IAMU News No.13, October 2006

Dokuz Eylül University, School of Maritime Business and Management, Marine Engineering Department

This academic year, The School of Maritime Business and Management at Turkey's Dokuz Eylül University will begin offering education in its Marine Engineering Department with 15 students. It is expected that the number of students will increase in the coming years.

The Marine Engineering Department has been established to respond to the increasing demand for highly qualified Seagoing Marine Engineer Officers from the shipping industry. The Department is accredited by the Prime Ministry Undersecretariat for Maritime Affairs and the Turkish Council of Higher Education.

The Department, where the medium of instruction will be in English, aims to educate graduates with high technical knowledge in marine engineering at the operational and management level, self-efficiency, and self-appraisal, and with critical thinking skills and qualities of effective leadership. Besides the ability to identify, formulate, and solve problems in marine engineering, they must be able to function both on the single-focus and multi-disciplinary teams, and to get prepare themselves for a process of life-long learning.

To achieve those objectives, the ME Department has adopted the student-centered learning environment and integrated modular problem-based learning process, through which students take active responsibility for their learning. In this method, the department curricula are presented through well-designed scenarios. This is one of the unique education applications in this field.

There has been an appreciable support from the shipping industry to the department. As a tangible outcome of industry and university cooperation, one of the major shipping companies in Turkey donated a state-of-the-art marine engineering laboratories building. This complex includes: workshops; full mission and PC-based engine simulators; diesel engine, hydraulic and pneumatic, automatic control, HVAC and electrotechnology laboratories; a learning resources center and multimedia classrooms. The building is designed totally in accordance with the requirements of marine engineering education, and with its open architecture will satisfy both current and future training needs.