A BGSU economics professor, Turkish-native Yasemin Akcan-Barto, never planned for her life to play out the way it has. As a person who has had many different experiences and influences in her life, Akcan-Barto’s interest in trying new things has now led her to the Wall Street Journal’s #1 university in the Midwest for student experience.

2024 is Akcan-Barto’s first year teaching at BGSU and her office is located on the third floor of the Maurer Center. The first thing one may notice about her office is the pictures above her desk that show memories shared between her and her loved ones. Growing up, Akcan-Barto
spent a lot of her time playing games and watching cartoons with her family.

Akcan-Barto said she has had an interest in working with mathematics, as well as reading about how the world works, ever since she started high school. During her high school experience, these interests started to sprout and develop.

“At high school, I was at first very shy and introverted because I grew up with my family and all of my friends were mostly my cousins, so I didn’t have to meet new people,” Akcan-Barto said. “I wasn’t participating in classes, but thanks to one of my teachers, she kind of saw
something and pushed me: asking me questions during the class or asking if I needed any help, so thanks to her, moving forward I started having an interest in math and asking questions to my teachers.”

Akcan-Barto graduated high school in 2008 in Turkey and later earned a bachelor’s degree in econometrics from a college in Turkey, located about eight hours away from where she grew up. It wasn’t until a scholarship offer came up that she considered the idea of traveling to the United States.

“During my undergrad, I didn’t have any opinions about going abroad, but one day people from a scholarship committee came to my university, and these scholarships were an opportunity to go outside of your country to get some education,” Akcan-Barto said. “I was still
shy at this point, but it’s like once you start exploring something, it’s nice to keep going with the feeling of ‘it’s something new, it’s something challenging, it’s something up to your personality or your life.’ So even though it comes with some trade-offs, it’s still nice.”

Following the lecture discussing the academic scholarships for studying abroad, Akcan-Barto began to think her career path may be something that she could do for a master’s degree. She flew to America and took a couple of language classes at the University of Delaware (UD). She then studied at Texas A&M University for two years to earn her master’s degree, which she described the environment as quite warm all the time, something she was not used to.

In 2019, Akcan-Barto started to teach Economics classes at UD, which was difficult for her at first.

“When you teach Economics here, it’s more like storytelling, but the way we learn in Turkey is more like the technical side, and I am more of a technical person,” Akcan-Barto said. “So it was a bit challenging from teaching it the first semester, but I survived.”

She has done more than just survive that first semester, because after four years of teaching at UD, Akcan-Barto decided another change to her life was desired.

“I was looking at openings overall and at the beginning, I didn’t have very specific reasons, I just thought that since I’m teaching over there, I could teach somewhere else and get experience at another institution,” Akcan-Barto said. “I already knew what we had in UD, the setup and
the students, so it was repeating over and over again.”

BGSU was one of the institutions that provided Akcan-Barto with an opportunity she was looking for and she was pleased with the interview process.

“Working with Yasemin has been wonderful so far, she is the type that will not hesitate to point me in the right direction as and when opportunities come up,” said Peter Wadam, Akcan-Barto’s teaching assistant for an introduction to economics course. “Even though we are
both new, I am learning a lot from her experience.”

Akcan-Barto appears to be adjusting well to her new environment, according to BGSU students. She is described by students as kind.

“Our professor is an incredibly kind and knowledgeable person on the matter of economics,” said Zach Dorman, one of Akcan-Barto’s students in the Introduction to Economics course. “She evidently cares endlessly for her students and their success and wants nothing but
the best for them.”

Even though Akcan-Barto’s career at BGSU is just getting started, she feels as though this university is a good place for her at the moment.

“I never thought I would end up in Ohio, now I’m here,” said Akcan-Barto. “I don’t know how to express this, but it was a good change for me and I feel like there is something here for me. I don’t know what it is, but sometimes you just got to do what you need to do.”