Furkan Gur is an associate professor of entrepreneurship in the Department of Management. This fall,
he taught, “Innovation, Social Equity, and Entrepreneurship in Media” with Professor Laura Vazquez.
Why were you attracted to offering an Honors seminar?
“In 2021, I received an online teaching award. During the reception I met with Dr. Vazquez who also received a similar award (Presidential Teaching Award). During our conversation, we were both excited to discover our shared interests and how we could highlight and discuss social issues using a combination of our backgrounds in creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and media. I believe we have the unique interdisciplinary background to cover various aspects of complex social issues such as climate change, ethics, circular economy, and diversity. We wanted to offer this course to a group of successful students with diverse and interdisciplinary backgrounds, and we thought the honors program was a great fit.”
How do you teach your subject or specialty to an interdisciplinary group of Honors students?
“I believe media is an efficient way to tell complex and multifaceted stories and issues to students in a short period of time. Accordingly, Dr. Vazquez and I curated different types of media including documentaries, movies, short videos, podcasts, and Ted Talks that we believe best outline the dimensions of a given social issue, supplemented by short readings that provide more details and data on the topic. Our class is organized in a way that students engage in group and class discussions related to these videos and readings. Every week we have a different set-up that includes hands-on learning opportunities, including a gallery walk and guest speakers. We also deliver brief interactive lectures on a topic from our disciplinary backgrounds that we believe complements the content in that week’s social issue and help students to develop ideas to tackle these issues. Later in the semester, students will take over a week of the class in a group to focus on a social issue that they are passionate about, assign all of [the] media and readings, and lead [the] class discussion on the subject.”
What are some of your tricks of the trade to engage students in the course materials?
“I work on integrating my teaching philosophy of “joyful and practical rigor” in my classes by 1) bridging theory and practice through experiential learning, 2) adopting a continuous experimentation approach, and 3) facilitating interactivity. In my classes, I strive to create an engaging learning environment especially built around providing students opportunities for hands-on and practical experiences. Students experience a combination of exercises, simulations, cases, guest speakers, workshops, field trips, improvised and planned presentations, brief and detailed business pitches, group projects, interviews, and launching a business in my classes. For example, in one of my classes, students start and run small businesses and they are responsible [for] all aspects of their emerging business including ideation, production, supply chain, operations, marketing, customer relationships, sales, and budgeting.”
What’s the best thing about teaching Honors students?
“I was pleasantly surprised with the great diversity (gender, ethnicity, and disciplinary backgrounds) we have in the classroom. Students are all engaged and have a unique perspective. It is such a pleasure to engage in conversations with all of them about complex social issues, and I discover new aspects of an issue alongside them every week. Because students seem to be eager to learn and discover with us, I am also excited to learn with them and looking forward to our classes every week.”
