Priorities:Middle East Technical University Student Priorities
Contents
FALL 2024
Strategic Priority 1
PEER PROJECT INSPRATION PROGRAM
- Strategic Priority:
Enhancing Student Engagement Through Peer Learning
- Objective:
We aim to inspire students by showcasing successful projects completed by their peers, fostering a culture of innovation and motivation within the student body.
Key Tactics:
- Survey Student Interest:
Conduct surveys to understand the level of interest among students in learning about their peers' projects. This will help us gauge the demand and tailor content that resonates with the student community.
- Pilot YouTube Video Creation:
Produce a pilot YouTube video featuring a successful student project. This video will highlight the project's background, process, and outcomes, making the content engaging and relatable. The video will serve as an initial test to assess the platform's effectiveness in reaching and motivating other students.
- Focus Group Sessions:
Organize small focus group sessions where students watch project videos and provide feedback. These sessions will offer qualitative insights into the videos' impact, helping us refine future content and better understand what inspires students.
Time Frame:
Phase 1 (Week1-2): Conduct surveys to gather initial data on student interest.
Phase 2 (Week 3-4): Produce the pilot YouTube video and launch it on the platform.
Phase 3 (Week5-6): Hold focus group sessions to collect in-depth feedback and adjust the approach as needed.
Point People: Freshman students.
Expected Outcome:
This initiative will help us identify the best methods to engage students, encouraging them to explore their innovative potential by learning from their peers' experiences.
Strategic Priority 2
BRAIN - TEA TIME
As we observed that in our campus there are lots of experienced academics both about life and academy but there is a gap between tehm and students. There are no events or environments where students can meet with academics outside of classes and get advice, or where academics can share their one-on-one experiences. Some seminars are held, but these are insufficient in terms of getting advice. That's why we are offering a tea time event that will bring students and academics together at regular intervals.
Key Tactics:
- Find true academicians: Academicians who work in different fields and are willing to provide information that can be truly beneficial to students should be researched in detail and contacted. Diversity of the team is very important in being inclusive.
- Way of meeting: It shouldn't be one speaks others listen like lectures. The atmosphere should be friendly like tea time with their friend gruop to feel everybody comfortable so they can ask their true questions and academicians can share them true insights.
- Informative seminars: As mentioned it shouldn't be like a lecture but some people can feel uncomfortable to ask questions directly so informative seminar sessions may be more inclusive for some people at the beginning.
Time Frame:
Phase 1 (Week1-2): Get in touch with different facult members/academicians really work on some research or business projects.
Phase 2 (Week 3-4): After creating a wide pool of different disciplines and projects, it is announced/introduced to students. Choosing weekly meeting hour and place.
Phase 3 (Week5-6): Planning conference/presentaon activities for students who are interested but shy to engage in direct conversation.
Point People: Researchers, academicians, entrepreneur students.
Expected Outcome:
Entrepreneurial students can get one-on-one advice from academics and curious students can find the project and field that is right for them after getting insights about them.
Strategic Priority 3
PROJECT WEBSITE
We are developing a website to help students find projects where their rare talents and knowledge perfectly match. This project will rely heavily on input from students and academic collaboration in ensuring that the website is an efficient platform for sorting and finding the right opportunities. We engage with students and academicians to make this website user-friendly and impactful.
Key Tactics:
- Survey students about the website.
- Having meetings with the academicians to improve the website.
Time Frame:
Phase 1 (Week1-2): Asking students in METU about this website and get their opinions.
Phase 2 (Week 3-4): Having meetings with the project managers and the academicians to see if this website will be efficent.
Phase 3 (Week5-6): Creating a pilot website and sureving 100 students to analyze the outcomes.
Point People: METU students, researchers, academicians, project managers.
Expected Outcome: We expect the outcome of this project to yield a more interactive and user-friendly site whereby the process of facilitating students with projects suited to their skill sets will not only get easier and quick but also add value to the development of the students academically as well as professionally. Feedback provided by the students and experts shall provide ample scope for paving the way to perfection on the website and turning it into an effective utility platform for the students and researchers who collaborate on innovative projects.
Strategic Priority 4
UM4E (Undergraduate Mentorship for Entrepreneurs Program)
UM4E aspires to create a symbiotic relationship between METU undergraduate students and Teknokent entrepreneurs. We provide the opportunity for an open idea and perspective exchange by enabling students to have hands-on experience in the world of entrepreneurship while providing the entrepreneur with the capability to see their business through fresh eyes. An understanding of experiences from both parties over the course of the program, critiquing startup methods, and different career options for the student.
Key Tactics:
- Mentor and mentee should understand the life of each other beside the work.
- Mentor helps mentee to see possible career paths and show opportunities.
- Mentee help mentor to criticize his work from a no knowledge perspective.
Time Frame:
Phase 1 (Week1-2): An undergraduate student is matched with an entrepreneur from Teknokent according to area of interest. Entrepreneur listens and observes the life of the student.
Phase 2 (Week 3-4): Entrepreneur shows how the startup is established to the student.
Phase 3 (Week5-6): Undergrad criticize the way the startup works and entrepreneur helps him to draft a career path.
Point People: METU undergraduate students, entrepreneurs in Teknokent.
Expected Outcome: With this, we expect a clear understanding of the entrepreneurial path by mentees—the revelation or discovery of career opportunities, coupled with critical thinking skills. Meanwhile, mentors will benefit from new ideas and constructive critiques, bringing forth new methods to improve their startup process. The synergy is thus intended to nurture innovation that helps in contributing to the growth of both the student and the entrepreneur.
FALL 2022
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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