The Story of 20 Years by Nesrin Balkan

To celebrate the 20th year of our university, we have prepared a set of four questions to ask faculty and administrative personnel who have been with us since the beginning, and to our first students. They all tell "the story of 20 years" from their own perspectives.

Going in alphabetical order, this week's interviewee for "The Story of 20 Years" is Nesrin Balkan.

Nesrin Balkan has been a member of the Sabancı University family since 1 March 1999. Nesrin Balkan, who has been working as a Corporate Communications Officer at Sabancı University for 21 years, served in the Institutional Development, Communication, and Public Relations units. She has been working in Marketing and Institutional Communications unit since 2010.

Nesrin Balkan’s answers to our four questions are below.

What was your initial memory / impression of when you met Sabancı University for the first time?

N.B: My first meeting with Sabancı University was when the communication company I worked for at the time was selected to promote the university during the foundation period. I worked externally for four years as the responsible for press communications at the university. During these four years, I participated in hundreds of television and newspaper interviews with our Founding Rector Tosun Terzioğlu, whom I always remember with affection and love. I have organized so many press conferences as well. I have written press releases and news stories describing the university's system. After four years, when I informed them that I would leave the company where I worked and wrote them a farewell message, Mr. Terzioğlu and our Founding Secretary General Mr. Hüsnü Paçacıoğlu, whom I always remember with affection and love, said, “Where are you going? Your place is Sabancı University.” Shortly after this invitation, I found myself as Sabancı University's Institutional Communications Officer. 

I remember working as a student preparing for an exam in order to write press releases that would introduce Sabancı University to the public in the first months of 1999, when the construction works of the campus was ongoing. I also remember the long meetings we had with Mr. Terzioğlu and Mr. Paçacıoğlu in order to explain to the press and therefore the public the very original system that was not available at other universities in Turkey. 

I remember the meetings we held in cities such as Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Adana in March, April, and May 1999 in order to introduce Sabancı University directly to prospective students and school counselors first-hand. Güler Sabancı, the Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, Tosun Terzioğlu, Secretary General Hosni Paçacıoğlu, Founding Director of Student Resources Zerrin Koyunsağan, Founding Deans Ahmet Evin and Kemal İnan, Director of the Basic Development Program at the time Hasan Bülent Kahraman attended these meetings. As a team, we traveled various cities with great excitement, enthusiasm, and explain the university’s system to school counselors and prospective students. 

There are so many memories from the early years of Sabancı University. I remember the Board of Trustees meeting where we invited journalists on a hot day in July 1999. The meeting was held in a shed on the campus, which was essentially a construction site. We gave everyone a helmet and showed them around the campus. After that, the front pages of the country's most prominent newspapers were heralding the news of Sabancı University. For days and weeks, our university was on the agenda of the country. 

I remember 20 October 1999. The opening day. Everyone from the President of the Republic to the Turkish Parliamentary Speaker was there. On that day, television channels broadcast the opening ceremony of Sabancı University. When we look at the face of our Honorary President, the late Sakıp Sabancı, we saw and understood from his body language very clearly that his happiness and pride were at their peak. Our first students, who had only been on campus for a few weeks, cheered and chanted slogans of love when Mr. Terzioğlu was announced, their applause was turly incredible. 

The feelings of excitement, happiness, and pride we experienced at our first graduation ceremony, where the first undergraduate graduates received their diplomas, were so intense that it was impossible to hold back our tears. Being part of the establishment of such a unique and special university which had set out to be “a world university in Turkey” adopting the philosophy of “Creating and developing together” at all stages and and feeling this excitement first-hand since the early years of this process were a great chance and privilege. It makes you feel so good and special. 

What are the differences between yourself 20 years ago and yourself today, and how did Sabancı University contribute to that change?

N.B: It has been about 22 years since I met Sabancı University. All these years, the Sabancı University campus has emerged from its barren appearance under construction, and the saplings planted 20 years ago with great efforts and under the supervision of Mr. Terzioğlu have become huge trees. Thousands of plant varieties have made the campus a wonderfully beautiful oasis. It has been a great pleasure and privilege for us old-timers to be able to observe this change step by step. 

It is the people who make up organizations and add value to them. When I think about Sabancı University, I think of people I have known and worked with during this time. It was a wealth for me to know Tosun Terzioğlu, who I had the opportunity to work with very closely as a press representative during his Rectorate. Mr. Terzioğlu with his quiet and calm leadership, his determination to fight for the truth without slogans, his unpretentious and natural kindness... Our managers who had adoped a human-oriented approach, prioritized the happiness of the employees, and always embraced by saying “we” such as Hüsnü Paçacioğlu, our Founding Secretary General and Haluk Bal, our second Secretary General who served for fifteen years, Berna Özkul, our director whom we worked with for ten years... Our academics such as Üstün Ergüder, Zehra Sayers, Ayşe Kadıoğlu, Mehmet Ali Alpar, and many others, who have achieved international success in their respective fields and whose names would fill pages and pages if I tried to count each and every one of them... Our precious friends, beautiful people in the administrative and technical staff and service units... Our brilliant, witty, and self-confident students and our graduates who are growing in number and age over the years... We were a big family at Sabancı University with all these beautiful people. Being a member of this family together with its academics and administrative and technical staff ranks first among what Sabancı University has given to me. I believe that teamwork, walking arm in arm is very important on the way to a common goal and the different cultural visions, perspectives that each member of the team has enrich me and mature me.

All these years, I have come to the campus almost every day with happiness, pleasure, excitement, and enthusiasm, and I have always said and will always say “I am a member of the Sabancı University family” with pride. I hope our friends who will serve after us will work with the same happiness and pride. 

What comes into your mind when you think of Sabancı University in 20 years? What are your dreams for Sabancı University for the next 20 years? What about yourself?

N.B: 20 years later, I imagine that Sabancı University will remain a university that is special and pioneering, preserves its authenticity, continues to protect the values of the Declaration of Academic Freedoms, has happy employees, and as Mr. Terzioğlu said “a school which does not force certain thinking patterns to its student, but teaches them how to think, how to argue in a civilized manner, how to have moral courage and self-confidence.” 

As for myself, I dream of engaging in activities that I will enjoy in a healthy way, sharing good moments with my friends, being engaged in cultural studies, and being able to continue making music. 

Where and how would you be now if your paths hadn't crossed with Sabancı University?

N.B: I would have continued to work in a different organization to sustain my life, but I would have lacked the wealth of people I have today and the sense of maturity and satisfaction brought by the experience I have gained over the past 20 years. I would not have had the privilege of knowing and acting and working together with the leading brilliant minds of the country who are so excited and eager, who set out to become a “world university in Turkey” and mobilized their minds and experience to achieve this goal. I would not be who I am today.