Nakiye Boyacıgiller: “If it weren’t for Sabancı University, I wouldn’t have come back to Turkey. I don’t think I could be as happy in another university because the fundamental values of this university are a perfect match for mine. I think we’re doing great things for Turkey here. I will be proud to have played a part in this until the end of my life.
As a relatively new faculty, it has had remarkable achievements.It was accredited by the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business); a mark of achievement held only by 5% of the management schools in the world.In the region, it is the only strategic partner of MIT Sloan, one of the most prestigious management schools in the world. This is the Sabancı School of Management, of which Nakiye Boyacıgiller has been the dean for 9 years.
Let’s start from before you were a dean. How did you decide to come to Turkey?
This is going to reveal my age, but I took my undergraduate degree from Boğaziçi University in 1974 and went to the United States for graduate education. Ever since then, Ziya and I were planning to come back some time. But I went on with a PhD and Ziya started a business there, and the ‘80s wasn’t a great time to be in Turkey. Whenever we spoke of coming back, our families urged us not to because we were doing well there. As a result, we lived in America for 29 years after my graduation. I'm not going to deny that we had a happy life there, we had great opportunities. But we always kept our ties with Turkey, we came here every summer. I had been invited to the search conference for the establishment of Sabancı University. This was a great chance and the happiest, most exciting three days of my life, from an academic perspective. I was thrilled to have a word in the establishment of a new university and be the part of a dream. But my daughters were in high school back then, and you know how tricky those years are.
Indeed, adolescence.
That is why I could not be a part of the early years of the university. But I kept visiting the university and maintained close ties. In the summer of 2002, I received a phone call from then-president Tosun Terzioğlu. I had not met him because he wasn’t at the search conference. He wanted to meet me. Clueless as I was, I didn’t know what to make of this. I was here on holiday and I only had a couple more days in Istanbul; I couldn’t go to the university. He said he’d meet me where I want. We sat and talked for an hour and a half. He told me about some issues of the faculty. I didn’t know why he was telling me all this, and in the end I asked him. He told me that they wanted me to be the dean. I wasn't even head of department at the time, let alone be a dean. He said, "We trust you and it's a small faculty; you'll do it." I thought about it and I talked to my husband. I was 49 years old and we had done lots in America, we had great achievements, but the fact that I had done nothing for Turkey was a thorn in my side. Ziya and I decided to take the opportunity and accept the assignment. My older daughter was in university and her sister was finishing high school. I told them I could come if they waited for a year, and they did! When Esen graduated from high school, we moved to Istanbul in 2003 and my tenure at Sabancı University began.
This interview is taken from "Wednesday talks with Nesrin Balkan" column of GazeteSU.
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