Middle East Technical University (METU), founded in 1956, is an international research university, which seeks excellence in serving the country, region, and the world. This welldeserved reputation is partly a reflection of its leading position in terms of international scientific publications and share of research funds from national scientific research funding agencies, primarily The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), among the most prominent universities of Turkey. Moreover, ODTÜ – as an international research-intensive university – is among the leading universities in Turkey in terms of depth and breadth of international research projects and the number of funds generated from research activities.
Research revenues account for 20-25% on average of annual ODTÜ expenditures, including all payroll costs. ODTÜ has actively taken part in and managed various projects under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA), especially the Framework Programmes (FP), as well as other international projects, such as COST, Erasmus, Newton-Katip Çelebi Fund, etc. In this context, as of September 13, 2019, ODTÜ has 354 international projects (either signed or in Grant Agreement phase) with a total budget of 765 M€ and ODTÜ’s share of 54 M€. Among these projects, 316 are completed with a total budget of 760M€ and ODTÜ’s share of 50M€, while 158 of these completed projects are supported by the EU Framework Programmes with a total budget of 680 M€ within which ODTÜ’s share of 39,5 M€. Seventy-nine of ODTÜ’s international projects are funded under the Erasmus program with a total budget of 24.5 M€ and ODTÜ’s share of nearly 6M€. At any given time, ODTÜ has approximately 400 R&D projects nationally funded by TÜBİTAK and various ministries and 60 R&D projects internationally sponsored, mainly by the EU Research and Innovation Framework Programmes. This record of accomplishment translates into ODTÜ bringing in about 9% of the FP-sourced research funds acquired by Turkey until now. Last but not least, it is important to the point that the language of education in ODTÜ is English. Moreover, ODTÜ strategically values the prevention of inbreeding by prioritizing the employment of researchers who have had international experience at doctoral and/or post-doctoral level(s). Thus, a significant portion of ODTÜ’s faculty is constituted of incoming researchers from Europe and/or Third countries (mostly USA).
More about Middle East Technical University (METU) is available at https://eds.metu.edu.tr/
Project members
Yeşim Çapa Aydın
Dr. Yeşim Çapa Aydın is an associate professor of Measurement and Evaluation, at the Department of Educational Sciences and she is the co-director of ÖGEM (Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching) in Middle East Technical University. She holds a Ph.D. in the field of quantitative research, measurement, and evaluation from The Ohio State University, USA. She has 15 years of professional experience as a faculty member in addition to three years of experience as a researcher in the Research, Evaluation, and Data Analysis Consultation Service at the Ohio State. She has been involved in at least 25 research projects (principal investigator in eight of them) and published 30 scientific articles. Her work appears in such journals as Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, Educational Psychology, Educational and Psychological Measurement, and Research in Science Education.