Riedberg campus

Yesterday I traveled out to one of the four University of Frankfurt campuses to see where I will be lecturing. Right now the University has two campuses in the city, Campus Westend and Campus Bockenheim. I am living in the Westend section of the city, on the edge of the Bockenheim campus. The Westend campus is nearby, easily within walking distance. Many of the sciences, including the Molecular Biology, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Physics, Chemistry and Biophysics, are located on the Riedberg campus. This campus is about a 30 minute train ride north of the city, high on a hill on the edge of a town called Niederusel. At the present time, some of the Biology groups (human genetics and others) are still here in the city on the Westend campus, but by 2015 they are all to be moved to Riedberg. The University is planning on shutting down the Bockenheim campus and consolidating to the remaining 3 (I don’t know what the current fourth campus is…). The Riedberg campus was really beautiful, a combination of new buildings with lots of glass and windows. All of the different groups of buildings are built in different styles, so there was a range of architecture. And, there is a TON of building happening. Around the outside of the area that already has buildings, there was construction happening nearly everywhere. Cranes were in use in nearly every direction I turned. The spaces between the buildings were beautiful, with many courtyards and even a few fountains. I took my camera and only managed to take a couple of pictures before my battery ran out.

I met with Prof. Zimmerman and with the individual who organizes the class, Dr. Scharf. I will be lecturing in ‘Ausgewahlte Kapitel aus der Zell-und Entwicklungsbiologie Vorlesung and Literaturseminar’. I have no idea what that means- I think Zell is Cell and the last name in the course title clearly has something to do with Literature and Seminar. Fortunately, this course is taught COMPLETELY in English! But, everyone who knows me knows that I speak quickly, so I am going to have to be very careful to slow it way down. The class meets at 8:30, so maybe I should skip my morning coffee on those days?! This course is typically taken by students in their 3 or 4th years. It is organized into 4-5 lecture sections, with each section covered by a single professor. The topics are entirely up to the faculty member- but they should cover some aspect of cell-molecular biology. Typically, faculty cover topics that are related to their own research areas. So, I am going to talk about post-transcriptional mechanisms of gene regulation in Drosophila oogenesis and then two lectures on some aspect of Immunology. Apparently there are no Drosophilists here, so I can spend a large chunk of my first lecture explaining Drosophila as a model. I was glad to see the campus and meet some more people, especially people in Biology.

I am looking forward to the lectures and I am anxious to see how the German undergraduates compare to ours at home. I actually had to students from here in my Immunology class at TCNJ a few years ago. I wish I could remember their names- but they were very good students. They embraced their time in the states, traveling nearly every weekend. I think they got to places I have never been. My favorite story from their time at TCNJ has to do with Halloween. Apparently, some of the TCNJ students explained Halloween to them and told them that we ALL get dressed up for class. That afternoon they arrived in lecture dressed as a cowboy and a ballerina. I guess I forgot to mention that they were male students, so while the cowboy costume was funny it wasn’t as good as the pink tutu on the other one. They got a good laugh out of the joke and were good sports about the situation. Hopefully this bunch of students will be equally easy-going.