The “Landeslehrpreis NRW”, the Teaching Award of the Land North-Rhine Westphalia, was awarded for the first time

German universities praise themselves for following the principles of Humboldt who emphasized the unity of research and teaching. But unfortunately, good teaching brings little reputation, much less than good research. Universities are ranked according to their research output in terms of publications. Shouldn’t we rather be judged based on the success of our students? Success defined as satisfaction, not primarily during the time of studies, but rather during life after studies. This is to what, at our Faculty of Biology, Dr. Ursula Windmüller devotes all her energies: helping the students (including the doctoral candidates) to find out for themselves what they really want to achieve, what they are best at. And this is why the students of our faculty nominated her for the first ever Landeslehrpreis NRW . This Teaching Award is meant as a publicly visible recognition of excellence in teaching. The three winners in the categories Best Teaching at Universities, Universities of Applied Sciences, and Universities of Art and Music, all went to pioneers of digital teaching - surprisingly, given that there also was a special award category ‘digital teaching’, and perhaps a bit narrowly, too; but certainly well-deserved by all of the five winners. Dr. Windmüller’s strength lies in the direct and personal interaction with the students, so she was not among them. But being nominated by one’s own students certainly is at least as much honour as being selected by a committee of judges who only know the nominees from a few pages of paper. So: congratulations to Dr. Windmüller for the nomination!