| Department of Business Development and Technology (BTECH) | |
| Native Name: | Institut for Forretningsudvikling og Teknologi |
| Established: | January 1, 1995 |
| Type: | Business and Engineering University |
| Faculty: | 225 (full-time and part-time) |
| Director: | Anders Frederiksen |
| Head Label: | Management Team |
| Head: | Team of four (Anders Frederiksen, Jan Laursen, Peter Lindgreen, Mikkel S. Nørgaard) |
| Students: | 1,800 |
| City: | Herning |
| Country: | Denmark |
| Coor: | 56.1294°N 9.0275°W |
| Affiliations: | Aarhus University, Aarhus BSS, AU Engineering |
| Website: | Department of Business Development and Technology |
Department of Business Development and Technology (or BTECH for short) is a university department centre for research and higher education under Aarhus University, located in Herning, Denmark. BTECH's focus is on education excellence and offers six undergraduate and two graduate study programmes as well as a number of part-time studies all within the fields of engineering, business economics, management and communication and multimedia.
The department has seen some heavy administrational re-organisations in the last decade or so.
Department of Business Development and Technology is a department under Aarhus BSS, itself one of four academic departments of Aarhus University. Since 2012, BTECH has also been affiliated with AU Engineering, an organisation at Aarhus University focussing on engineering.
Apart from the educational activities, BTECH is home to a number of externally funded knowledge and research centres, including one Nordic Centre of Excellence. Research is anchored with four professorships and includes innovation and business development, entrepreneurship, energy technologies, IT development, climate adaptation and the wind energy industry.
BTECH has about 1,800 students (about sixty percent are full-time students and the rest are part-time students). Approximately 15% come from other countries than Denmark. Around 125 full-time employees, including technical and administrative personnel. Additionally, BTECH employs 100 part-time teachers.[1]
BTECH’s study programmes are based on interaction across professional boundaries as well as close interaction with students and the surrounding business community. However, BTECH is also developing distance- and e-learning to provide educational opportunities in evolving markets. Furthermore, all study programmes have an innovative and international perspective. For example, approximately 40% of the students spend at least six months of their studies at a foreign engineering college, university or company.
The following Bachelor and Master courses are offered in 2014:[2]
BTECH was founded in 1995 as a merger between Engineering School Vestjysk Teknikum and the Business School Midtjysk Handelshøjskolecenter under the name Handels- og IngeniørHøjskolen (HIH), in English - Herning Institute of Business Administration and Technology (HIBAT).
A new residence, designed by famous Danish architect Henning Larsen, was erected at Birk Centerpark 15 in Herning.
When, by January 1, 2006, HIBAT merged with Aarhus University, the name was changed to Aarhus Universitet, Handels- og IngeniørHøjskolen (AU-HIH) (in English: Aarhus University, Institute of Business and Technology (AU-IBT)).
June 1, 2011, AU-IBT was changed - this time to AU Herning - a centre of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences (Aarhus BSS) at Aarhus University.[3]
In January 2012 the engineering organisation of AU Engineering at Aarhus University also became involved with the engineering educations in Herning and AU Herning changed name to Department of Business Development and Technology (BTECH).