The new Graduate School of Education opened on Monday, September 18. The GSE is housed in the new building beside the Faculty of Science in the centre of Main Campus.

Twenty-five students began their training to become high school teachers of biology, English, history, and Turkish. The 2-year program leads to a master degree and qualified teacher status. It includes work in five schools and a 2-month visit to the US in semester 3, which is generously funded by the Fulbright Program of the US Department of State. The students will gain experience in international schools in Ankara, İstanbul and İzmir.

The masters program began with welcomes to the group of graduates - from the universities of Bilkent, METU, Hacettepe, Ankara and Başkent in Ankara, Boğaziçi, İstanbul Technical and Mimar Sinan in İstanbul, and Dokuz Eylül in İzmir - who have committed themselves to a career in teaching. (One of the students, anxious not to miss the start, left her 5-day old baby with her parents in the car outside the Graduate School as she attended the first classes, disappearing from time to time to check with her baby!) The students also began their work in schools this week. This semester BUPS and ÖBL have allocated mentors to work with the students one day a week. Students, dressed as teachers, gathered in the early morning sunshine outside the school before their first carefully-structured day with their mentors. This week, too, the new faculty member from Portland State University, Assoc. Prof. Dannelle Stevens, who joined the Director, Margaret Sands, and her colleagues in August, will video-tape lessons at the school for discussion and analysis of good teaching practice with her students. This new program will be an innovative one with UK and US faculty working alongside Turkish colleagues.