TEXAS TECH TO OFFER TURKISH LANGUAGE CLASS

LUBBOCK--Texas Tech will offer its first ever Turkish language course during the upcoming fall semester. The course is sponsored by the Fulbright Commission and will be part of their Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship program. Texas Tech's Fulbright instructor for Turkish language and culture is Sultan Turkan, a graduate of Bosphoros University in Istanbul, Turkey. In addition to the language course, she will also be teaching a class on Turkish culture.

The course on Turkish culture will utilize Texas Tech's Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative, which is available online at the website given below and which inspired this initiative. Also visit http://www.depts.ttu.edu/classic_modern/

The archive, which has received more than 300,000 visitors since it went online earlier this year, is a repository of narratives, anecdotes and folk tales, many collected from villages and rural areas of Turkey. Some of the narratives were published as far back as the early 19th century, and some of them are so rare that they cannot be found anywhere else.

The Fulbright Commission has sent nine Turkish students to American universities, including Texas Tech, to teach the Turkish language this fall and spring. The Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures is committed to the establishment of an ongoing Turkish program.

Texas Tech University enjoys multiple connections to Turkey. Through official exchange agreements, a number of TTU professors have taught at METU (Middle East Technical University) in Ankara. 32 people from Karadeniz University in Trabzon on the Black Sea participated in a faculty development program at Tech, during which they finished their graduate degrees. Cordial relationships have been maintained with a number of these Tech graduates who are currently on the Karadeniz faculty. Turkey is among the top 10 countries sending students to Tech for many years.

A crowning honor for the entire Lubbock community was the six year presence of Gürer Aykal as the outstanding Musical Director/Conductor of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Aykal is officially designated a "National Treasure" of Turkey and his positive impact on our area was immense.