After 20 years as Director of the SDI and 13 years as President of the International University of Applied Sciences SDI Munich, Professor Felix Mayer is retiring from his positions and handing over to the Vice President and Deputy Director Professor Florian Feuser.
Professor Felix Mayer was elected Director of the SDI Munich in 2000. Seven years later, the University of Applied Languages was founded under his leadership to promote the academization of language professions in Bavaria. In the years that followed, a comprehensive range of intercultural degree programmes in the fields of business, communication and language was created, so that it was only logical that the university was renamed International University SDI München in 2020.
After 20 years at the helm of the SDI, Professor Mayer would now like to devote his time to research and teaching. He will remain closely associated with the SDI as a professor.
Professor Florian Feuser will assume the functions of acting President and Director on 1 October 2020. As the current Vice President and Deputy Director, he is very familiar with the SDI’s business areas. Due to his professional background, the SDI has already been able to benefit from his practical experience in recent years. As Professor of Intercultural Communication and Director of the Master's Program in Intercultural Communication, he knows the students’ needs and the requirements of the job market.
“Our students and pupils are the focus of our work and of our actions. Together with my colleagues at SDI, we will do everything we can to live up to this claim. I would like to thank Professor Mayer warmly for the good and collegial cooperation over the past years and for the impulses he has been able to provide to the SDI,” said Professor Feuser on assuming his new functions. “At the SDI young people who enjoy languages, communication and interculturalism come together. Expressed in an image, we are akin to bridge builders – bridge builders for successful communication, without which there are no viable solutions in society, politics or business," says Florian Feuser, explaining the SDI’s guiding principle.