Istanbul Gelisim University - Community Service Policy

While conducting educational, research, social, cultural, artistic, and sports activities, it adopts "serving the community" as its primary duty and field of activity with the aim of ensuring that what is produced within the campus reaches the community, becomes widespread, and thus serves humanity. In this direction, it develops and implements measures and incentives.

Working for a fair, good and sustainable world is the moral and scientific obligation of the University. The reason for the existence of higher education institutions is not only to produce science and knowledge and to provide vocational training. Bring out good citizens, good society; to find solutions to the ecological, economic and social problems and needs at the local and global level, to improve the quality of life. The universities that undertake the task of educating and shaping the “human being” as a social entity, while producing the scientific knowledge required for this, contribute to the good citizens and profession by the knowledge they produce, by transforming this information into behavior in the next step, also aims to create a livable society. Higher education institutions play a complementary role by influencing demographically, economically and socio-culturally the regions in which they are established locally. For the sustainable and better world at the local and global scale, academy must open the added value that it produces to the society.

With this understanding, Istanbul Gelisim University aims to contribute to the creation of a livable society at the global level; contribute to the solution of humanistic, social, economic and ecological problems of the region where it is located, and with the works that can be carried out within the framework of social responsibility, the good of the society and the region.

It adopts the “service to the community” as a primary duty and field of activity in order to ensure that those who are produced in the campus reach the society, spread and serve humanity in this way while they carry out education, research, social, cultural, artistic and sports activities. It develops measures and incentives in this direction.

Basic values

The basic values of the university's community service policy are:

University is a whole with its surroundings: The university has social, economic and ecological environment. The good, quality and sustainability of the environment directly affect the university.
The University serves humanity: The University is a structure built on universal values and aims to contribute to the quality of humanity and life through its activities.
Community service is a social and intellectual responsibility: It is the social and intellectual responsibility of the university to make a sustainable contribution to the society, the disadvantaged groups and ecological problems.
University real sector cooperation: Cooperation should be made with other actors that make up the community in the fields of education, research and community service.
Learning by doing and serving: Students are encouraged to learn by doing and serving, to reinforce what they have learned, to recognize relationships in the real sector and society, and to establish social networks.
Performance Indicator: Community service is the indicator to be used to evaluate the performance of the university, its units, personnel and projects.

Community Service Strategy

The cornerstones of the community service strategy shaped around these values are:

The content of the community service strategy is based on regular and systematic feedback from internal and external stakeholders; It is updated regularly through the examination of good practice examples of world universities. Internal and external stakeholders' opinions are regularly gathered, discussed, evaluated and resolved.

The type, scope and method of community service and cooperation activities are determined by planning and needs analysis.
The planning and management approach of the university is supported by the “Plan, Do, Check Act” cycle in order to continuously improve community service activities.
A Community Service Committee is established to coordinate, monitor, and promote the activities of the university on community service.
Within the framework of the learning approach by doing and serving, students are encouraged by taking the necessary measures in the curriculum, support and orientation services and preparing the appropriate infrastructure.
In the community service, human rights, live rights, environmental rights, ethics, inter-individual differences, local culture and values are fully respected without any hesitation. In case of violation of the rules of ethics or law, the sanctions to be imposed expressly declared.
University revenues are diversified by conducting community service activities by each unit, especially the Continuing Education Center.

The objectives of education policy are:

1. To increase the number and diversity of the contribution to society
2. Increasing the number of students and academic staff serving the community
3. Increase the number of co-operation and partnerships with nearby social actors
4. Increase the budget of community service activities and revenues from these activities

Indicators are created to monitor the realization of these objectives. Realization percentages are determined, corrective and remedial measures are taken.

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