Freie Universität is one of the largest employers in Berlin and Brandenburg and offers its employees and faculty a broad range of continuing education options. Various avenues are also open to working professionals, schools, and educational institutions outside of the university. Details of new developments and research conducted at the university are also presented in various events, which offer children, teens, and adults insight into day-to-day academic work. Extensive media and public relations work helps the university present clear, understandable information on complex academic and scientific topics for wider audiences.

Continuing Education Center

The Continuing Education Center of Freie Universität offers a wealth of courses to provide continuing academic and professional education, from one-day seminars to several-year qualification programs. The center’s offerings are aimed at employees, faculty members, and junior researchers affiliated with the universities as well as members of the general public.

The range of education options offered includes continuing education in foreign languages, information technology, and administration. The modular programs in Library and Archive Management, Management in the Art Market, and Museum Management are already successfully established on the national stage.

The Guest Auditor Card (GasthörerCard) program is the core of the options offered for members of the public who are interested in academia, science, and culture, and the “Kunstgeschichten vor Ort” (Art History on Site) sub-program is the only program of its kind in Germany.

Cooperation with Schools

One of the very special strengths of Freie Universität Berlin is its cooperative arrangements with schools, alongside its school-related cooperative initiatives with institutions that support education and other educational institutions. All of these activities are backed by the firm conviction that a university not only has an obligation to contribute to improving the quality of instruction in schools, but that doing so is also one of the hallmarks and abilities marking a university’s true excellence.

Freie Universität’s broad range of activities in this field is covered by two main bodies: the Center for Cooperation with Schools, which began its work in 2007, and the Center for Teacher Training, which was established back in 2004.

Freie Universität’s cooperative initiatives with schools include offerings at four interconnected levels:

• courses, events, and activities for elementary and secondary students,
• active assistance in the transition from school to higher education,
• teacher training, and
• continuing and professional education for teachers.

Academic and Scientific Communication

Freie Universität Berlin offers the public at large a variety of opportunities to participate in campus life and explore new research findings. Academic and scientific presentations of all kinds are one way that researchers at the university reach out to the general public beyond their teaching schedules or present the results of their work to the public. During the annual Long Night of the Sciences, for example, the entire Freie Universität campus becomes one big lab for various experiences and experiments. An entertaining and varied program offers children, teens, and adults alike an opportunity to explore popular science experiments and demonstrations from various disciplines.

News and Public Affairs

The Office of News and Public Affairs of Freie Universität Berlin offers a wide range of services for the media as well as university faculty and staff. In about 400 press releases published each year, the insert published six times annually in the Tagesspiegel daily newspaper, and the academic magazine fundiert, the office keeps audiences abreast of new developments in teaching, research, and university policies.

Since 2008, the university’s online magazine campus.leben has been offering five sections of daily reports, articles, and portraits drawn from current events at the university and from the university’s research and teaching activities. The newsletter Topics for Journalists offers journalists monthly tips for current articles, reports, and backgrounders.

More than 500 scholars and scientists at Freie Universität have registered with the university’s expert service (Experts for Media), a list of those available to the media for questions and information. The central online editorial team manages and develops the central website of Freie Universität.