First Impressions of the Job

When I told people I was coming to a “work in progress” I was referring to the English Language Program. It turns out the whole campus is a giant start up. I thought their academic courses would be running, but it turns out that we, the English Language Program, are the only game in town at the moment. In fact, only one building is completed – or about 95% completed. They are still grading a road into the site. Some of it actually had asphalt on it this morning (Friday). Classes start Monday.

That said, what they have done is absolutely gorgeous. Our building has marble floors throughout – except in the classrooms. I would have died and gone to heaven had I had such classrooms at UW. They have individual moveable desks and chairs so you have great flexibility in setting up the room. They all have ceiling mounted projectors and computer hookups that will allow you to project materials you’ve preloaded on the computer. The building has WiFi everywhere, so you can also project Internet sites. On Monday all instructors are to receive laptops. In fact, each student is to receive a laptop as well. On the bottom floor there is a tea stand. It is served in little tulip-shaped classes on square glass saucers. Despite the fact that the Turks introduced coffee to the rest of Europe, they are really great tea drinkers.

The one odd thing about the building is how few electrical outlets there are. The teachers’ offices are very large rooms. There are six of us to a room, That sounds bad but we all have very large desks and they are kind of partitioned off with cabinets. One entire wall is windows that actually open. It’s all very tastefully done. However there are only four outlets in the room. And they aren’t double outlets like in the US – just one plug per outlet. Looks like we’ll be buying some power strips!

The other interesting feature is the women’s restroom. It’s all nicely tiled in tastefully chosen colors. Two of the stalls have regular western toilets, with the progressive water-saving devise of two levels of flushing; one uses more water than the other. However, the other stall is a porcelain bowl in the floor. It’s flushable, but you don’t sit; you squat. I’ve encountered those types of toilets elsewhere in my travels but none in brand new luxury-style buildings.

The campus sits atop the rolling hills in this region of southern Anatolia. The Texans of the staff say it looks like the Texas hill country, but without as much vegetation. It’s very dry here – it feels a bit like the American Southwest climate-wise. The patches of green are mostly orchards or vineyards. And they don’t stake up their grapes the way we do. They look more like bushes. The university has already planted hundreds of trees around the existing construction site. It will take five year to complete and will eventually become a self-contained village, with student housing, etc. They soccer fields have already been built. Going home this evening I even spotted a couple of goals set up in the fields.

The one problem with the campus is that is a distance outside town. There is no public transportation. They’ve been running vans for the employees – including the teachers. The administration expects over 300 students to start the language program on Monday. They will probably run vans from the end of the bus line. It isn’t common for students to own cars, so they will have to provide some sort of transport for them. What this means, however, is that we are basically stuck on campus from 8:00 – 5:00 Monday through Friday. That makes things such as shopping and dealing with the bank nearly impossible. However, they are providing everyone, including students, a hot lunch every day. And the food has been quite good.

The Zirve vision is really quite progressive. They plan is to offer all their degree programs entirely in English. The main university here teaches everything except engineering in Turkish; engineers are all taught in English. Given Turkey’s hopes for joining the EU, Zirve will be ahead of the pack, since all major EU universities have to offer at least some of their degree programs in English.

Zirve contracted with the University of Northern Texas in Denton to build their English program. The idea was to have half of the teaching staff be native speakers and the other half Turks who have learned English. Most of the Turkish-speaking teachers are quite young – for most this is their first job after college. It amazes me how well they can speak English, often without having left Turkey. The UNT staff held a three-week “boot camp” for them starting September 8. It was really a crash methodology course. I think they will be great – very enthusiastic.

The big shock all the way around is that out of something like 350 students, three quarters of them placed at the absolute beginner level on the basis of a diagnostic test administered by UNT staff. Even more surprising is that 100 of them didn’t even show up for the test; they were automatically placed in the beginning class. That doesn’t mean they don’t know any English; most have had 6-8 years in school. But they were never really required to produce – speak or write – in English. All high school tests were either fill-in or multiple choice so to come to a test and be asked to write an essay on some topic was a real shock. Personally, I don’t think it will be quite as disastrous as some people fear – UNT promised to have the students fit for content classes by the fall – because they really have a solid base to build on. We just have to activate it.

The academic (content) side of the program is madly trying to hire faculty. They don’t want anyone without an American PhD. I really like their business dean. He spent six years at the Spokane branch of WSU and speaks beautiful English. He’s looking for finance and marketing faculty – but statistics is a requirement for almost all their majors. He’s even open to people looking to spend their sabbaticals in an interesting location.