Uşak University Faculty of Agriculture, Uşak Chamber of Agriculture, Continuing Education Research and Application Centre and Agricultural and Nature Research Application and Research Centre organised two conferences with Prof. Dr. Seyit Mehmet Şen.

Prof. Dr. Seyit Mehmet Şen, who came to our university to give conferences titled ‘Eat Walnuts, Live Healthy’ and ‘Our Youth and Our Future’, visited Rector Prof. Dr. Ekrem Savaş in his office. Rector Savaş stated that they are happy to host Prof. Dr. Seyit Mehmet Şen at Uşak University and that it is of great value for Prof. Dr. Şen to share his knowledge and experiences with students.

Prof. Dr. Seyit Mehmet Şen first came together with students at the Faculty of Agriculture. In his presentation titled ‘Eat Walnut, Live Healthy’, Prof. Dr. Şen gave detailed information about the benefits of walnut, its production status in Turkey and its positive effects on health. The conference, which attracted great interest of the students, ended with a question and answer session.

After the event at the Faculty of Agriculture, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Şen came together with young people at Uşak University Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Congress and Culture Centre and gave a conference titled ‘Our Youth and Our Future’.

In the opening speech of the conference, Rector Prof. Dr. Ekrem Savaş stated that young people have an important role in building the future, emphasised that such events improve the vision of young people and thanked Prof. Dr. Şen for the information he conveyed.

In the conference, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Şen talked about the characteristics of young people and what they will contribute to our future and gave advice to the youth with examples from life. Prof. Dr. Seyit Mehmet Şen emphasised that the definition of youth is not based on age and said: ‘Anyone who has a dream, goal, excitement, belief and love is young in my opinion. Young people have worries and have an ideal. The young person should have a backbone and should have a steep stance against all obstacles and difficulties in life.’

Şen; ‘If you want to be, you have to be full first. You should spend every moment in education life or life itself by learning’ and told young people to know the value of time.

Prof. Dr. Şen said in his speech, ‘If we want to make progress in education and catch up with the age, we need to hand over education to the nation, which is its main owner, and re-construct it. During this reconstruction, we have to find a new education system in line with the realities of life, the demands of the market and the requirements of the age. The necessity of a new education system is that our share of universal production as a nation is only as much as we work and produce. At this stage, the lesson to be learnt by the youth is the fact that ‘Everyone is paid only for what they work for’.

Underlining that no race can be won with the skill taught by someone else or by imitating someone else's skill exactly, Prof. Dr. Şen gave the following advice to the students: ‘A skilful person, while giving one of his skills to someone else, has definitely kept his further skills to himself. Let's always keep this in mind: Information is the commodity with the highest market value and the most important power element. We cannot dominate things without knowledge. We cannot be strong without mastering things, and we cannot be a first-class country without being strong. Therefore, we have to produce knowledge with high market value that will make us strong.’

At the end of the programme, Rector Savaş presented Prof. Dr. Şen with a plaque of appreciation in memory of the day. Prof. Dr. Şen expressed his pleasure to be at Uşak University and thanked those who contributed to the organisation of the events.