Alumni of the School of Engineering for Water Management visited the Department of Water, Environment, Construction and Safety this week, 60 years after their graduation.
Many former fellow students lose track of each other sooner or later after they finish their studies, when they change their own centre of life due to family and job. Some friendships, however, last a lifetime. An example of the latter is the "Oc" study group of the former Magdeburg School of Engineering for Water Management. Even after completing their three-year studies, the gentlemen stayed in touch with each other by exchanging letters and meeting annually in different places in Germany. This week, 60 years after the end of their studies, they visited the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences to get an impression of how the education in water management has changed since then.
After a welcome by the Dean of the Department of Water, Environment, Construction and Safety, Prof. Dr. Schmidt, Mr. Heepe, the speaker of the group, gave a presentation on how he and his friends had experienced studying at the end of the 1950s and under what adversities the students had to live in the post-war years. At the end, he presented the department with a brass bell with the members' names engraved on it, which had been a symbol of tradition for the group for decades and could not be missing from any meeting.
This was followed by a tour of the laboratory halls, during which Prof. Daniel Bachmann and laboratory engineer Stefan Müller presented the "Magic Sandbox" and explained the process of a dam bursting in a model experiment. This gave rise to a lot of discussion and interested questions.