From September 18 to September 24, 2022, Jennifer Sánchez Acosta, technical advisor of the Vice-Rectory of Research and Transfer of the Universidad Técnica Nacional (UTN) visited Osnabrück University (UOS). Her stay commenced with a visit to the Costa Rica Center of the UOS with Prof. Dr. Susanne Schlünder. There they met with representatives of the International Office and the Costa Rica Center and Jennifer Sánchez Acosta learned about the goals and projects of the Center.
In the days that followed, she also had the opportunity to talk to various researchers and experts from the UOS who specialize in environmental topics and sustainability, such as Prof. Dr. Andreas Focks (Institute of Mathematics and Institute of Environmental Research), Dr. Florian Fiebelkorn (Chair for Biology Didactics), Dr. Seyed Jalaleddin Mirnezami (Institute of Geography) and PhD candidate Miles Yannik Ahlemann (Institute of Social Sciences). These conversations were coordinated and accompanied by Dr. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor and Dr. Johannes Halbe.
In addition, Jennifer Sánchez Acosta had the chance to share dinner with a delegation of the UTN/ UOS research project CoRi VET (Costa Rican Vocational Education and Training) which aims at the development of study structures for qualified vocational teacher training in Costa Rica.
Jennifer Sánchez Acosta’s visit did not remain limited to activities at UOS but was complemented by various excursions. Together with Dr. Johannes Halbe, she visited Hof Pente, a farm practicing community-supported agriculture, as well as an Urban Gardening project. On days five and six of her stay, she traveled to the coastal towns Wilhelmshaven and Dangast with Dr. Philipp Gorris. Their first stop was Wilhelmshaven, where they visited the UNESCO Wadden Sea World Heritage Museum. This offered Jennifer Sánchez Acosta valuable insights into the outstanding biological diversity of the Wadden Sea, its variety of current use forms and the transnational approach to governing coastal and marine biodiversity along the German coast (Trilateral Wadden Sea Cooperation). The exhibition is an example of a state-of-the-art approach to public awareness raising based on, for instance, augmented reality and environmental games. In Dangast Dr. Philipp Gorris introduced her to the iSeal-project on “Transdisciplinary social-ecological network research in the German Wadden Sea national parks” and they visited the ‘Wattenmeerhaus’, as an example of environmental education as part of a sustainable tourism approach. As part of this trip to the North Sea, Jennifer Sánchez Acosta also had the opportunity to enjoy a guided tour into the Wadden Sea, during which she was introduced to the marine life of German wetlands and its role for migratory birds.