The Core Program is an essential step concerning quality education associated with sustainable development goals. This program is equally applied to all undergraduate students, encouraging the principle of equality and ensuring that each student is able to create a basic understanding of sustainable development.

 

The students start education in the first year within the scope of the Core Program. Then, they are given the opportunities and facilities to develop and implement all the theoretical knowledge and practical skills they may need through the Project Education Model starting in the second year. Each academic topic taught within the scope of the Project Based Education Model is discussed within specific models adapted to a particular project. Starting from the second semester, it is ensured that a student carries out at least two projects in each semester, questions the formation needed to attain the goal of that project, and gets the necessary knowledge and skills in the topics discussed during that semester.

 

The compulsory courses given during the spring and fall semesters, such as Scientific Discoveries and Consequences, History of Humanity, Universal Values and Ethics, and Design, provide the students with various points of view and help them understand the context of sustainability. These courses help the students improve their thinking skills scientifically, historically, ethically, and critically and obtain the basic knowledge and understanding they may need to attain sustainable development goals.

 

The specific elective courses that a student is free to choose to allow them to get a further understanding of various topics concerning sustainable development. These courses, offered within the scope of a wide range from economy to art, science to history, allow the students to conduct further research and analyses in sustainability-related issues. This makes it possible for the students to specialize in sustainable development according to their areas of interest and increase their potential to produce efficient solutions in the future.

 

Different modules in the course are taught by specialist instructors, which ensures that the students get knowledge in a way appropriate for different learning styles. In addition, different measurement and assessment methods are used during the student’s learning process, which helps them improve their skills of profoundly and critically understanding the topics discussed.

 

Various resources are used in the course’s contents, which provide the students with different points of view and help them discuss the topics in a detailed manner. The use of videos, films, books, articles, documentaries, and other materials encourages the students to interact with visual, audio, and written materials accordingly. This contributes to the efforts intended to help the students deeply understand the issues discussed.

 

The courses given and events organized within the organization of our University in connection with this goal are detailed below.

• Courses

• KHAS 107 Design: Within the scope of this mandatory course of design for all the first-year students of the university under the Core Program, out of the student projects intended to provide a solution to a particular problem identified by the students at the campus and its surroundings are specific projects that focus on the improvement of life at the campus and the standard course department. For example, specific student projects were carried out, such as the card designs intended to help the foreign students get familiar with Istanbul and Cibali, the box games designed to help the new students to know about the university and their departments, the reorganization of the “buddy program”, a support program that matches the first year students with more experienced students, considering the needs of the students, and the creation of an “academic buddy program”, the reorganization of the standard courses department’s syllabus and colander, considering the needs of the students, and the organization of events and meetings so that the first year students know one another, and get socialized.
• KHAS101 Origins and Consequences: This course taught by the teachers, each of whom is a specialist in their own field, discusses the different aspects of science within the scope of a project-based education system, delivering quality education that helps the students improve their skills of reading, doing research, understanding, writing and making presentations away from the form of rote learning.
• KHAS103 History of Humankind: This is a case-based course, which blends the current and past based on significant questions in respect of social sciences and history, prioritizing the engagement of the students and thus delivering an innovative approach including but not limited to classroom activities, visual and written materials.
• KHAS 105 Universal Values and Ethics expects the students to be able to:

1. Deliver a higher level of awareness regarding universal values and undertake the personal and social responsibilities necessary to live in a diversified world accordingly.
2. Show that they understand the importance of having a point of view or thought independent of the effectiveness of theory and judgments of others.
3. Use efficient mental and discursive tools to provide a creative and critical response to the current issues and ethical dilemmas.
4. Assess and differentiate the scientific and popular texts from one another.
5. Have the skill of critically questioning personal beliefs and prejudices.
6. Display the competence of identifying the nuances in the selection of words and the manipulative language.

• KHAS 110 Social Responsibility: Our University combined forces with an association called Bütün Çocuklar Bizim Derneği (BÇBD) in this respect. BÇBD is a non-governmental organization that supports the education and development of disadvantaged children. Within the scope of the training events organized by BÇBD, the students participated in these events with the students from Kırımlı Aslanbey Elementary School. Immigrant students are participating in these events to ensure an inclusive educational organization. These events include but are not limited to origami, watching films, visiting museums, reading books, improving communication skills, etc.
• KHAS 110 Social Responsibility: Our University combined forces with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Neighborhood Houses in this respect. These Neighborhood Houses support the education and development of people through certain events intended for those of various ages. The students contributed to the events organized by the Neighborhood Houses. These events are arranged in a wide range, such as helping children study their courses, contributing to their development by means of playing games with them, and participating in such organizations intended for adults.
• KHAS 110 Social Responsibility: Our University combined forces with the Education Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV) in this respect. Within the scope of this cooperation, the students help those who are in need to study their courses online.
• TLL 101 and TLL 102: This course is intended to help the students enhance their skills of expressing themselves verbally and in writing competently during their daily reading, understanding the texts based on arguments of different extents, and producing written and verbal critical comments about the texts they read. Within the scope of this course, the students are encouraged to express their thoughts/arguments individually or within a group of people appropriately. This course gives the students the skill to access the right printed, digital, and visual resources to carry out academic research and gain an understanding of practicing academic integrity principles while producing written and verbal works. This course is designed not in a way that a teacher talks about a topic for many hours. Still, the students discuss the issues in question, provide comments thereon, express their ideas individually or as a member of a group of people, and criticize the productions of other students in a written and verbal manner as a reading/writing workshop.

 

Period	Course Code	Course
2022-23 Fall	SGS598	Seminar
2022-23 Spring	SGS598	Seminar

 

• Seminars and Training
  • Training Programs
• From the Catholic Armenian Girls School to the Istanbul Art Center: ‘Discovering of an Abbey: This speech tells the story of a building where the Istanbul Art Center is located, which is on the Sakızağacı Avenue in Tarlabaşı, Beyoğlu, also known as the “Abbey,” and the process of discovering this story.
• I feel like I am losing myself’: Humanitarian protection, security, and queer migrants in Istanbul: What does security mean for queer migrants and humanitarian assistance workers? How is the humanitarian protection regime shaped? Is it possible for the current regime to protect the homosexual people?
• Pastoral Nomadism in Transition: Nomadic tribes, State, and Market in Nineteenth-Century Northeastern Anatolia: This article analyzes the political, economic, and social transformation of the nomadic tribes in Northeastern Anatolia due to their direct relationships with an imperial state that was under the process of being centralized, and their integration with a market being expended in the second half of the 19th century.
• Mean Streets Metastasized: Homelessness and Public Space after the Urban Revolution: Don Mitchell is known for his studies in the field of critical geography, and the topics of his research include the cultural and political economy of landscaping, as well as the social theory and labor, Marxism, and power and marginalization geographies.
• Sweatshop Regulation and Global Equality: Sweatshops are businesses where most people work under unfavorable conditions. Activists and progressive governments regulate the working conditions of these sweatshops.
• Kristin Ross’ Rancièrean Anti-Sociology in May ’68 and its Afterlives: A Critical Reading: Among the studies about the memory of May 68 are, in particular, the study of Kristin Ross called May 68 and its Afterlives as a unique approach to understanding the political meaning of the May events against the subsequent depoliticized comments.
• Solving the Biological Complexity with Data-Driven Machine Learning Methods: Biology and the tools thereof have always been to understand nature and find a cure for diseases. The practices thereof have always been progressing at an extraordinary speed. Biological interactions in organisms are complex and require that the interdisciplinary complex systems are understood.
• Literary ‘Vagabonds and Adventure of Modernization: In literature, the characters who leave their home, become homeless, or do not feel at “home”, and the characters who leave a settled life and become ‘vagabonds’, are in general in breach of the Law identified with ‘home’ or Big Other and, display the characteristics of a rootless person or a person who renounce their inheritance rights by means of leaving their metaphoric homes, into which they were born (a home, history, identity, socio-economic position, etc., each is told with a big narrative). The ‘crisis’ moments experienced by these characters are essential for literature since they refer to a physical and intellectual breakdown.
• Imperial Flashbacks in Cold War Turkey: A nation is envisaged in a way associated with a homeland, a ‘sacred’ source of livelihood, outputs, energy, and emotions. In modern communities, where more people start to meet ‘others’ through displacements, immigrations, wars, and modernization, nationalist myths referring to the collective memories of the places gain strength in helping people oppose the status of ‘being homeless’.
• Coping with The Loss of Empire: British Spy Fiction and Turkish Literary Conspiracism: The publication of the famous novel by Rudyard Kipling called Kim in 1901 refers to the beginning of spy fiction as a popular literary genre that would continue to develop with the contributions of the leading novelists of the twentieth century English literature; Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Helen MacInnes, and John Le Carré are a few of them. In the context of the British Empire under the progress of being rotten, spy fiction energized the imperial myths, excluding internal problems and hostilities through enemy and traitor characters, and provides the readers with cognitive maps of the complex geopolitical relations.