This is the blog of Ole Westphal and Elias Braun from Germany. They are currently studying for a Master of Science in Management at Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg, Germany. Ole graduated with the German Bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering and with the American Bachelor degree in International Business. Elias has just successfully finished his Bachelor studies in Aviation Management in Germany.

End of second trimester!

Finally, we also survived the second trimester at the KLU. Compared to the first trimester, this trimester passed by even faster. Due to various group projects, in-class presentations as well as challenging assignments, which we had to complete during the last three months, it was at the same time also more labor-intensive than the first one. But also our group of totally diverse people from all around the world has grown closer together. During different group works we had the possibility to work not only with international fellow students from our class, but also with students from the Global Logistics class as well as with students who are already one year ahead of us and are about to do their Master thesis.

Champions League games in a Master in Management

Besides that, we continued our regular movie nights at the KLU once a month and had football evenings where we watched Champions League games together with our fellow students. Of course, we also had a welcome-back party at the beginning of our second trimester as well as an end-of-trimester party right before our holiday breaks with corresponding mottos.

Guest lectures, workshops, excursions and factory tours

During the course of the second trimester, there were again various guest lectures, workshops, excursions and factory tours on a regular basis. Companies such as Kühne & Nagel, BCG, Xing, Dachser, Daimler hold guest lectures at the KLU, to name only a few of them. For instance, we had a company visit and factory tour to Aurubis, the largest copper producer in Europe.

University election day for our trimester abroad

At the end of January, there was also our partner university election day for our trimester abroad. Before this selection session, a set of exchange places has been assigned to each class. Based on our overall average grade at this point in time, we had to announce our choice. In general, there were more places available at the different partner universities as students in the class. Therefore, most of our fellow students were satisfied with the available places as well as their final choices. And the number of partner universities is growing every month. At the moment, the KLU has 25 different partner universities all over the world, from Reykjavik (Iceland) in the North, Windhoek (Namibia) in the South, Bogota (Colombia) in the West and Shanghai (China) in the East.

KLU Lectures in trimester II

In trimester II, we had four different lectures:

• Finance and Risk
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Economics of Strategy
• Global Values & Ethics

Choosing your focus: logistic-specific or general management

As already in the last trimester, we were able to select between different electives for the next trimester. Depending on our personal preferences, we had the opportunity to deepen our knowledge either into a more logistic-specific or general management topic. Besides that, there will be a first big group project, called “Integration Project I”, where we will have the whole of the third trimester to work on. In addition, some of our fellow students organized a DHL Leipzig Hub Tour where we will take a look behind the scenes at DHL’s European logistics hub.

So, more than one reason to be curious about the next trimester and all the new experiences!

Ole and Elias

Master in Management 2012-2013
Kuehne Logistics University