German Students to Visit Pitt-Bradford

Four students from Heilbronn University in Heilbronn, Germany, will spend the fall semester studying at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford as part of a new agreement between the two schools.

The arrangement came about after Rick Nelson, associate professor of business at Pitt-Bradford, met Dr. Mathias Moersch, a professor at Heilbronn, while the two were grading exams for the CFA Institute, which awards the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Moersch had recently begun coordinating Heilbronn’s foreign studies program and asked Nelson whether Pitt-Bradford would be interested in an exchange. An agreement was reached, and Pitt-Bradford will welcome its first four Heilbronn students in August: Uwe Behringer, Alessandro Gravina, Anja Schramm and Alexander Sirunjan.

The three men and one woman will take primarily business courses, but also plan to travel within the United States, Nelson said. One student plans to play on the Pitt-Bradford Panthers soccer team this fall.

Each of the students passed an English test and will take all of their courses at Pitt-Bradford in English. The students will not all be living together in order to help them integrate more fully into campus life, Nelson said. In addition, students from the business club Students in Free Enterprise have agreed to show their German counterparts around.

Moersch visited Nelson in February to check out the campus and nearby Niagara Falls, Ontario. He will visit again this fall to check on the students.

“I am really impressed by the small class sizes at Pitt-Bradford,” Moersch said. “This is exactly the environment of personalized attention to students that we are trying to provide at Heilbronn. Also, the course offering in business is quite similar to that at our school. This gives our students the opportunity to transfer all of the credits they earn while studying abroad.”

For now the exchange is one-way but Nelson hopes that won’t be for long.

“I would hope that within a year or two we should be able to travel over there,” he said, adding that students can take some courses in English at Heilbronn.

Dr. Steven Hardin, vice president and dean of academic affairs, worked on the agreement along with Nelson, Moersch and Isabelle Champlin, director of international studies at Pitt-Bradford.

“It will be great to have four students from Germany on campus this fall interacting with our students, adding to our cultural diversity and enriching the perspectives and conversations in our classrooms,” he said.

“Pitt-Bradford is committed to international education and cultural awareness, and this exchange agreement adds another important component to our study abroad opportunities.”

Located in a southern wine country region of Germany, Heilbronn is primarily a business and engineering school with about 6,000 students.

The city of Heilbronn has 120,000 residents on the Neckar River and is home to the notable companies Audi and Bosch.

Pictured, three of the exchange students and Professor Mathias Moersch. The students will be visiting and taking classes at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford this fall as part of an agreement between Pitt-Bradford and Heilbronn University in Germany. The students are, from left, Alexander Sirunjan, Anja Schramm and Alessandro Gravina.
Photo courtesy of Pitt-Bradford