What is it actually like...
... being a student employee at TEER?
What is your name and what are you studying?
A: I'm Arne Bätz, I'm studying Mechanical Engineering.
S: I'm Sabrina Greif and I'm studying Sustainable Resources and Energy Supply.
How long have you been a student employee at TEER?
A: Since 2021.
S: Me too.
How many other student employees are there at TEER? Who do you work with? In a team or alone?
A and S: There are an estimated 15 - 20 student employees at TEER.
A: I work in a team with the research assistants. There is another student employee who has a similar job to mine, but we usually alternate our working days.
S: Yes, it's similar for me. I also work with different research assistants. But there are three other student employees working here in the lab, so we usually try to work together in pairs or threes because it's just more fun then.
How many hours a week do you work?
A: 8 hours.
S: Me too.
And what are you doing during this time? Are you involved in experiments or projects? Are you involved in teaching?
A: I'm working on the TeTox project. This is a project to evaluate emission reduction measures for single-room combustion systems. For example, the fireplace that you might have at home. I prepare the tests and evaluate them, but it's mainly the implementation that takes up most of my time.
S: I mostly work in the fuel laboratory, where we do fuel characterizations. For example, we carry out emmidiate or elemental analyses to determine the basic composition of the fuels. To do this, we determine the ash or sulphur content of the samples, for example. Apart from that, we also carry out other analyses - it always depends on what exactly the client wants. And I also help out with the maintenance of our website.
Is the work useful for your studies? Do you feel that you can make useful contacts, possibly also for your future career?
A: I definitely make useful contacts! I can't say yet... It's definitely useful for my studies. I'm not studying Environmental Engineering, like most people here at the institute, but I will continue to study Process Engineering and the work here is definitely useful for me in terms of measurement technology.
S: The work is definitely also useful for my studies. I've already been able to link some of the course content here with my work. For example, the subject ERT 1 (Energy Resources and Technology 1) has many points of contact. And you can definitely make useful contacts, especially with the research assistants. And I think that if you want to start here later as a WiMa, it's definitely good to have been a student employee here before.