News

Giving students the chance to develop as good citizens is a key part of their educational experience. That's what led MU to recognize one of their own recently - BBA student Simon Hala received the "Student Volunteer Award" for his contributions to student and community life during the Fall 2011-2012 semester.

Simon's efforts were recognized under the auspices of the MU Cares program, the university's initiative to encourage and reward contributions to student life and charitable involvement. Simon, who was elected as a Student Representative by his peers, was an active volunteer in organizing major social and sporting events, as well as helping welcome new students at Orientation Week and through the MU Buddy Program for international students. He also led a Facebook drive which saw students raise enough funds to provide needy children at the Integrationshaus with two brand new laptops to help them complete their high school studies.

Hala is modest about his role: "I really enjoy doing my part so my fellow students enjoy themselves - and it was great to know we came together and did something nice for the kids who got the laptops!" This semester, Simon is continuing to make a difference by helping the Student Service Center plan a charity soccer tournament.

As thanks for his efforts, MU will donate 100 euros on Simon's behalf to the Football Helps Foundation [13], an Austrian-based charity which helps youngsters in Burundi through sport. The funds will assist Football Helps in preparing to launch another round of youth soccer tournaments in summer 2012.

BBA Dean Prof. Dr. Dagmar Lund-Durlacher, Simon Hala, and Student Service Center Representative Jesse Alexander

MU added another success story to its growing list of achievements. On Monday, April 23rd, MODUL University Vienna received the Sustainability Award 2012 in the category of Structural Foundation for the programs ‘’MU Cares’’, ’’Scholarship of Hope’’, and ‘’Employee Sustainability Award’’.

Organized by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management, and the Ministry of Science and Research, the third annual competition recognized excellence and innovation in the area of sustainability. The competition is open to all public universities, colleges, accredited private universities and colleges of education in Austria.

MU’s successful winning proposal highlighted our three initiatives to actively engage Modulians at all levels of the university. The Scholarship of Hope and MU Cares are student-directed programs to inspire both thought and action in environmental, economic, and social sustainability, while the employee award encourages faculty and staff to consider these concepts to improve their working environment and make an MU an even better place to study.

The submission highlighted a three-fold effort: ‘’Ever since MODUL University Vienna opened its doors sustainability has been one of the fundamental credos for all its stakeholders. One initiative to embrace this principle is the Scholarship of Hope, which is meant to encourage students to promote sustainability by presenting innovative and creative ideas that could be implemented at MU. Parallel to the student scholarship, MU has also initiated an Employee Sustainability Award to recognize MU employees who submit ideas to improve the overall sustainability of the university. Winners of both awards receive attractive prizes and their ideas are published on the university homepage. Moreover, MU is also actively involved in providing students opportunities for extracurricular activities, a commitment which led to the launch of the “MU Cares” community program. Students and staff are engaged in several external charity initiatives and volunteer work, thereby creating ambassadors of responsible living. ‘’

The award itself, designed by students from the University of Applied Arts, was presented to our representatives (as pictured l-r) Prof. Dr. Karl Wöber, Dr. Sabine Sedlacek, MA Anja Hergesell, Mag. Getraud Moser, by Dr. Franz Fischler, former EU Agriculture Commissioner and President of the Austrian Think Tank “Ecosocial Forum“. 

Sustainability has been a core value of MU since inception, and is visibly engaged in the environmental component; for example, the solar panels catching sunlight on the university roof. However this is not the only way the university strives for full-circle exchange. 
Student Service Center representative, MU Cares coordinator and Sustainability Committee member Jesse Alexander spoke about the benefits of the sometimes overlooked aspect of social sustainability, which MU Cares actively encourages. ‘’The program creates a socially sustainable, healthy environment leading to community building, education of the whole person, developing leadership skills and personal growth.’’

Not only does the positive atmosphere contribute to enhancing the social environment on campus, the program brings students into the city to work with charities such as Grenzenlos and Gruft. 

In addition to the trophy winning submission, MU was also awarded third place for our international cooperation with Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI). Special congratulations to Gertraud Moser for drafting the structural foundations proposal, to Dagmar Lund-Durlacher for the international cooperation proposal, and to Anja Hergesell and Jesse Alexander for editing!

As part of MU’s ongoing Latest Trends series, Dr. Janne J. Liburd, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Tourism, Innovation and Culture at the University of Southern Denmark, was invited to lecture on Kahlenberg.

Dr. Liburd has been involved in various tourism education initiatives including membership in the Tourism Education Futures Institute (TEFI) alongside MU’s Dagmar Lund-Durlacher and Karl Wöber, as well as the BEST Education Network [17]. This was her second time at MU – She participated in the BEST EN Thank Tank X held here in 2010.

Her presentation to on "Using Web 2.0 for Innovation in Tourism Education -The Case of INNOTOUR" attracted a large group of BBA and MSc students, the interested public, and even some potential future Modulians from Vienna Business School. Created by the Centre for Tourism, Innovation and Culture, at the University of Southern Denmark, she expounded on INNOTOUR [18], a WEB 2.0 platform for education, research and business development in tourism.

She touched on the internet’s evolution and increasingly interactive nature “Web 2.0 refers to the principles and practice of facilitating information sharing and social interaction by users generating altering and uploading web-based content (O’Reilly, 2005) whereas its predecessor, Web 1.0 limits users to the passive viewing and download of largely copyrighted information.” (Liburd, 2011)’’.

Her background in cultural anthropology influences her approach to the world online, encouraging the attendees to think about behavior responses to learning and social media. Dr. Liburd’s long resumé includes publications on epistemology, open innovation, Web 2.0, tourism education, quality of life, national park development, heritage tourism, tourism crisis communication, NGOs and accountability. She is the co-founder of the INNOTOUR platform and serves on several editorial boards, as well as formerly serving as the Chair of the BEST Education Network (2005-2010).

During her fruitful visit, Dr. Liburd and Dr. Lund-Durlacher further developed a idea to create an online lecture series on sustainable tourism within the BEST EN network using the INNOTOUR platform, to further disseminate teaching modules and teaching material on sustainable tourism generated by BEST EN members. The main goal is to provide an open source teaching and communication environment which can be used for free by everyone.

This was the second lecture in the Latest Trends [19] series, following the kick off date with Dr. Vladimir Preveden of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Upcoming speakers in the Spring 2012 series are Christian Wichman, Senior Brand Consultant, Brand:Trust, Nuremberg - “The Employer´s Axe Effect - How Employer Branding Helps You to Attract the Right People” ; Katrin Melle, Director of Human Resources, Hyatt International - “Making a Difference Through Keeping an Employment Brand Promise”; Terry Stevens, Managing Director, Stevens & Associates (UK) - “Wellness Tourism: Market Trends and Creative Products” and Dr. Pierre Benckendorff, Senior Lecturer and Chair of Learning in the School of Tourism at the University of Queensland - “Tourism Futures in the Digital Age”.

The lectures take place Friday afternoons and are open to the public.

More information can be found at http://www.modul.ac.at/latesttrendsseminars [19].

Dr. Janne Liburd with Dr. Dagmar Lund-Durlacher

With more than 800 million monthly active users, the Facebook platform bears significant potential for scientific projects. A team of scientists in Austria has tapped into this potential with a social media application to collect information on climate change awareness and the users’ knowledge about the underlying processes. Players face two types of challenges to increase their score: selecting correct relations between two environmental concepts, and answering climate change related questions.

http://www.ecoresearch.net/triple-c [22]

The Climate Quiz [23] invites Facebook users and their online friends to evaluate whether two concepts presented by the system are related (e.g. “climate change”, “ecosystem”), and which label is most appropriate to describe this relation (e.g. “threatens”). Participants earn points for matching answers, but can also lose them if their opinions differ from the majority of other players. The built-in notification system and real-time progress statistics help engage Facebook users and leverage the wisdom of the crowds for scientific purposes.

The game with a purpose is part of the Climate Change Collaboratory [24], a research project to strengthen the relations between environmental stakeholders who recognize the need for climate change adaptation and mitigation, but differ in their specific goals and agendas. It not only develops innovative survey instruments such as the Climate Quiz to create shared meaning and build domain models, but also investigates the communicative strategies of the various stakeholders. Thereby, the collaboratory aims to unearth hidden assumptions and misconceptions about climate change, contribute to a mutual understanding of existing problems, and suggest priorities for research and policy development.

The Climate Change Collaboratory is funded by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund within the program line ACRP (Austrian Climate Research Program). The project partners include MODUL University Vienna (Department of New Media Technology and Department of Public Governance and Management), the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Research Institute for Computational Methods), the University of Graz (Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change), and the European Support Centre of the Club of Rome.

This year's conference of the Travel and Tourism Research Association - European Chapter will be held in Bilbao, Spain from 18 to 20 April. The overall conference theme is "Performance Measurement and Management in Tourism".

Prof. Andreas Zins, Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, will present a case example on "Internal Benchmarking for Regional Tourism Organizations".
Keynote presentations will be delivered by Zheng Xiang on "Travel Information Search and Social Media: the Macro Analysis", by Rick Perdue on "Strategic planning for destination competitiveness: issues and concerns from the Virginia Tourism Corporation experience" and by Dan Fesenmaier on "New Framework for Measuring Response to Travel Advertising".

Prof. Zins presents a viable and focused solution for the DMO of a federal state of Austria. It is based on the premises of an internal benchmarking system incorporating the principles of the balanced score card framework. This new system has been developed two years ago together with Dr. Wolfgang Sovis Unternehmensberatung and registered under the trademark Tourismus Sensor (R).

Some students just can’t get enough of MODUL University Vienna – including two of our alumni who are now full time employees. BBA ’10 Leopold Spiegelfeld, Recruitment & Marketing Coordinator has been criss-crossing Europe to promote MU.

His most recent activity took him to his homeland of South Tyrol, where students from the Landeshotelfachschule Kaiserhof, one of the oldest and most respected Tourism schools in Italy, learned about options for the next step in their education.

What set this presentation apart from the rest was the spectacular location - Schloss Schenna in the hills surrounding Merano, Italy. The 650-year old castle was rebuilt and expanded in the 19th century by Archduke Johann, and retains lifestyle and decor from over four centuries. The castle is still owned and operated by the Archduke's decendants, and is currently in the hands of Leo's parents, Franz and Johanna Spielgelfeld. A centre of cultural activity, the castle holds regular concerts and is home to an art gallery. Ranking among the top tourist destinations in South Tyrol, what better place to present MU’s BBA in Tourism and Hospitality management?

Sixteen potential Modulians, along with Esther Pöhl, president of the Kaiserhof alumni association, attended the evening hosted in the castle hall. Recruitment's next stop - Brussels!

A warm meal can go a long way to making someone's day just a little easier - that's the principle that led a team of student volunteers (part of the MU Cares [31] charity program) to the Gruft's soup kitchen for the homeless. Enthused by a previous charity cookoff [32] to help refugee asylum seekers, students arranged to take over the soup kitchen in the basement of the Barnabitenkirche on Mariahilferstrasse for an afternoon. 

After some intense negoatiating chili con carne was chosen as the main dish with the family of student Natalie Hood graciously providing home-baked banana bread for dessert. After a heavy-duty shopping spree at Metro (cooking for 150 guests takes a lot of food!), the team met at the church on a cool Saturday afternoon. After unloading the over 50kg of ingredients and donning their dashing plastic aprons and paper chef hats, the students set about preparing the meal with the help of the knowledgeable and kind staff at the Gruft [33].

Three giant-sized batches of chili later, dinner was ready to be served. In all, about 150 servings were heaped out to the clients who regularly visit the Gruft for food, shelter and social services. The students very much appreciated the round of applause they received from the dining room guests as they left!

Special thanks to the wonderful staff at the Gruft for helping out our team, and to students Ioana Benea and Nikolaus Wendl for donating the transport for the food and arranging the visit, respectively. The MU Cares cooks look forward to returning to the Gruft again soon!

If you would like to make a donation to help make that possible please contact the Student Service Center at ssc@modul.ac.at [34].

Check out more pictures from the event on our Facebook [35] page!