Dear Members of the Bilkent Community,

I would like to welcome you all back for the 2020-21 academic year!

At the end of the last academic year, we bid farewell to 2,151 graduates as they joined the ranks of Bilkent’s alumni, who now number around 50,000. We are confident that our new graduates will progress successfully in their careers and follow in the footsteps of our previous graduates to glorify the Bilkent name. I wish our graduates all the best in their future endeavors.

This summer, we admitted 2,363 undergraduate and 378 graduate students to Bilkent University. The members of our new undergraduate class come from 72 provinces in Turkey, and from 18 countries worldwide. I would like to extend a heartfelt welcome to new Bilkenters and wish them wonderful years at our university.

We are starting this academic year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization estimates that COVID-19 will be with us for another two years. It is evident that we need to learn to live with the virus and that all institutions are required to devise their own ways to pursue their missions in the face of the current challenges. At Bilkent, our primary mission is to lay a strong intellectual and scientific foundation on which our students can build their futures. With this in mind, we decided to adopt a hybrid mode of teaching for this semester in order to continue our tradition of providing excellent education to our students with minimal interruptions, while also endeavoring to minimize health risks in our community.

Needless to say, this transition to a hybrid mode requires full collaboration from all members of our community. I am confident that our students, faculty and employees will quickly adopt the new practices we have established to enable this transition and will diligently comply with all precautionary health measures to help Bilkent remain a safe learning environment. It is especially critical to wear face masks both indoors and outdoors, and keep the necessary social distance at all times.

I wish you all a healthy and successful academic year!

Abdullah Atalar

Photograph by Aydın Ramazanoğlu, April at Bilkent

Dear Members of the Bilkent Community,

As we get used to learning, teaching and working from a distance at Bilkent, all members of our community are working hard to continue our core operations in an uninterrupted fashion.

Our technical staff did a wonderful job of migrating our teaching operations to the online environment.

Our faculty enthusiastically adopted a new medium of teaching, with all its novel challenges and opportunities.

Going through a significant disruption in their learning routines, our students once again proved their agility, adaptability and conscientiousness. We are proud of their perseverance and “no-excuses” approach to their own learning processes in the face of adversity.

I once again thank all Bilkenters for their patience and ongoing support as we continue our work under the conditions imposed by the struggle against COVID-19.

Spring is upon us, and you all know what a beautiful place the Bilkent campus becomes at this time of year. What we have realized this year is that what makes it really beautiful is our campus community – our students, faculty and employees. I hope that this period will soon pass, and we will again come together on our campus and celebrate many springs to come.

I wish you all good health.

Rector Abdullah Atalar