My Teaching Policy

Academic accommodations: I would love to do my best to tailor your learning experience to your needs; in particular, if you have any special situation, please contact me to discuss further. Such a situation may be physical disability, learning disability, ADHD, chronic health issue, mental health condition, complications with a pregnancy, temporarily disabling injury or circumstance, upcoming surgery, and else. Being a mathematical physicist who is bound to teach math-heavy courses, I would particularly advise that students contact me if they have dyscalculia, and advice that they check if they have dyscalculia in case they suffer greatly in mathematical courses.

I usually do not require The Letter for Academic Accommodation for my classes (please check with me first though) ; however other instructors may prefer students to have this: please check the website of METU Disability Support Office (DSO) for further information.

Academic integrity: You accept by taking my class that you will abide by the academic integrity rules within my class as well. You should definitely read my explanations of the expected academic integrity.

Language: The medium of instruction in my classes is English (article 5/1 in Regulations): you are of course free to use any language (Turkish, English, Quenya, etc.) when interacting with the instructor outside the classroom, but please do your best to stick to English inside the classroom!

Attendance: Class attendance is mandatory by the Regulations (article 23/1). Although I am personally against mandatory attendance, I would strongly advice it anyway: these courses can get quite essential for the rest of your physics career and you may not be able to learn everything by studying yourself! That said, your attendance will not affect your grade.

Assessment & Grades:

• By the Regulations (article 24/5), each student receives a letter grade at the end of the semester.
• The letter grades will be determined based on the scores of the students, and the subdivision of overall score among examinations or other possible courseload is determined per the course: see its syllabus for further details.
• As per my right provided by the Regulations (article 24/2), I will determine the conversion of Score to a Letter Grade at the end of the course: although there are various guidelines (say, assigning AA to the interval $90-100$), I will use my judgment to determine the appropriate designations based on the overall class performance and the receptions of the exams by the class. For my grading strategy in past, check out my explanations here.

Examinations & Admissible Excuses:

• Students are responsible to take each and every examination announced in the syllabus. If you fail to take an examination without an admissible excuse, I will invoke my rights provided by the Regulations (article 23) to penalize your score (hence effectively your letter grade) as detailed in the respective syllabus of the course.

• If a student misses one or more examinations in the following cases, they may be entitled to admissible excuses:

  1.

  If you were at the Health and Guidance Center for medical examination or treatment at the same time as the exam, request a medical examination document from HGC: I may or may not accept it as an admissible excuse, in alignment with the relevant regulation (article 9/4b).

  2.

  If you have a medical report, it is an admissible excuse (see article 11/3c of Regulations) provided that you submit your medical report to Health and Guidance Center (HGC) within 5 days after the period covered by the report ends, as required by the Regulations (article 10/2). Therefore, I reserve the right not to accept your medical report as an admissible excuse if it was not validated by HGC. In any case, I suggest that you contact me immediately if you miss an exam due to a medical complication, and email me a picture of your medical report as well.

  3.

  If the student has a concurrent examination scheduled for another course, then I count it as an admissible excuse provided that the instructor of the other course sends me an email through their METU email address, verifying the exam clash.

  4.

  For other situations (such as a family crisis, death of a relative, etc.), please contant me: I may (or may not) grant you an admissible excuse.

• An admissible excuse does not warrant a make-up examination; it may simply change the algorithm with which the student’s score is calculated in accordance with the relevant regulations (for instance, see article 11/3c of Regulations). For more details, consult to the syllabus of the relevant course.

  Teaching Assistants: Some courses might have teaching assistants associated with them; please contact these assistants for further information regarding their duties in the given class. To learn more about their responsibilities towards the class and teaching in general, see the guideline here.