Glossary

Application for admission to a doctoral programme

The admission procedure for international students can be found here.

For students that finished their Masters/Diploma at an austrian institution information can be found here (only a german version is available).

Code of Conduct

The Code of Conduct can be found here (an English version can be found below the German one).

Curricular part

The courses ( amounting to 18 ECTS) you have to complete, to finish the doctoral program.

Dean of Studies

(German: Studiendekanin, Studiendekan, or Studienrechtliches Organ)

Person wielding sole executive power on all matters concerning the doctoral programme. Among other things, he or she has the last word over matters of admission, coursework, and legitimacy of the topic and advisors. Each of the nine fields of study in the doctoral programme has its own dean of studies.

Deans Office

The dean’s office is responsible for handling of staff and monetary matters of the faculty. Furthermore, it administrates questions concerning the study law.

Admission Office

(German: Studienabteilung) Administrative office concerned with student matters, most prominently admission and graduation. Their website.

Doctoral College

These are special PhD programs covering selected research fields where funding (part time employment at TU Wien) is provided for doctoral candidates. Most of the doctoral college (German: Doktoratskolleg) have a little bit different requirements than the doctoral programe defined in the curriculum. Offered positions can be found in the bulletin of TU Wien. Doctoral candidates having an employment contract are paid according to the collective bargaining agreement for university staff.

For a more compact overview you can visit https://www.tuwien.at/tu-wien/organisation/zentrale-bereiche/personaladministration/fb-wissenschaftliches-personal/informationen.

ECTS

(short for European Credit Transfer and accumulation System) An effort by the Bologna process to standardize the workload of academic courses in order to make them comparable and transferrable across the European Union. In theory, a student should be awarded one ECTS credit point for time investment of 25 hours. In Austria, the academic year of a full-time student is standardised to 60 ECTS credits, thus corresponding to about 1,500 hours of work.

Fachschaft

A Fachschaft is the group of students representing the students of a faculty or group of programmes. Typically, the elected student representatives are part of the respective Fachschaft. The representation of doctoral candidates at TU Wien is the Fachschaft Doktorat.

FWF

(short for: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung) Most important Austrian third-party funds for basic science, financed by the Austrian federal government. Across-the-board spending cuts to education and science in the last decade have taken a heavy toll on the funds, forcing it to suspend or scale back most of its programmes.

HSG

(short for Hochschülerinnen- und Hochschülerschaftsgesetz) The Austrian law regulating the representation of students in Austria on national and institutional level.

HTU

Short for: Hochschülerinnen- und Hochschülerschaft and der Technischen Universität Wien. The official students’ representation at university level for the TU Wien. htu.at

PV

Privatissimum. A private seminar, normally with your supervisor, where you discuss problems regarding your thesis.

SE

Seminar. Normally a course with just a few participants who present more advanced matter related to a given topic.

Statutes

Within the statutes of the TU Wien, university-specific regulation are defined. The current version can be found at the website of the TU Wien.

TU Wien

(german: Technische Universität Wien) former: Vienna University of Technology.

UE

Übung – excercise course. A course with continuous assessment of course work. This normally means solving excercises and/or written examinations during the course.

Universitätsgesetz (UG)

The most important law regarding your time at TU Wien is the Universtätsgesetz. The current version is the UG2002.

VO

Vorlesung – lecture. A course with a written and/or oral exam.

VU

Vorlesung mit Übung – lecture with examination. A course where you typically have to work over the whole semester (small exams, exercise sheets, etc…), often with a bigger exam at the end.

ÖH

Österreichische Hochschülerinnen- und Hochschülerschaft. The official representation of students at the national level. Link: http://www.oeh.ac.at/.