Professional Skills

Professional skills courses are designed to enhance your expertise in topics not directly related to your field of research. They aim to provide you with knowledge and skills that can be used during your doctoral studies and your subsequent career – inside and outside of academia.

Opportunities offered by GAUSS and GGNB

Our professional skills courses are open to all doctoral students enrolled in GAUSS/GGNB and most of them are taught in English. Please find our current course program in

  • EXA
    (path: Research facilities > Göttinger Graduiertenschulen > Georg-August University School of Science (GAUSS))

or (as pdf sorted by semester) here:

We are striving to provide you with the best support possible and are constantly tailoring our course program to your needs. Hence, we are welcoming suggestions for additional courses that will benefit all GAUSS and GGNB doctoral students (please send an email to office@gauss.uni-goettingen.de).

Further opportunities offered by the University and non-university institutions

Doctoral students also have access to additional training and development courses offered by a variety of institutions on the Göttingen Campus:

  • Qualification portal for doctoral students
    The qualification portal is a joint service for doctoral students at the Göttingen University provided by several partners: Whereas offers are initially directed and open to members of the hosting institution, available places can also be offered to other students. Opportunities provided by the HR department are only available to employees of the University of Göttingen.
  • Courses for key competencies (offered by ZESS)
    ZESS is providing several offers, which might be of interest for doctoral candidates. As matriculated doctoral students you are eligible to take part as any other student. However, please be aware that most of these courses are taught in German only.
  • Courses offered by the HR Development
    Opportunities provided by the HR department are only available to employees of the University of Göttingen.
    The qualification program (in German) is mainly addressed at university administrative staff but also open for all employees of the University of Göttingen.
  • Language Courses

    The University’s Language Center – German as a foreign language is offering German courses for all doctoral students. You can access the semester program here.

    Additional language courses (German and English) are directly organized by GAUSS in cooperation with the University’s Language Center. They are aimed at doctoral students and mainly taking place in the evenings. Courses in English and other languages are also offered by ZESS.
    All language courses are linked to the semester schedule and start in October and April.

    An english workshop is offered by the Foyer International on Wednesdays at 8 pm.

  • Statistical Consulting for Doctoral Students

    Since October 2017 the Center of Statistics of the University of Göttingen is offering courses and consulting services in statistical questions for doctoral candidates including advice on data collection, statistical modelling and statistical inference. For further information and registration please follow this link.

  • IT Support

    If you have any IT or media issues, please contact the GWDG. For further information on their support as well as guidelines and instructions on different topics, please go to www.gwdg.de.