Dean's Message

The Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences (FEASS) covers the main branches of Social Sciences that are rooted in the history of humankind. The aim of FEASS is to develop a broad understanding of the inner and outer dynamics of societal issues throughout history, and to make future forecasts based on our understanding of these past experiences.

FEASS welcomed its first students to the Department of Economics, Department of Business Administration, and the Department of Political Science and International Relations in 2014. This was followed by the opening of the Department of Psychology in 2015, thus bringing FEASS to its present structure.

As faculty members of all four FEASS Departments, our aim is to provide our students with a high quality education in their own disciplines by enabling them to follow developments and innovations taking place in our country and around the world. This will support our students in advancing their skills in adaptation and analysis as well as carrying out team projects that require building competencies and superior qualifications.

The curriculum of each FEASS department has been specifically prepared to help students achieve the career goals they would like to pursue at home or abroad after graduation. Moreover, the preparation of our departmental curricula takes into account the structure of similar programs in leading universities in Turkey and abroad. With this understanding, every department in FEASS offers core courses regarding the emergence and evolution process of its own discipline as well as innovative courses about developments that have been taking place in related fields. In addition to such departmental courses, we also encourage our students to take elective courses that are offered not only in FEASS but also across other faculties in the university. This enables our students to develop general culture and competencies, become knowledgeable about the topics covered in different disciplines, and explore alternative approaches, which are often required to solve different problems.

The "Flipped Learning" model adopted by MEF University as the method of teaching is applied in all courses, compulsory or elective, offered in our Faculty. We observe that the Flipped Learning method, which allows the transfer of information through short videos prepared by the Faculty Members and Instructors prior to class, helps our students to undertake more practice and analysis during class hours, meaning they are able to understand the concepts covered in the course better as well as further reflecting on their own thoughts.

In today's world, where access to information has never been easier, it is a fact that course content is still essential for every student, but also not sufficient enough to achieve success. For this reason, in FEASS, we believe that students, in addition to being successful in their classes, must also develop 21st century competencies. Thus, we attach the utmost importance to the notion of developing skills in the preparation of course content in such a way as to provide opportunities for students to develop a variety of skills, such as presentation techniques, teamwork, technological literacy and the like.

Today, be it in academia or in business, it seems like that there is an increase in the number of curricula that have been jointly produced by more than one discipline in different programs offered in universities. For instance, Richard H. Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics, provides a striking example of this development due to his prestigious work in the field of "Behavioral Economics" that draws from both Economics and Psychology. For this reason, "Double Major" and "Minor" programs as well as international exchange opportunities, such as "Erasmus” and “3+2” are fully open for our students to benefit from.

Another topic that we attach importance to in FEASS is providing our students with opportunities to collaborate with faculty members. Students have the opportunity to do this through taking active roles, such as "Student Assistant" or "Project Assistant" in organizing academic activities such as conferences, seminars and workshops. In this way, our students can benefit from the knowledge and experience of our academics by working closely together with them.

As members of the Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, we acknowledge our responsibilities and continue to work with increased confidence and determination with a view to reaching the goal of "raising the individuals of the next generations to think universally and be capable of becoming global citizens". This is directly in line with the ideas of Founder of MEF Schools and MEF University, the late Dr. İbrahim Arıkan (1941 – 2016).
 
Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kibaroğlu
Dean