IUE ESTABLISHES A NEW ROUTE
Izmir University of Economics established a new route for the next 10 years. IUE, one of the leading universities of Turkey, and the first Foundation University of Aegean Region, conducted a “2013 – 2023 Strategic Plan Search Conference” to brainstorm how to provide more qualified education and better services to its national and foreign national students.
A group of 80 people including IUE Rector Prof. Dr. Tunçdan Baltacıoğlu, academicians, managers, businessmen, graduates, and Turkish and foreign national students discussed the future of the University at the conference that took place at Çeşme Boyalık Beach Hotel, which was renovated by Nail Özkardeş. The participants got into groups to brainstorm, and took the first steps to make IUE become a world star university. Prof. Dr. Seeram Ramakrishna also gave a conference on “creativeness, innovativeness” at the organization. Seeram Ramakrishna is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Vice-President (Research Strategy) at the National University of Singapore, NUS. He is the founding Co-Director of NUS Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Initiative.
Ekrem Demirtaş, President of IUE Board of Trustees, reminded that they established the University based on Ataturk’s legacy at the first Economic Congress in Izmir, where he asked “chambers of commerce to establish a university in big cities”. President Demirtaş said, “After establishing our university with this legacy in 2001, we also established our goal of making IUE a world university. We did our study about what the trend was when we were establishing the university. We established a student focused teaching system that taught how to retrieve information. We are not speaking of our success only. The data by Ministry of Science, Industry, and Technology clearly proves our success. Our Faculty of Medicine and research centres have not started education yet. We have just established our Engineering faculties. In spite of all this, we rank in 42nd place among 175 universities.”
“IUE, A World University”
President Ekrem Demirtaş also indicated that they were the first higher education institution to adapt to Bologna Process among the other foundation universities, and they ranked in 5th place in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. Demirtaş, stated the following:
“The world is at a very fast pace. Trends, technology changes rapidly. We constantly ask the question of ‘what we should do’. We think about how we can ensure a better future for our children with a flexible education system. Currently, there are 200 million students all around the world. How can we create a student profile to take place among the first 10 thousands, 20 thousands among 200 million students? How can we make our graduates, not survive, walk, run, but fly? Our target is to come up with an education model that will make them different and excel.”
Demirtaş stated that a ship cannot make it to the harbour without a route. He said, “First, we need to establish a route. Therefore, we need a 10 year strategic plan. We always made our plans. Our last plan was good until 2013. Now we are planning for the years 2013 – 2023. Our target for 2023 is to become a world university, to be at a different place from other universities, and to make a distinction.”
“Internationalism brings success”
Prof. Dr. Seeram Ramakrishna on the other hand stated that Singapore declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 and took steps to become a world country. Ramakrishna, who stated that English was chosen as the official language, said, “Singapore today is in second place in entrepreneurship and innovativeness in world economics. We worked so hard for this; we placed special importance on higher education. National University of Singapore has a 100 year old history, but in 1990’s we left our identity as an education university and became a research university. It gained specialty on some areas. It became more autonomous. Each faculty member started to do a research at the University. In 2010, we adopted the concept of global research, global learning.”
Prof. Dr. Ramakrishna stated that learning experiences should be more flexible and said universities becoming international increased the success.
