Interviews
A Look Into
EESTEC’s past
Interviewee: Jürgen Tzschoppe
Interviewer: Yagmur Tulga, Darija Šalehar
EESTEC is a huge network, becoming bigger and bigger each day, since the day it was found. Year after year, our
Association changes itself with innovation and offers us an open field in which we can power
our future in the best way!
This time, with the help of our History Book, we looked back to the year 1992 in EESTEC. Jürgen Tzschoppe,
Vice-Chairman in 1992 International Board, kindly accepted to do an interview with us, and replied
our questions related to those years in EESTEC, its expansion since those days and shared
his point of view of us, volunteers in an International Students Association.
We would once more like to thank to Jürgen for his acceptance, the interview was a big pleasure for us!
Jürgen studied in Aachen, joined EESTEC in 1989 and volunteered
to become Vice Chairman of EESTEC International. He was also
chief editor of the Newsletter for some time. Today, he is working
as Senior Vice President in the Norwegian based energy company
Statkraft, the biggest producer of renewable energy in Europe. He is
responsible for energy market activities in Continental Europe, UK,
Turkey and South America. After his studies of Electrical Engineering
he worked for several years at the University of Aachen, consulting
energy companies and finishing his PhD. Before joining Statkraft in
2002 he worked with the American energy trading firm Enron. Jürgen
lives in Düsseldorf/Germany, is married and has two kids.
Please share your story behind the decision of joining EESTEC in
those years.
I started studying in 1988 and joined EESTEC a year later. Back then
EESTEC was one activity in the Students’ Association, taking care of
international contacts. Honestly, I found it quite exciting linking to Universities and people abroad.
The first exchange I joined was with the University of Budapest. 10-15
students from Aachen went to Budapest for a 10 days trip and in the
other direction shortly afterwards for a return visit. Back then my motivation was about meeting people from different cultures and nationalities. Meeting and exchanging thoughts was great fun actually triggered
me volunteering to work with the Association.
At that time organization was informal, exchanges were the core, but
a few workshops were organized too. I remember visiting Denmark for
a workshop about renew X