University of Bern

Private funding boosts and accelerates the university's development in line with its strategy, while sponsoring supports its marketing objectives. Philanthropic funding enables additional services in specific research areas, supports early-career researchers, generates innovation, and enhances the role of Bern – and Switzerland as a whole – as a center of business and knowledge. We can advise you in person upon request and put you in touch with the appropriate academics.

The University of Bern invites any interested private individuals, companies, foundations, or other organizations to forge a cooperative funding partnership, and to receive long-lasting and appreciative support in return for their financial commitment. The university’s relationships with its donors and sponsors are characterized by transparency, respect, dialog, appreciation and long-term partnerships. University Advancement informs, advises and supports the university and organizational units, institutes and centers when it comes to fundraising and sponsoring.

In everything that it does, the University feels its obligation to bring about benefits for science, society and the economy. The University of Bern wants to procure the competences required to acquire knowledge and to use that knowledge. With this aim in mind, the University of Bern conducts excellent research and teaching and offers high-quality advanced training and services. The University of Bern bases its disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary focuses on academic interests and societal needs.

The University aspires to be the most important regional institution which generates independent knowledge and which promotes sustained value creation for the economy of the Canton of Bern. The University makes a major contribution to increasing the appeal of Bern as a centre of economic innovation and attractive working conditions. In this way, the University of Bern is able to honour its obligations to the citizens of the Canton of Bern who, after all, are the people who enable the University to exist. Knowledge is one of the most important resources in our society, and it will only become more important in the future. Knowledge is the key to solving societal problems and overcoming global challenges. Universities make an indispensable contribution to the evolution and imparting of knowledge, and this task will become increasingly important.

The mission statement sets out general standards that the University of Bern and its members aim to achieve and adhere to in the long term with regard to people, research and teaching as well as public relations and the environment.

Sustainable development represents a global challenge. As hotspots for knowledge generation and transfer, universities are expected to make a contribution. The University of Bern takes this responsibility seriously and is committed to integrating sustainability as a cross-cutting issue across all areas of the university (teaching, research, continuing education, public relations and business operations) and promoting the respectful use of ecological, economic and social resources. The University of Bern is working to promote sustainable development in research, teaching and business operations:

• It conducts disciplinary, inter- and transdisciplinary research that makes a significant contribution to shaping sustainable development.
• The University of Bern imparts knowledge and skills through its teaching activities that enable students to respond appropriately to the challenges of sustainable development.
• In its business operations, the University of Bern promotes the careful use of ecological, economic and social resources.

Bern’s researchers and lecturers form part of a strong global network. International collaboration takes place in various ways in both research and teaching, from sporadic contact with colleagues to formal collaboration as part of cooperation and exchange agreements as well as through the operation of joint competence centres. To encourage international networking through exchange of information and collaboration, the University supports central points of contact for students, researchers and lecturers.

The university is committed to gender equality for men and women. It promotes the success of both men and women in academia with effective instruments of gender equality and career models. The University of Bern thus has a Gender Equality Commission as well as an Office for Gender Equality and pursues, in particular, the following goals:

• The appropriate representation of both genders at all levels
• The active promotion of the genuine equality of men and women by everyone
• The possible reconcilability of studies, job and care obligations for both men and women
• A permanent position for Gender Studies within the universit

Continuing education at the University of Bern is based on science and research. It fosters students' ability to reflect on subject matter in a scientific way and apply what they have learned to the world of work and to the wider environment in which they live. To do this, and using documents from Swissuni as a basis, the University of Bern has formulated its own principles and standards and developed its own tools as part of its broader quality assurance and development activities.