European Language Label (ELL) of the European Commission awards outstanding innovative and creative initiatives for language teaching and learning. In Austria, this competition is organised biannually by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the Austrian National Agency for Erasmus+ Education of the Österreichisches Sprachenkompetenzzentrum (ÖSZ – a national institute of Austria specialised in the promotion of language learning and teaching).
On 26 September 2019, the European Day of Languages, Prof. Dr. Britta Hufeisen, Director of the Division of Linguistics – Multilingualism and Director of the Language Resource Centre of TU Darmstadt, and her team members Eva Meirer, Larissa Haas, Dr. Elisabeth Allgäuer-Hackl and Joachim Schlabach were awarded the European Language Label at the Europe House in Vienna for their school development and research project “formatio · plurilingual · digital” in upper secondary education at the formatio private school, which is an Austrian international school in Triesen, Liechtenstein.
Athene Award for Teaching Excellence
The ‘Athene Award for Teaching Excellence’ from the Carlo and Karin Giersch foundation at TU Darmstadt is awarded to TU members and departments/faculties who have distinguished themselves by their excellence in teaching.
2016:
Prof. Dr. Britta Hufeisen, Dr. Chris Merkelbach, Lennart Bartelheimer, Sascha Bay, Constanze Bradlaw, Dr. Sandra Drumm, Karen Fleischhauer, Dr. Nathalie Geers, Lisa Hertweck, Lea L. Kimmerle, Barbara Stolaczyk and Sandra Sulzer received the special STEM education award for the promotional project ‘AllFaSprInt’. Within the scope of this project, student teachers from various fields at TU Darmstadt advance through successive modules during their training to work with young refugees.
2013:
Sandra Drumm received the special STEM education award for her seminar curriculum ‘Language for Special Purposes in Multilingual Content Language Classrooms’. Within the scope of the seminar, student teachers from all subject areas became qualified to create language-sensitive content (CLIL) classes. As part of the seminar they reflected on language and specific subject content and developed additional remedial material and curricula for weaker pupils.
2004:
In 2004 the Carlo and Karin Giersch foundation first awarded the Athene Award, which acknowledged efforts made to advance the internationalization of TU Darmstadt. As part of the President’s Summer Festival in July, former TU Darmstadt President Jan Wörner awarded this prize to Britta Hufeisen (SPZ) and Fritz Theiß (DEZ. la) for their work on summer schools for students from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
E-Teaching Award
2015:
Barbara Stolarczyk from the Language Resource Center was honoured for her German-Polish E-Tandem Course ‘A Virtual Walk through Darmstadt and Posen’, a joint project of Adam-Mickiewicz-University and TU Darmstadt. This is a general language course that takes place in real time on both the Polish and German websites. As part of this tandem project, video podcasts are created by students on one of the core themes from: ‘A Virtual Walk through My University and Yours’.
2013:
Karin Pertoft was acknowledged with this award for her Blended-Learning Curriculum as part of her course ‘Speaking Germanic Languages,’ which focuses on a comprehensive and targeted use of reusable online language learning sites. This course encourages autonomous learning, takes different learning types into account through a variety of media formats and thereby significantly contributes to participants’ learning success.