"It almost went to shit," Monika Werner says with a laugh about her path to the HSWT. When the University of Applied Sciences wanted to tell her after the interview that she had the job, no one could reach her - because the trained office clerk had just moved in the meantime and attempts to contact her failed at both - the new and the old address. That was at the end of the eighties, before e-mails and smartphones. "Fortunately, it worked out by phone at some point," Monika Werner remembers. And so she started her job as a secretary at the beginning of April 1989 in the "Department of Agriculture 1", as the department was then called. For the first six months, she worked in Landshut before the entire department moved to the Weihenstephan campus.

People matter to her

"I need people around me, and that something is stirring," says the native of Freising. She has sought and found this at HSWT. The 60-year-old describes her decision to come to the University of Applied Sciences as a "destiny", with a wink but in all seriousness. "I liked my previous job as an industrial clerk at a food importer, but I was alone most of the time and had more to do with numbers than people. Then I saw the HSWT job advertisement in the newspaper," she recalls. What she likes most about her job as Dean's Secretary in the Department of Sustainable Agriculture and Energy Systems is interacting with colleagues and students: "I simply need that. I like to support and help. So, she sometimes provides emotional support when students with minor or major problems come to her office, and there are always a few sweets in her desk drawer to give out as nourishment.

Monika Werner has a good relationship with her colleagues. That is one of the reasons why she says: "I would always take the job again and again. I wouldn't want to work anywhere else. Until a colleague retired last year, there were three of them in the deanery secretariat - the three women have worked together for around 30 years. They also meet regularly in private, and that will, of course, continue even though they no longer share an office.

Monika Werner also has a good working relationship with the dean's office staff from the other departments. "Before the coronavirus pandemic, we established a format for mutual exchange with an annual face-to-face meeting, which we would like to continue after the pandemic," she reports.

This is where the threads come together

Monika Werner's tasks include assisting with the exam coordination and student support, dealing with the departments' part-time lecturers, bureaucratic correspondence and telephone service. "We in the dean's office are the contact point for all kinds of concerns," says Monika Werner. During her professional career, she has not only witnessed the growth of HSWT but also an enormous technical change in her everyday work. "In the beginning, I mainly kept the grade sheets and wrote scripts and exam papers. For that, I had a typewriter, which was very modern at the time, that could store 600 characters and had a small screen," she recalls with a smile. "At some point, I had to decide whether to buy another model like that or a PC - my choice was in favour of the PC."

Precisely because she appreciates working with people, has an open ear for everyone and creates positive interaction, Monika Werner needs time for herself in her free time to balance things out. She describes hiking as her "soul food" - wether in the Bavarian Alps, South Tyrol, on Majorca or along the Portuguese coast. "That's where I look for peace and solitude," she says and goes into rapture at the thought of the views of the Atlantic.

Her latest interest, on the other hand, is quite a hustle and bustle - but of the animal kind. "About two years ago, I created another balance for myself and started beekeeping," says the mother of two grown-up children. Last year, she set up her first young colonies and is now hoping for a bee-friendly, high-yield summer. She wouldn't be Monika Werner if she didn't think of others: "When my girls are busy and the honey harvest is good, my colleagues get samples, of course," she emphasises.