Priorities:Middle East Technical University Student Priorities
Contents
Strategic Priority 1
MEETU
We observed that students' overall happiness is strongly affected by their social lives. In order to help them socialize in METU, we designed a program called “MEETU”. This program aims to encourage freshmans to socialize and to help them with the process of adapting to school. For the first 2 weeks of the program, we are organizing ice-breaking activities for the freshmans to help them socialize on campus.
To help them with the process, we are matching a senior student with a foreign and a Turkish student. With their mentor, freshmans can learn more about school. We also care about the language barrier between international students and school staff, so mentors in the program are responsible for facilitating communication between them, too.
Key Tactics:
- Match 2 freshmans (1 Turkish and 1 international student) with 1 senior to ease that freshmans get help when needed.
- Use senior students also as “language bridgers” between international students and school staff(ex:dorm,canteen staff).
- Organize 2 orientation weeks which includes a brief view of METU and ice breaking activities for new students.
- Send feed-back forms via email weekly to check whether something is wrong or can be shared with other mentor-mentee matches to be helpful.
Time Frame:
The very beginning of academic years (4 week)
1st and 2nd weeks- ice breaking activities for new students of METU
3rd week- Mentor and mentee applications open. 1 mentor for 2 freshmans are matched by the algorithm. Mentors are getting a crash course about how to be a great mentor.
4th week- Mentors are helping mentees, we are getting feedback from all students included in the program.
Strategic Priority 2
Hit The Road
As we observed on our Landscape Canvas, there are courses and programs in our school to develop soft skills. However, their biggest problem is that they are not interactive enough and not inclusive for all departments. Therefore, although they are sufficient as a curriculum, there are many points that need to be improved in practice. To address this problem, we created a 7-week-training with comprehensive content in order to practice the skills that can not be obtained from a traditional curriculum. The strongest point of Hit The Road is being interactive. Thus, participants obtain soft skills like teamwork, presentation, and design thinking by practicing.
Content of Hit The Road :
1st week: Orientation and Teamwork
2nd week: How NOT to make a presentation?
3rd week: Design Thinking (include sustainability)
4th week: Case Studies about problems in campus/METU
5th week: Social Responsibility(using methods covered in previous weeks.)
6th-7th week: Presentations from participants as teams.
Key Tactics:
- Students will be given interactive courses with smaller groups than usual courses.
- Soft skill education will be at the center of these courses.
- Design Thinking, Project Management, and Presentation Skills are 3 essential topics.
- Mentorships will be provided to the students.
- Teams include diversity and students learn working with one another.
- The method of the course will be informal education mostly.
Strategic Priority 3
SPACEMETU
Students in METU face difficulties when they want to conduct a team job because there isn't an available place on campus. SPACEMETU is an area open to all students which is designed by students. Teams can gather here and conduct design-thinking processes and projects.
Key Tactics:
- Make this space available as many hours a day as possible.
- Make students comfortable in this space.
- Separate some special areas for teams to work.
- The area should be flexible.
- Regular events should be organized and as a result, it should be a place where students like to meet frequently.
- The administration of this place should be student-based.
Strategic Priority 4
ideapol
By looking at the feedbacks from our peers and seniors, we wanted to focus on a student-based hub which centers innovation and entrepreneurship for our 4th project. We combined the problems that we are trying to tackle with a physical hub. After we conducted researches on METU campus assets, we discovered an apparent gap between the transfer of projects from a prototype to the manufacture of the idea. Consequently, we decided to be the bridge, reviving the projects from the perfect prototypes and pushing the members to go beyond the theories and make actual models . Similarly, this hub is a meeting point for all the various clubs, which we believe will be the combination of powers and experiences to create feasible results. Not limited to that, we want to make our end-products available to all the universities, since we agree that the more brains, the better gains for all.
Key Tactics:
- Different students from different student clubs should work together for campus problems.
- The student-based hub should be inclusive for all students.
- Various ice-breaking activities will be held.
- There will be various soft skills, design thinking, and problem solving classes.
- Case-study integrated workshops for campus problems will be held.
- Problem solving teams will be formed by diverse group of students in order to strengthen teamwork skills.
- Workshop, and solving processes for different problems around the campus will be shared on a platform for other universities to see.
- Creative and innovative approaches in every field (from designing the room to ice-breaking ideas) is welcomed.
- This hub will serve as a learning, and taking action space both on-line and face to face in the area created and designed for this hub.
- There will be various events for career growth regularly.
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