Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger has been in office as WU rector since October 2015. She has ambitious plans for the coming period, starting on October 1, 2019: She wants to further promote WU’s international orientation, facilitate top-quality research, and support knowledge transfer with society. In addition to the challenges of the restructuring of public funding for universities, she also plans to focus on digitalization, an important aspect for the future. “Rector Hanappi-Egger’s presentation on her ideas for WU’s future was very convincing, and the Board’s decision was unanimous,” says University Board Chair Cattina Leitner.

Accreditation, new forms of performance assessment, English bachelor’s

In her first period, the rector focused on positioning WU as an excellent educational and research institution, resulting in the extension of WU’s five-year EQUIS reaccreditation. Together with its AACSB and AMBA accreditations, this makes WU one of only 1% of all universities worldwide to hold the prestigious triple accreditation. The rector’s initiative for alternative forms of evaluating researchers’ academic performance, as practiced at WU, has received recognition both in Austria and internationally. The idea behind this approach is to view a person’s academic achievements in a wider lifetime context, including aspects like caregiving responsibilities, activities in official positions, and academic age. The concept was awarded the Diversitas Prize by the Federal Ministry. Earlier this year, the rector announced that the first English-taught bachelor’s program in business and economics to be offered by an Austrian public university will be launched at WU in the fall of 2018. The demand for the program is very high. In addition, she has worked towards establishing a more welcoming environment at WU and founded the WU4You scholarship program, which gives talented students from low-income families the opportunity to study at WU.

Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger

Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger received her doctorate in informatics from TU Wien (TUW), followed by numerous research stays abroad in Stockholm, Toronto, and Oslo, among other places. She earned her venia docendi (habilitation) in applied informatics from TUW in 1996 and remained there as an associate professor until 2002. She has been at WU as Professor of Gender & Diversity in Organizations since 2002. Hanappi-Egger has over 350 publications in the field of gender/diversity in organizations to her name, has spent time at numerous international research institutions (including LSE and McGill University), and has held the EU Jean Monnet Chair. From 2008 to 2013, she was a member of the University Board of TU Graz, from 2006 to 2009 she acted as chair of the Senate at WU, and from 2012 to 2014, she was head of the Department of Management. She has been rector of WU since October 1, 2015 and is the first woman to ever hold this position. From June 2016 to December 2017, she also acted as Vice President of Universities Austria (uniko). She is a member of numerous international academic networks, supervisory boards, and consulting bodies.

Contact:
Cornelia Moll
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Email: cornelia.moll@wu.ac.at