The university is pleased to announce the recipients of the Distinguished Teaching Awards for the 2025–26 academic year. Asst. Prof. Onur Çizmecioğlu, Asst. Prof. Arda Gitmez, Esra Tünay, Assoc. Prof. Eray Tüzün and Asst. Prof. Jonathan Coleman Williams were chosen for demonstrating outstanding teaching abilities and for contributing to students’ academic and intellectual development.
Please read statements from the distinguished teachers below:
Onur Çizmecioğlu (MBG)
Receiving the Distinguished Teaching Award is deeply meaningful to me, not only as a professional recognition but also as a reflection of my long-standing bond with Bilkent University. Bilkent is not merely the institution where I work; it is also my alma mater, the place where my academic identity first began to take shape, and a university that I continue to regard as my intellectual home. For this reason, being recognized for my teaching at Bilkent carries a particularly special emotional value.
I am sincerely grateful to Prof. Tayfun Özçelik, Prof. Turgay Dalkara and Prof. Emrah Özensoy for their generous support, encouragement and endorsements during this process. I would also like to express my heartfelt appreciation to Hadi Kerem Çil for his thoughtful student endorsement, which made this recognition especially meaningful.
Throughout my academic career, I have viewed teaching not simply as the transfer of knowledge, but as a responsibility to help students develop scientific curiosity, analytical thinking and confidence in their own ability to interpret complex biological processes. Seeing students move from memorizing concepts to questioning data, constructing arguments and thinking like scientists has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my profession.
This award reminds me that the time, care and effort invested in the classroom can leave a lasting impact. It also strengthens my sense of responsibility to pass on to future generations the values that Bilkent helped instill in me. Being able to teach at my own alma mater has always been a privilege; having this journey recognized through such an award is a source of sincere gratitude and pride.
Arda Gitmez (ECON)
I am incredibly honored to be named among the recipients of this year’s Bilkent University Distinguished Teaching Awards. The award reflects Bilkent University’s commitment to excellence in teaching, a mission I am proud to be a part of. It is a true privilege to have my name included among such a dedicated and inspiring group of teachers.
I have truly enjoyed every opportunity to teach during my time at Bilkent. Without a doubt, Bilkent’s conscientious and vibrant student community is the primary reason behind this enjoyment. Often, my teaching hours have been the highlight of my day. I have taken great pleasure in conversing with incredibly bright and curious young minds, answering their questions and showing them a glimpse of how we, as economists, think about the world. I see my teaching hours as a “meeting point” between different generations and an opportunity for two-way exchange: not only do students leave the classroom a little more knowledgeable than they were an hour earlier, but I leave the classroom a little smarter! Thanks to this exchange of perspectives, I can say without hesitation that my teaching experience at Bilkent has made me a better scholar.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the department and faculty administration, as well as to my colleagues for their unwavering support throughout my teaching journey at Bilkent. I have had the opportunity to co-teach courses with excellent instructors, including Nuh Aygün Dalkıran and Tarık Kara, and I have learned a great deal from them. I would like to thank all the teaching assistants for their efforts and contributions and all the students for their invaluable role in shaping the teaching experience. I am grateful to the students, alumni and colleagues who wrote endorsement letters as well as to the nomination committee and the award committee.
Last but not least, I would like to dedicate this award to the memory of Talat Şenocak, whom we lost far too early. He was a true embodiment of Bilkent University’s dedication to excellence in teaching, and we will continue to remember him with great fondness.
Esra Tünay (PREP)
I am deeply honored and delighted to have received the Distinguished Teaching Award. I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Elif Kantarcıoğlu, Dr. Hande Işık Scott, Gökçen Çolak and Aslı Sağ for believing in my vision, recognizing my dedication and investing their time to writing such thoughtful letters of nomination. My heartfelt thanks also goes to my husband and daughter, whose love has been my greatest source of strength and joy.
To my former and current students: thank you for allowing me to accompany you in your academic lives and walk alongside you in your growth, both in English and beyond. I extend this gratitude to my Prep School family, with whom I have stood side by side for the past twenty years. Together we have overcome challenges and celebrated milestones. I am immensely proud to belong to this supportive academic community, whose overwhelming joy for this award has made the recognition unforgettable.
Working with preparatory school students has always held a special significance for me. At the age of eighteen, many of them are navigating independence while adapting to academic life. Supporting them in this period while helping them develop academically and personally has remained at the heart of my teaching philosophy. In an increasingly virtual world, I believe that genuine human connection is what makes meaningful learning possible and leaves a lasting impact on students and teachers.
This award has given me the opportunity to reflect on what teaching has meant to me throughout my career. For me, teaching English has never been limited to transferring knowledge or developing linguistic competence. It has always been about connection, trust and transformation. Empowering students to gain English proficiency and unlock their voices remains one of the greatest privileges of my professional life.
Eray Tüzün (CS)
Receiving the Distinguished Teaching Award is a great honor and a deeply meaningful recognition. I am sincerely grateful to my students, colleagues, department and Bilkent University for this award.
The most important outcome of teaching, for me, is helping students grow into thoughtful, capable and curious individuals. I feel that the real impact of education is seeing students continuously improve themselves: as engineers, as professionals and as individuals. One of the things that genuinely makes me happiest is seeing a student go from “version 1.0” to “version 1.01”: becoming more confident, more thoughtful, more disciplined or more self-aware over time, even in the slightest ways. Those small but meaningful steps of growth matter enormously.
Throughout my academic career, I have tried to build bridges between academia and industry by integrating real-world software engineering practices, guest speakers, industrial collaborations and hands-on projects into my courses. One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching at Bilkent has been witnessing students transform their ideas into impactful systems, research projects, startups and successful professional careers around the world.
I deeply value student engagement and interaction. When students participate actively, ask difficult questions, challenge assumptions and push discussions further, the classroom becomes truly alive. Especially in the age of large language models and AI, I believe one of the most important skills students can develop is the ability to ask good questions, think critically and evaluate information independently. Technology can generate answers very quickly, but curiosity, judgment and intellectual depth remain uniquely human qualities.
As a graduate of this university, I feel very fortunate to still be part of the Bilkent community, where excellence in teaching and student engagement is truly valued. This award motivates me to continue improving myself as an educator and contributing to future generations of students.
Jonathan C. Williams (ELIT)
It is difficult to find the words to express my gratitude at having been named one of the recipients of the 2026 Distinguished Teaching Award. I am grateful to my department chair, Ayşe Çelikkol, and to my dean, Simon Wigley, for nominating me; to my colleagues, Ceylan Köşker Bevington, Ayşe Çelikkol and Apala Das, each of whom devoted countless hours to my nomination; to the alums who wrote letters of support; and to the award committee. I am thankful to each of my former and current students for reminding me every day just how joyous a task the study of literature can be.
I have been reflecting on the question of what I mean when I tell people that I teach literature. Only recently have I begun to understand that the “I” of that grammatical construct is less important than its direct object. I alone am less important than the concepts I teach, which is precisely whyI find the work of teaching to be so rejuvenating. The questions that literature addresses—questions having to do with the relation between grammar and rhetoric, selfhood and history, individual life and collective responsibility—are so deeply urgent that they cannot be said to be the exclusive domain of any one teacher or thinker. They are rather the domain of the public, the grounds upon which we might begin to conceive of history in collective and not merely personal terms. The best and truest philosophies of history begin with the acknowledgment that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which is not to say that the parts are not important (it is in fact just the opposite). There is a joy in understanding that truth—a joy that is activated and cultivated in and through the work of teaching.
