Dr. Kemal Gürüz is the former
President of the Turkish Council of Higher Education, a cabinet-level post to
which he was appointed by the immediate past Turkish President Süleyman Demirel
in 1995 and in which he served until 2003. Early in his career, Dr. Gürüz was
awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to join the Department of Chemical Engineering
at Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he worked for four years as a
researcher and Visiting Associate Professor. For five years he served as
President of Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon, Turkey. Soon
after, Dr. Gürüz was appointed Chairman of the Turkish Fulbright Commission.
In 1990, Dr. Gürüz was named president of Turkey’s National Science Foundation, the Turkish Scientific
and Technical Research Council, a post he held until 1992.
During his tenure as
President of the Council of Higher Education, Dr. Gürüz made great contributions
to the internationalization of Turkish higher education. One of his many accomplishments
from that moment in his career was the establishment of a joint program with
the State University of New York to provide opportunities for Turkish students
to participate in collaborative degree programs between Turkish universities
and SUNY campuses. The founding of this program was of groundbreaking
significance in terms of its breadth and close degree of collaboration.
