Research and teaching

The Rector’s Teaching Award is presented once a year at the Graduates’ celebration in July to one winner per faculty. Winners from the Faculty of Law may be lecturers or, every other year, seminar leaders. The winner is determined on the basis of the average of the evaluation results for their courses. The overall rating of the course is taken into account.

For lecturers, all lectures they have delivered over the past two semesters are included in the assessment, provided each has been evaluated by at least five students. This includes lectures, tutorials, colloquia and the modules of the examination course, but not courses on foreign legal terminology, law courses taught in a foreign language, or courses in the FFA programme. In the case of candidates for a postdoctoral qualification, the evaluations of the seminars they have held are also taken into account. The relevant courses taught by a lecturer must have been evaluated by a total of at least 80 students. 

The group of seminar leaders should also have the opportunity to win this prize. For this reason, every two years, all seminars from the past four semesters are considered, provided they have been evaluated by a total of at least 50 students.

A prerequisite for consideration for the Rector’s Teaching Award is that the lecturer in question is still employed at the University of Bonn

The departmental teaching awards for outstanding teaching are presented annually at the faculty’s summer party. They are awarded to one lecturer and one seminar leader per subject area. Here too, a prerequisite is that the lecturer in question, provided they are on a permanent contract, will also be working at the University of Bonn in the following semester. If the employment contract is fixed-term, continued employment at the University of Bonn is not required. The decisive date for assessing this matter is also the last meeting of the Evaluation Committee prior to the awarding of the teaching prize.

Among lecturers, the winner is selected according to the same criteria used for the Rector’s Teaching Award. However, the winner of the Rector’s Teaching Award cannot simultaneously receive the Faculty Teaching Award; in such cases, the prize is awarded to the runner-up.

The award winners from the group of seminar leaders are selected on the basis of the evaluation results for the seminars held over the last two semesters. Here, too, the overall rating of the course is taken into account, and the selection is based on the average of the results. Only seminar leaders who have held at least two seminars are eligible, whereby these may have been held in parallel in one of the two relevant semesters or in both semesters. However, a course is only included in the calculation if it has been evaluated by at least nine seminar participants. If a lecturer has held seminars in different areas of law, only those for which the aforementioned requirements are met may be taken into account. Seminar leaders for revision seminars and CASTLE seminars receive a separate departmental teaching award. This means that a total of five prizes may be awarded as part of the prize for seminar leaders. However, a prerequisite for the award of a prize is that there are at least three candidates available in each category who meet the award criteria. If this is not the case, the prize in question will not be awarded.