West Virginia University football team visits GEA

GEA recently received a special visit from football players from the Chambers Elite Climbers of West Virginia University (WVU) in Bönen, Germany, as part of an exchange program with Münster University of Applied Sciences (UAS). The sports professionals are enrolled in various courses of study in their home country, including business administration. Since GEA produces milking and feeding technology at its Bönen site, a hackathon on the topic of sustainable milk production was a natural choice. In keeping with the theme, participants also visited a farm that uses GEA technology. Here, for example, the dairy cows are milked with a GEA robot.

The contact to the mechanical engineering company was established through GEA employee Colby McGill, who himself had participated in a summer school with WVU as a graduate of Münster University of Applied Sciences. The Münster School of Business (MSB) at Münster UAS and WVU have been working closely together for more than ten years. In addition to sports career development, the "Chambers Elite Climbers" program also aims to help students develop intercultural skills. This includes a visit to various European cities and exchanges with students from all over the world. At GEA, the participants were able to get a taste of mechanical engineering and dairy farming for a day.

After the tour of the farm and the milking robot, Christian Müller, Senior Director Portfolio, Market Intelligence and Sustainability at GEA Farm Technologies introduced the guests to the topic of sustainability in agriculture together with Prof. Dr. Nora Verfürth from MSB. The two keynote speeches were the prelude to the hackathon. Here, teams were to develop solutions on the topic of Next Generation Farming and present them to a jury in 90 seconds. "For the farmer and his animals, the focus is on animal welfare, profitability and sustainable agriculture. All of these must go hand in hand," Christian Müller summarizes. "It was exciting to see how the teams approached these topics with different approaches." Football player Ja'Quay Hubbard takes home a few things from the visit, "I learned that the dairy manufacturing business is much more complex than I thought. There's so much digitization involved."

"Our visitors fly back to the USA with many new insights and perspectives," Prof. Dr. Mike Wasserman from MSB is certain. Jennifer Burkart, initiator of the Summer School and lecturer in Business English at Münster UAS, is also satisfied: "I am really proud that WVU decided to organize this program for its top student athletes together with MSB. It shows that we have built a great collaboration over the years."