Applying to the TÜBİTAK call for promoting the notion of entrepreneurship and innovation in universities and ensuring early realization of successful business ideas, Sabancı University became one of the 14 Turkish universities to receive TÜBİTAK support and started its first term in early 2014.
In the Spring 2015 term, 40 students registered to the TÜBİTAK 1601 Entrepreneurship Certificate Program received courses from Sabancı University faculty members including Kutlu Kazancı on Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship; Assistant Professor Umut Ekmekçi on Creative Thinking and Idea Generation; Associate Professor Mahmut Bayazıt on Management Skills, Leadership and Decision-Making Techniques, Effective Negotiation Techniques; Professor Dilek Çetindamar on Business Modeling and Gülru Gözaçan on Effective Presentations.
In addition to the courses, the students visited ITU ARI Teknokent to meet with ITU Seed entrepreneurs, and went to the offices of Pozitron, which was sold to Monitise for USD 100 million in 2014, IMONA, and Düğün.com to speak to their executives. The program also invited SecureDrive founder Murat Şahin, ESKİMO founder Tolga Canözkan, and Metamorfoz ICT founder and co-creator of SUCard, the Sabancı University graduate Ergi Şener to the Tuzla campus. These were public events where participants found the opportunity to listen to the experiences of entrepreneurs.
Program implementer Naci Kahraman said: "The 'Entrepreneurship School' is coordinated by the Sabancı University Entrepreneurship Council and supported by TÜBİTAK, and we did our utmost to make it much better than a program where you simply spend a few hours in class every week. We designed the program with courses, extracurricular activities and practical application. We think of the Entrepreneurship School as a form of intensive master's in entrepreneurship. We were particularly delighted to hear from engineering students that they benefited greatly in terms of management skills. We completed the third term of the Entrepreneurship School, and we plan to keep improving our program to offer further benefits. We are enthusiastic about tech-based projects to emerge from this school to transition to the Sabancı University Pre-incubation Center SUCOOL. As the Entrepreneurship Council, we would like to congratulate all graduates and wish them success in their academic and professional endeavors."
The Entrepreneurship School gave 17 graduates at the end of the term, including one MSc and one PhD student and one PhD researcher from the Sabancı University Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (SUNUM).
The full list of graduates is below:
1. Aykut Kadayıfçı – EE 4th Year
2. Baturalp Topçu – MS 2nd Year
3. Buse Yıldırım – IS 4th Year
4. Cansu Çalbıyık – MS 2nd Year
5. Dilek Çakıroğlu – MAT PhD
6. Emre Ekinci – ECON 2nd Year
7. Ersin İncir – CS 2nd Year
8. Günsu Eskicioğlu – MS 2nd Year
9. Dr. Hilmi Ege – SUNUM Researcher
10. Kerem Çetiner – MS 4th Year
11. Kübra Özbıyık – MS 4th Year
12. Mehmet Albayrak – MS MSc
13. Müge Seğmen – CS 4th Year
14. Özlem Çelebi – MS 4th Year
15. Umut Gönülkırmaz – MS 4th Year
16. Yusufcan Bozkuş – MGMT 2nd Year
17. Yüce Ülker – MS 4th Year