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Our 8th Graduation Ceremony Held with Great Enthusiasm!
Our University's 8th Graduation Ceremony was held on Sunday, 4 July 2010, at İnönü Stadium. Our graduates will shortly be able to access videos and photos at http://mezuniyet.bahcesehir.
More detailed information about our Graduation Ceremony can be found in the text below.
Bahçeşehir University Sends Off Another Group of Students to Change the World!
As Bahçeşehir University leaves behind the 2009–2010 Academic Year, in which it celebrated its twelfth anniversary, it is experiencing the excitement of graduating a new class. Bahçeşehir University's 2009-2010 graduates set out on the most important journey of their lives with the graduation ceremony held on Sunday, 4 July 2010. The ceremony was attended by the entire Bahçeşehir University academic staff, President Prof. Dr. Yılmaz Esmer and Chair of the Board of Trustees Enver Yücel, and its guest of honor was Minister of National Education Nimet Çubukçu.
Delivering the opening speech at the graduation ceremony held at BJK İnönü Stadium,
Bahçeşehir University President Prof. Dr. Yılmaz Esmer began by stating that the University had reached a good point in what can be considered a very short time in the life of a university, and that this was a record in the history of education that would be hard to break. President Esmer described the point the university has reached and its international goals with these words:
“"Today, we have a total of 10,251 students in our 6 faculties, two graduate schools and vocational school. This year, we are graduating 1,600 students. We have settled in the heart of Istanbul, right on the shore of our unique Bosphorus. We have opened our school in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. We are about to open in Berlin. Our goal is to plant the Bahçeşehir flag in the world's major capitals, and we will reach this goal..
In the last 3-4 days, yes, just in these last 3-4 days, we have hosted top-level administrators and scientists from Oxford University, Northeastern University, Syracuse University, New York University and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and developed new joint programs. Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ahmed Zewail was our guest.
Let me name a few more universities: Yale, Michigan State, Stanford, Zurich, Princeton, UC Irvine, Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, MIT, Wisconsin, Oxford, McGill, Cambridge, Toronto, New York University, Virginia Tech, Sorbonne, Amsterdam, Columbia, Texas A&M, Georgetown, London, Duke… And the world's leading higher education institutions like them... Do you know what they have in common? Many scientists who received their diplomas from these institutions are now on the academic staff of our Bahçeşehir University.
So, dear graduates, this is the point our Bahçeşehir University has reached in 12 years. You have become graduates of a university with these qualities."
Taking the podium after Prof. Esmer, Enver Yücel, Founder and Chair of the Board of Trustees of Bahçeşehir University, said that although they had left 12 years behind, they were experiencing the excitement of a young man at the point they had reached.
Stating that the point they had reached was commendable, Yücel noted that they had said they would be among the world's top 500 universities in 2023 and that they were continuing on their way without losing any of their enthusiasm. Stating that education is the first thing that comes to mind in solving the problems countries face, Yücel said: "No society that has not solved its education problem has been able to reach the level of contemporary civilization. The path to our country's development, to reaching the level of contemporary civilization, and to prosperity, happiness, peace and fraternity does not pass through any particular geographical region of our country. The only way is quality education, and I believe that as a country we will solve this together."
Yücel concluded his speech by giving the following advice to Bahçeşehir University's 8th graduating class:
"Your heart and intuition know what you want to do. Everything else is secondary.
If the noise of others prevents you from hearing the voice of your own heart, do not allow it. Have the courage to follow whichever path the voice of your heart leads you to. Do not waste your time living other people's lives. Invest in yourself and work hard for it. The wind can blow from every direction: from the East, the West, the South or the North. It is the captain who determines the ship's course. Do not be a prisoner of the wind. Be prepared for failure, but do not accept defeat; do not get used to defeat. Speak softly, listen aggressively. Hear what you say, absorb what you hear. Choose your words carefully when you speak. Words are like money; they must be spent carefully. Have beliefs and principles, not prejudices. Be a team, not a side, in your work. Be among those who see both the forest and the trees. Dream big; let your dreams make your blood boil. Dream of the summits."
Taking the podium after Yücel, the guest of honor of the ceremony, Minister of National Education Nimet Çubukçu, began by expressing her happiness at being at Bahçeşehir University's graduation ceremony and congratulated the 1,600 graduating students with the words: "I believe that each of you will reach great heights in your fields and make your own contributions to the growth and development of our country. From now on, we expect you to take determined, continuous and respectable steps forward for yourselves, your surroundings, our country and humanity, and to create a more advanced and developed Türkiye that can compete with knowledge societies and get ahead of them."
Minister Çubukçu continued: "In our world, which has entered a process of very rapid global change since the 1980s, one of the two prominent elements is people and the other is knowledge. In the century we live in, the most important inputs of the economy are knowledge and human capacity. Therefore, universities, which undertake the task of training the human resources that produce science and technology and develop and use technology, must fulfill this task in the most effective way. In an environment of competition and globalization, the quality and contribution of the knowledge produced at universities play an increasingly important role."
Explaining that higher education in Türkiye has made great progress in terms of quantity and quality, Çubukçu noted that, as at all levels of education, efforts have accelerated in higher education in many areas such as quality, openness to the world, the promotion of lifelong learning, flexible learning, and international cooperation and exchange of experience.
Stating that, with its work in line with these efforts, Bahçeşehir University is progressing rapidly both in preparing its students for life as world citizens and in becoming a world university, Çubukçu continued: "There is a continuous increase in demand for university education in our country. As the government, we have tried to meet this increase in demand by establishing a university in each of our provinces and increasing the capacity of our existing universities. During the terms of our governments, we have given the greatest support to the development and growth of foundation universities. We see our foundation universities not as an alternative to our existing higher education system but as a part of it, and we think they should be seen this way. Considering countless factors such as competition among universities, quality in education, our country's schooling target in higher education and meeting our young people's demand for higher education, the importance of establishing, supporting and developing foundation universities is clear. While the number of universities in our country was 76 in 2002, 53 state and 23 foundation universities, as of today 146 universities serve, 95 state and 51 foundation universities. I would like to note that a bill on the establishment of 7 state universities and one foundation university is currently on the agenda of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye and will be discussed this week."
Later in the ceremony, Çubukçu, Yücel and Esmer presented the "Golden Brain" award to Ece Başaran, a Faculty of Law student and the top student of the 2009-2010 academic year, and plaques of achievement to Doğan Haktan Erdoğdu from the Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, who ranked second, and Melek Merve Toktamış from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, who ranked third.
