The reporting year 2018 is characterised by a transition period and, at the same time, by a reorientation of the TEWI. As far as the transition is concerned: one characteristic of the TEWI is that the respective managing director strives for a doctorate as part of his or her job and, upon reaching this goal, usually leaves the TEWI to take on new challenges. In the many years of the TEWI’s existence, we have been able to fulfil the function of promoting young academics in Switzerland extremely successfully. The flip side of this is that we are repeatedly confronted with the replacement of the important position of Executive Director. Gabriel Abu-Tayeh, an academically very successful managing director, completed his doctorate at the University of Bern at the beginning of 2018. After his departure, the position has remained vacant for the time being. This is not only due to the fact that the applicant situation is difficult. Rather, this departure is also associated with a partial reorientation of the TEWI. At the moment I am writing these lines, this transitional period is coming to an end, as we have been able to appoint a successor for the position of Managing Director as of April 2019. As far as the reorientation is concerned: In close consultation with the Canton of Valais, new thematic priorities were defined for the TEWI. On the one hand, a main focus of work should be defined for a given period of time, which is thematically interesting for the canton. Secondly, the work of the TEWI should be done even more in cooperation with other tertiary education institutions in Valais. As a result, we intensified our joint activities with the Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences, based in Brig, and defined a joint project that we intend to push ahead with in the coming months. We were already able to concretise the project with various workshops in the autumn and are currently continuing to work on it at full speed.
Apart from these changes, we want to continue to be there as TEWI as usual in Valais as a competence centre and network organisation for the dissemination of know-how on digitalisation and business informatics. This concerns, as ever, activities in research, teaching and knowledge transfer. We hope that you will stay with us.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Myrach, President TEWI
Read the full activity report 2018.