Priorities:Istanbul Technical University Student Priorities

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Student Priorities

2022 Cohort | "Be the change you want to see on campus."

Project #1: Forming a Changemaker Community as organized as a Project Team

Person in Charge: Ömer Tarık İnce

Project Details

  1. Forming a project & research team with faculty champion
  2. Organizing fundamental events to teaching and spreading the entrepreneurial mindset to other students
  3. Supporting fellows' and other students projects to increase awareness and solving problems
  4. Making the UIF Fellowship Sustainable at Our University by organizing and promoting Fire Up event or creating other ways in necessary conditions
  5. Extending the community to other universities to promote UIF (in Türkiye and EELISA universities)


Project #2:Making students aware of the campus's entrepreneurship ecosystem by cooperating with a department

Person in Charge: Nurefşan Cebeci

Project Details

1.Investigating the culture of innovation on campus

2.Creating a student-friendly unit that spreads entrepreneurship

3.Cooperation with entrepreneurship and innovation institutions in campus

4. Organizing events in campus promoting these institutions and entrepreneurship


Project #3: Forming a Maker Community on the Campus

ITU Maker Community - Storyboard

Person in Charge: Seren Sıla Uysal

Project Details

  1. Providing the necessary space and tools to give every ITU student the opportunity to learn the maker culture and experience creating things by applying their engineering knowledge
  2. Organizing persistent trainings for students to learn essential tools in maker projects such as Arduino and 3D printers
  3. Bringing mentors and students together for making projects aiming improving the inside and outside campus facilities as a sub-group of the Changemakers Community. A simple example would be repairing an out-of-order automat at the cafeteria and change it into a bookself.
  4. Contributing to social responsibility projects such as Robotel Turkey, by (for example) printing 3D hand and leg prosthetics for free
  5. Organizing challanges to let community members enjoy building and teamwork in a challenging atmosphere.


Project #4: Open Innovation Call: Collaborating with Partners

Person in Charge: Başak Bozkır

Project Details

As our fourth project, we felt that there should be more options for students to become more active in the industry because the relationship between them and the sector is not strong enough. Therefore, we have made the decision to develop a design-phase program model, implement the program with suitable partners, and provide ITU students the chance to add value and solve the problem with their own project. So, how will this program model act?

  1. Initially, we have made the decision to expand the challenge-based program called "Let's Innomind," which was created by our faculty champion Zeynep Erden Bayazıt, and held last year. By guiding the second cohort this year, we will create a journey of the students who have participated, gather all the outputs of the program, and recreate the exact model for potential partnerships.
  2. With this open innovation model, partners will come up with a specific problem statement, and open a call for students to collaborate. Students will come up with several projects with the steps of the program, while gaining related abilities such as team-work, design thinking, presentation skills etc.
  3. At the end of the program, the prices will be given, the abilities of designing a solution will be gained and the chosen students will be nominated as 'Change-maker' in our 'Change-Maker Society'.
    While we were coming up with our fourth project, we have realized that especially in Turkey, people don't want to open their problems and their firms to strangers, and are strictly closed to any outside interference. We want to change this whole mindset of closeness for not only companies, but also students. As a result, we have chosen to include such activities in the program in order to emphasize the value of open innovation.



2020 Cohort | Change Story

Project #0: Learning Community Program:

Main Project of the 2020 Fall cohort of Istanbul Technical University

People in Charge: Cansu Çevik, Selenay Sonay Tufan, Selin Yılmaz, and Serhat Bilge

Project Details

The roadmap of the certificate program to be organized within the created ITU Innovation Mission is as follows:

  1. Firstly, the student shares his / her problem and solution proposal on the topic of the month from the platform.
  3. Selected ones meeting on the same denominator are grouped in Discord servers, thus creating learning circles.
  5. In the learning circles, readings and brainstorms on the main topics are carried out every week. Basic knowledge is fed by various Coursera training according to its denominators.
  7. Thanks to the mentors from the upper classes assigned to the groups, newcomers in the circle get to know the university culture and start drawing their roadmaps. In addition, tasks to be completed are assigned based on peer review learning nutrition.
  9. With sector talks (Tuesday Talks), which will be held regularly and Failure Week, sector recognition and networking are provided and university-industry cooperation is strengthened.
  11. Groups that want to move their projects to the start-up phase can be included in Tough Nut Innovation Camp (Optional).
  13. Students who actively complete the tasks assigned in the certificate program are invited to the Fire Up Change Pioneers Program.
  15. Students who have successfully completed the Fire Up process and selected through interviews will be introduced as a candidate cohort for the Stanford University Innovation Fellows Program.

Project #1: Forming a Project Teams Unit @ Istanbul Technical University:

Person in Charge: Selin Yılmaz

Project Details

There are 22 student project teams at Istanbul Technical University. They develop several projects that are enhanced with original design understanding, innovative and intelligent solutions, and aim to represent our country and our school in the best way by taking its place in the competition every year. Even though the teams have academic counselors, there is not a specific unit to be interface in their technology transfer process. To strengthen their connection with the industry, the project aims to establish an interface structure in the university which informs teams about the intellectual property law, patent procedures, and strategy development.

Project #2: Creating a Solution for the Socialization Problem of University Students:

Person in Charge: Selenay Sonay Tufan

Project Details

Our university is Turkey's first technical university and ITU has achieved success with its students and academic staff since 1773. However, when I examined the expectations of students from a school in my interviews, I realized that besides academic success, social life is also indispensable for students. Most of the students were not satisfied with the social life of our university, and they said that this issue got worse during the pandemic period. And I chose this project to develop and improve this issue. The basis of this project is to solve the socialization problem of ITU students.

The project I want to do to solve this issue is to organize activities that will enable students to meet each other and make good friendships. I think such activities will greatly increase the motivation of the student, especially in this period when we continue online education. In these socialization activities that I will carry out, I aim for every student to learn useful information as well as socializing. This learned knowledge can be an inspirational conversation, interesting research, or entrepreneurship training. Moreover, I think there is no limit to the information that can be shared. These socializing and meeting activities that I want to do online in the online term, can also be done face to face after the pandemic process. I hope these events to be organized will be included in ITU culture over the years and become one of the most anticipated events.


Project #3: Improving the Feedback System of the University:

Person in Charge: Cansu Çevik

Project Details

On-campus, lots of problems or complaints about school, life, education style or the world problems are as normal as all around the world. But specifically in ITU, we have a “Support Ticket System” about the lectures and general ideas about the school itself. Along with the research that we made and also personal experiences this kind of application students do not feel so comfortable because of this button connected to the school management and there is always a question about “Is my comment will be effective on my education treatment?” and we started from here to pop these bubbles and negativity in students' minds and turn these negative impacts to new brief innovation and entrepreneurship forest. Alright hun, “How Are We Going To Do This Real?”

Here are the steps:

Firstly, every month through some free apps and site questions will be uploaded to these connections which every type of student who is part of the campus and the ITU will have a brief word to mention. Secondly, these people will be involved in a process in which a group of tasks will be given and expect these students to finish their responsible parts. In this way, they asked to be completed a course on “Coursera” which will increase their type of creativity and engagement. Thirdly, according to the process, students who finished their tasks actively on the due date will be connected to another innovation project called Fire-Up Changemakers Program. Fourth, after all these assumptions students will get into the UIF Programme.

In general, the idea is to involve students in innovation and entrepreneurship through specific problem sessions.


Project #4: Innovation Discourse of the Istanbul Technical University:

Person in Charge: Serhat Bilge

Project Details

According to observations and 1-1 interview insights, my team and I released that people need to work together and a common perspective and approach to creating value in a manner. That's why we designed the first project as a workshop chain. With the workshops, we supply people an opportunity to join a participatory platform and create value with different, unfamiliar people.

So, what will they do? They will state the ITU Innovation Discourse. They will help people to adapt and to take action according to discourse thanks to workshops facilitated. After the conceptual acceptance, we will organize adaptation meetings to carry the innovation discourse into the daily workflow and turn it into concrete outputs. We will ensure that the relationship between the vision and strategy of the organization with the statement is clarified.

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