From the Student Council

Dear Bilkenters,
As members of student council and your fellow students, we are aware of your wishes and needs. For this reason, we always try to find a solution to suit your expectations.

For this spring term, in order to provide opportunities for your academic and social development, we have organized various activities that will be held on the Bilkent campus. The upcoming Winter Fest will feature popular singers. Also, during Cinema, Theater and Humor Days, we will bring well-known artists and entertainers in those fields to campus.

We all wish you a happy and successful academic term, and would like to stress that we are always open to your opinions, suggestions and requests.

Erkan Mert Yılmaz
Bilkent University Student Council President
 

Smallest Known Turkish Flag Created Through Nanolithography

A nano-scale Turkish flag has been drawn on a silicon surface by the graduate students in the Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) Group in the Physics Department and the Nanotechnology Research Center in the Faculty of Science. Under the supervision of Dr. Ahmet Oral, team members Munir Dede, Özgür Karcı, Özge Girişen, Hülya Ayan, Mehrdad Atabak and Sevil Özer succeeded in drawing the smallest known Turkish flag to date in their second attempt. The lines are only 100 nanometers long and about 2 nanometers high. (In comparison, a human hair is typically 50,000 nanometers in diameter.) The height of the flag corresponds to approximately 10 atomic layers of silicon dioxide. (Continued)


2005-2006 Spring Semester Academic Calendar

The University Senate made a decision to revise the spring 2006 Academic Calendar slightly as follows to make up for the postponement of registration, classes and the BUSEL examination due to the harsh winter conditions.

13 February 2006 - Monday
Last Day to Add/Drop Courses

27 - 31 March 2006 - Monday through Friday
Mid-semester Break

28 April 2006 - Friday
Last Day to Withdraw
from Courses

16 May 2006 - Tuesday
Last Day of Classes

19 May 2006 - Friday
National Holiday

27 May 2006 - Saturday
Last Day of Final
Examinations

30 May 2006 - Tuesday
Last Day for
Submission of
Course Grades
 

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Music Prep Student Wins Guitar Competition

Ayşegül Koca, a third-year student at the Music Preparatory School, won
First Prize at the X. Eduard Pamfil International Young Guitarists Festival held in Bucharest, Romania, in December. During the competition, Koca performed her own composition, "Scarlatti," as well as pieces by Giuliani, Mertz, Tansman and Koshkin. There were four age-group categories in the competition, A,B,C and D. Ms. Koca came in first in Category C (ages 14-17) and also won a special award in Category D (ages 17-26).

Ayşegül Koca started music at an early age, learning to play the flute and mandolin. When she was 8, she began concentrating on classical guitar, and at age 12 was admitted (with a scholarship) to the Bilkent Music Preparatory School's Department of Classical Guitar, where she became a student of Dr. Kürşad Terci and quickly made great progress. She has given a number of concerts and participated in a variety of master classes.

In 2005, Ms. Koca won second prize in the sixth José Tomas International Guitar Competition in Almería, Spain, before going on to compete in Romania later in the year. She is currently continuing her studies at the Music Preparatory High School under the supervision of Dr. Kürşad Terci and Dr. Kağan Korad.

Distinguished Scholar to Offer Turkish Literature Course

One of the world's leading scholars in the field of early Turkish literature, Prof. Dr. Semih Tezcan of Bamberg University (Germany), will be giving a concentrated course at Bilkent's Department of Turkish Literature from mid-February to mid-March 2006. Prof. Tezcan is a distinguished Turkologist renowned for his scholarship in the areas of Uighur literature, the "Oğuzname" tradition and the "Dede Korkut Tales." His course will deal with the Orhon and Yenisey inscriptions, the Manicheist and Buddhist texts of the Uighur Turks and the earliest major works of the Islamicized Turks.

Prof. Tezcan taught for many years in the Faculty of Languages, History and Geography at Ankara University before joining the faculty of Bamberg University 22 years ago. Since the late 1990s he has published many volumes in Turkish and German about early Turkish literature as well as on the 17th-century travel writer and cultural commentator Evliya Çelebi.