On March 1st, 2022, two training sessions were held for the editors of our university webpages, including a sustainable development training on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their relation to universities and a capacity building training on how to write news articles about the activities carried out in our university toward SDGs.
During the online training sessions in which the editors of our faculty and department webpages participated, sustainable development goals and the role of universities in achieving these goals were discussed. During the meeting, the participants also received applied training on how to write news articles about the research, education contents, application, and leadership activities carried out in IMU in relation to sustainable development goals.
In the first part of the workshop, Lect. Zehra SAVAN delivered a presentation on how to improve the organization and content of the news articles published on our university webpages. During the applied training, the trainer introduced the general principles of news writing, the main components of a good news article, and the most common errors made when writing news articles in reference to particular examples from our webpages. She also discussed the ways to improve the article examples with the participants in an interactive learning environment. The news articles were examined in three categories, i.e., success, event, and publication news in the second part of the training session, which focused on the English translations of the articles to analyze the common translation errors through examples and to share suggestions on how to attain a more correct and fluent language use. At the end of the presentation, the trainer suggested certain tools to improve English translations and hints about how to create shorter and more effective headlines based on examples from foreign press.
In the second part of the workshop, our university research assistant Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK made a presentation about the sustainable development goals and responsible institution philosophy and the contribution of our university towards achieving these goals. She started her presentation by giving information about the 8 Millennium Development Goals announced by the United Nations in 2000 and aiming to contribute to international development. She also stated that the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that guide today’s strategies and are targeted to be achieved by the end of 2030 are built on the Millennium Development Goals, but also include new fields such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice. Afterwards, she touched upon the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their sub-goals and explained the importance of these goals for a sustainable world.
ÇELİKBİLEK stated that universities have an important role in achieving SDGs with their important roles in producing and disseminating knowledge, supporting economic and social development with innovative solutions, and training sustainability practitioners of the future and pointed out that working on SDGs will provide significant benefits for universities. She stated that universities can contribute to the SDGs especially in four areas: research activities such as conducting research and projects related to SDGs, developing innovative solutions and obtaining patents; education activities such as preparing courses related to SDGs, organizing lifelong learning activities, organizing capacity building trainings and mobilizing students; operations such as developing management decisions related to the SDGs, operations and reporting progress; and leadership activities such as ensuring cooperation between sectors and institutions, contributing to the policy development process and involving the public in the process.
In the following parts of the presentation, it was emphasized that the Sustainable Development Goals included the titles of human, environment, construction, society and production of various tools, and that progress could be made towards all 17 objectives with the sum of the activities of all faculties within our University. It was pointed out that the sdg.medeniyet.edu.tr website, where the activities carried out by our University in relation to SDGs are shared, is important both in terms of monitoring the institutional development and sharing the activities and knowledge of our University with the society and other stakeholders.
It was stated that the contributions of Istanbul Medeniyet University to the Sustainable Development Goals were ranked in the THE Impact Rankings of Times Higher Education, one of the world’s leading university ranking institutions, for the first time in 2021. IMU was globally ranked in the 301-400 range for SDG-2 “Zero Hunger”, in the 401-600 range for SD-3 “Good Health and Well-Being”, in the 601-800 range for SDG-4 “Quality Education”, and in the 601-800 range for SDG-17 “Partnerships for the Goals”. It has been announced that our university has applied for 9 SDGs this year and aims to gradually increase this number.
In the second part of the presentation, ÇELİKBİLEK provided the faculty webmasters of our University with information on how the studies carried out within the faculties and contributing to the SDGs will be written into news articles via the web content forms. She provided information on how to establish the relationship between the activities and SDGs, how SDGs should be handled in news content, and what kind of information should be conveyed to internal and external stakeholders.
In the last part of the workshop, the opinions of the web editors of our University, which adopts the inclusive institution approach in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, were discussed in the light of their experiences in their fields of study and faculty practices.
