Dear students and academicians,
Welcome to the first and only thematic university of Turkey in the field of social sciences!
If you are interested in the phenomena as to humans and societies, and if you like to progress in social sciences as a discipline, the right address should be the Social Sciences University of Ankara (ASBU). ASBU is a young, dynamic state university with a vision in social sciences. Its scope with social sciences oriented activities compels ASBU to progress more profoundly in those disciplines and to become a leader in its field as a part of its mission and vision. Since social sciences as a discipline are more complicated, thus being full of challenging readings compared to the other disciplines, ASBU aims at offering a medium for the self-confident researchers with intellectually high capacity and entrepreneurship.
As a natural part of social sciences, ASBU, designed as an urban university, is located in Ulus, at the old city centre on the road from the Ankara Castle-Hajı Bayram Wali to the First Grand National Assembly of Turkey, being the most spectacular parts of Ankara. Combining history, art, wisdom and knowledge, this exceptional place is itself a “social laboratory”, stimulating learning environment, and a campus offering observations and social experiments.
The educational objective at ASBU is to raise intellectuals demanded by different strata of the society (public, private and civil life), rather than offering standard education for average graduates to work for market needs only. In order to equip its students with social innovation skills along with expertise education ASBU offers students and academicians alike to take part in institutional research projects, to be actively involved in national and international exchange programs, to participate in in-service-training opportunities both at major national and international bodies, etc., to contributively and actively take place in small classrooms.
As a research-oriented university, ASBU aims at giving priority to post-graduate programs, disseminating and deepening the interdisciplinary approach required by the complexity of social events, having expertise in certain areas through its several research centres, discovering the social phenomena of Eastern and Western worlds beyond national/local borders through its various institutes, and realising short and long term big scale projects via cooperations and collaborations.
Aiming at producing and disseminating scholarly knowledge, ASBU places research in the heart of its missions like education, services for the good of society and entrepreneurship, and adopts an institutional approach towards these activities and goals via its pivotal research initiatives. Likewise, ASBU views social entrepreneurship strategically significant and likes to spread it at every possible level throughout the university (students, academicians, administrators, stakeholders).
To encourage social entrepreneurship and institutionalize social innovation, ASBU develops a “socio-park” within its premises. Not widely seen in the world, socio-parks are the institutional bodies, with which social problems are dealt, and where the demand and supply of required scientific and scholarly knowledge are met. Within the framework of specially designed socio-park to be implemented by our university, ASBU aims at continually offering innovative solutions to the problems via some infrastructures (social-experiment labs, simulation centres, ex-ante effect analysis media, negotiation rooms for conflict of interests, etc), interfaces and techniques. With the help of social scientist teams within ASBU (sociologists, psychologists, legal experts, economists, managers, theologians, political scientists, etc), multisided resolutions will be offered to the social problems and innovations.
ASBU, at the centre of the capital city in Turkey, will be a strategic centre for the transformation of knowledge into a beneficial asset for both private and civil sectors through its social entrepreneurship aspect. ASBU will be the right address for the individuals and organisations looking for social resolutions, transformation, change and progress as a way of getting service. As well as the social contributions aimed within the context of education, research and social entrepreneurship, ASBU also sees its mission to be accomplished through local, national and international scaled social responsibilities projects and activities. We firmly believe that so long as we go with the society for the good of society within our mission restricted with social sciences, we will progress towards success. As the social entrepreneurs in an educational research environment supported and encouraged by ASBU, we wish to offer services within the framework of social responsibilities through innovations all together.
Prof. Dr. Mehmet BARCA
Rector
Rector