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| 12 Feb 2026 | |
| Germany | |
| Global Teacher Prize |
Global Teacher Prize Ambassador Dr. Marie Ghanbari has been awarded the 2025 Rectorate Teaching Award, a prestigious honour presented every three years and endowed with €30,000, recognising outstanding commitment and excellence in higher education teaching. She received the award for the Sportpaten project, an innovative initiative she launched in 2012 that the jury praised for its forward-thinking seminar design and powerful societal impact, particularly in developing students’ empathic skills.
The Sportpaten project is an interdisciplinary programme that bridges theory, research, and practice. Over two semesters, university students are trained as sports mentors, each supporting a schoolchild through weekly sport-based activities that foster both physical and psychosocial development. The initiative creates meaningful, real-world learning experiences while positively impacting children’s lives.
Originally founded within the Department of Sport Psychology, the programme has since expanded across the Department of Sports Science and now includes Medicine, Business and Economics, Law, and Educational Sciences. To date, more than 1,000 students have participated in 46 interdisciplinary seminars, each mentoring a child. With six cross-faculty seminars now delivered annually, Sportpaten stands as a powerful model of practice-oriented higher education, benefiting both students and communities alike.
