As of April 2011 there will be two new faces in the President’s Office at the University of Bremen: Heidi Schelhowe and Yasemin Karaka?o?lu. At its meeting on 26th January the Academic Senate passed a resolution recommending the University President to appoint the two professors to their new posts. Heidi Schelhowe from the department "Digital Media in Education" will become Vice President for Academic Teaching and Studies. Yasemin Karaka?o?lu from the department "Intercultural Education" will occupy the newly created position of Vice President for Intercultural and International Affairs. Their appointment by the University President Wilfried Müller will follow shortly.
 
Prof. Dr. Heidi Schelhowe has been professor of digital media in education in the Faculty of Mathematics/Computer Science at the University of Bremen since 2001. She was a student of German Studies and Catholic Theology before initially becoming a teacher in Bremen. Later on she studied computer science and worked as a research assistant at the University of Bremen (at the artec interdisciplinary research center) and Hamburg (Faculty of Computer Science). After obtaining her doctorate she worked as a research assistant in the Department of Computer Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin, before she then returned to the University of Bremen.

Prof. Dr. Yasemin Karaka?o?lu studied Turkology, contemporary German literature and political science, obtaining her Dr. phil. in Education in 1999. She worked as a research assistant and she was head of the department of socio-cultural affairs at the Center for Turkish Studies in Essen (today: Stiftung Zentrum für Türkeistudien) and also as research assistant at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Faculty of Education in the area of intercultural pedagogy). In October 2004 she was appointed Professor for Intercultural Education in the department of pedagogy in the Faculty Pedagogy and Educational Science at the University of Bremen.