Professorship of Business Education

The Chair of Business Education is part of the Institute of Business Education within the School of Business, Economics and Society at FAU.

Offices and Responsibilities

Professor Kimmelmann’s work, guided by the principle of lifelong learning, focuses on a wide range of vocational education contexts, spanning vocational preparation and career orientation, dual vocational training, and continuing vocational education, as well as personnel management and development. Through her membership in the collegial leadership team of the FAU Competence Center Education, the central academic institution for education and teaching support, higher education teaching and the qualification of student tutors and teaching staff at FAU are also integral parts of her professional profile.

In her role as Diversity Officer of the School of Business, Economics and Society, Professor Kimmelmann supports FAU’s awareness concept through a wide range of measures targeting students as well as academic and academic support staff.

Within the working group “Inclusion in Educational Contexts”, she advocates for embedding inclusion, understood in a broad sense, across all teacher education programs.

As coordinator of the second teaching subjects German for Vocational Purposes and Inclusive Education Education, she consistently integrates her expertise into the education and training of students.

Within the working group Internationalization in Teacher Education, she contributes to initiatives promoting international mobility as well as the development of intercultural courses and training measures aimed at fostering students’ intercultural competencies.

From the winter semester 2026/27 onwards, Professor Kimmelmann and her team will be responsible for the WiSo onboarding of bachelor’s students across all economics and business degree programs at the School, including the business simulation course.

Research Profile and Activities

The Chair conducts research on key organizational framework conditions, changing competency requirements, the professionalization of educational staff, and innovative didactic designs across various contexts of vocational education and training, including leadership and human resource development.

Current research focuses on diversity, language, and inclusion in vocational education and training, teachers’ resilience and stress management, artificial intelligence in educational contexts, and the future of work and education. International perspectives and comparative approaches addressing shared challenges in these fields also form an integral part of the research agenda.

The Chair’s research is strongly design-oriented, following Design-Based Research approaches. In close collaboration with practitioners in the field of education, and drawing on both qualitative and quantitative research methods, the Chair develops educational interventions, including design principles for their sustainable implementation across different contexts. Over recent years, this work has resulted, for example, in several topic-specific mentoring and training programs for defined target groups, didactic concepts and tools for vocational schools and companies, and competency models for the professionalization of educators.