Skip to main content

Our Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Bahar Akıngüç Günver's Message on IKU Agenda - XXV

Dear Kültür Family,

We have left two weeks behind in the fall period we started by adapting our training and business processes to the new normal. In addition to our distance learning portal CATS V3, we prepared a total of 18 classrooms for hybrid education at our Ataköy and Şirinevler Campuses in order to increase the efficiency of live lessons. Our 2 classes are currently being designed with the mobile equipment philosophy. Our Foreign Languages department and our Faculty of Health Sciences have started to use our hybrid classrooms integrated into our Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation department CATSV3. It is pleasing to see that our technology investments turn into benefits for our students and academics. I wish our experiences with our hybrid classrooms and distance learning platform will be fruitful and positive throughout the fall semester.

Dear Kültür Family,

We continue our evaluation meetings with our deans and department heads regarding our training and business processes. It was promising to feel the strength, devotion and loyalty of our academics and administrative staff in our dialogue, especially in these days when we made great efforts to manage uncertainty.

Our reference point in the quality of the work we do is always our students. As a family of Kültür, keeping the student at the center in the face of events and situations, exhibiting an attitude and stance beside the student should be the main motivation of all of us. In our meetings, I observed that the comments and point of view were in this direction. I would like to thank all my colleagues who reflected our student-centered approach to the classroom climate and communication.

The new normal we are trying to adapt to forced us to change our educational habits. We try to keep the emotional states of our students at a positive level while adapting to change. However, our academic staff; I ask them to concentrate on their research and publication as well as student happiness and educational performance. I believe that we, as Kültür family, will make a difference in 2020-2021, especially with your research and publication activities that encourage student participation. As management, we are open to all ideas and suggestions that can coordinate research and training. We will continue to support scientific studies within our possibilities in the fall semester. Taking the time required for publication and research together with your course responsibility and administrative duties can sometimes turn into a question mark. At this point, time management appears as a topic. It is very important that you share your ideas and opinions on time planning for the balanced distribution of workload and effective execution of research, course and administrative tasks with department heads, deans and human resources department. Together we can decide how we can do better. On this occasion, I would like to state once again that the research and publication performance of our academic staff is as valuable and important to us as student happiness, and I wish you success in the new academic year.

Dear Kültür Family,

In the first week of October, the "Guide for Developing Healthy and Clean Environments in Higher Education Institutions in the Context of the Global Epidemic" of YÖK and TSE was published. In the following period, with the statements made by the Presidency, the time and planning of transition to face-to-face education at universities took place on the agenda. In the last days to the data for the second wave of the pandemic that started in Europe and Turkey, noted the sensitivity of the process. At this point the most basic topic that preserves the seriousness of the pandemic. In particular, I would like to comply with the hygiene conditions in all of our work, training and activity processes. As a university, it is our priority to comply with our working, education, nutrition, visitor procedures, and approach risks with individual responsibility and social sensitivity.

As Kültür Family, we made our plans by taking all scenarios into consideration. Our health and safety activities in our campuses have been continuing periodically since May. Our physical structures, including our activity areas, have been reorganized against the risks of the global epidemic. There is currently no clear decision on the Kültür agenda that face-to-face education will start in the fall semester. However, in the event of a possible scenario, I can assure you that we, as Kültür family, are prepared without compromising health and safety.

My Dear Kültür Family,

I have examined the global McKinsey survey in the past few days. According to the data, COVID-19 pandemic is evaluated as an element which has triggered the change in our lives and in our shape, in a short term. In the survey, in which 800 managers were attendants, the opinions on change about the nature of workplaces due to the acceleration of automation, digitalization and other trends are dominant. We have experienced the change in certain levels, however, the evaluation of change as a “destructive” element by other attendants, is the element which makes the survey striking. 

Feeling of exhaustion, stress are an outcome of the crisis of health and safety we are worrying about. It is our common responsibility to make good work organisation and ensure the psychological security, to not create fear and uneasiness between individuals, shortly to decrease the destructive effects. I am thinking that solidarity, the effort to create meaning, and being able to approach the needs of our immediate environment with a conscious awareness during the crisis are very valuable in the difficult days we are in. In this context, we started an initiative 2 weeks ago under the coordination of İKÜMED and KÜMED with the responsibility of being a trainer. Our target in the campaign, which we announced with the message “Together, we are one click stronger” is 200 computers. I would like to thank all my colleagues who sincerely supported our call, and I would like to take this opportunity to share once again that our campaign continues.

We will mitigate the devastating effects of this crisis through the work we achieve together, the value we generate, the sense of meaning we share.

Hope to see you on healthy days.

Dr. Bahar Akıngüç Günver
Chairperson of the Board of Trustees