Supporting junior academics on their way to a professorship is an important strategic pillar at the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd. The aim is to optimally prepare young postdoc students for a career both within and outside of the university sector, all while attracting national and international academic talents to our institution.

The two career paths leading to a professorship that are well-established at the university – the traditional postdoctorate with habilitation plus the junior professorships that have existed for over 10 years (mostly without a tenure option) – are now being joined by a third reliable route: from 2020, at least 10% of professorships will take the form of tenure track professorships in salary on scale W1.

By systematically establishing the tenure track professorship, the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd will be able to present outstanding talents with attractive job prospects offering greatly enhanced planning security at an early stage in their academic careers. Although tenure track professorships are initially assigned on a fixed-term basis, these transition directly into lifelong professorships following successful interim and final evaluation. In this way, candidates that have received positive evaluations are not required to compete against any further applicants in order to obtain their post.

Tenure track professorships funded by the joint programme of the Federal Government and the Federal States for the promotion of junior academics are based in the following areas:

• Empirical Research on Childhood and Youth with Focus on Globalization and Intersectionality
• Digitization with focus on algorithmics in education and data science
• Digitization in vocational education
• Consumer education in the digital world

The job postings for tenure track professorships are available here.

Appointment procedure

Appointment to a tenure track professorship follows the same procedure as appointment to a lifelong professorship. For more information, see section 3 – ‘Procedural guidelines for the appointment of university teachers’ – of the quality assurance concept for tenure track professorships at the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd (only in German, see Downloads section).

Following successful tenure evaluation, the holder of the position will be appointed to a W3 lifelong professorship.

Contact for queries relating to tenure track professorships: