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A chat with Dr. Aysegul Timur as she approaches one year in the role as president of FGCU

Dr. Aysegul Timur, president of Florida Gulf Coast University
Mike Kiniry / WGCU
Dr. Aysegul Timur, president of Florida Gulf Coast University

Dr. Aysegul Timur officially took the reins in her new role as president of Florida Gulf Coast University on July 1, 2023. Prior to serving as president she was Assistant Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Strategy and Program Innovation. Overall, she’s been a part of the FGCU community since 2019.

Dr. Timur is the FGCU’s fifth president, and she is the university’s first female president since its founding in 1997. President Timur was born in Turkey and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration at University of Istanbul before coming to the U.S. in the late 1990s to pursue her PhD at University of South Florida, which she received in 2006.

Prior to joining FGCU, President Timur worked for Hodges University in Fort Myers, where she began her career as a teaching assistant in 1999. There, she steadily moved up the ranks to become a full professor of economics in 2009, and then was Dean of the Johnson School of Business in 2014, and then Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs in 2017.

We sit down with President Timur as she approaches her first year as president to discuss topics including the university's new Strategic Plan, how Generative AI is being addressed and implemented on campus and in academic programs, a new plan to explore building workforce housing for faculty and staff near campus, and her trip to Bloomington, IN to watch the FGCU Women's Basketball team compete in the 2024 Final Four Tournament.

You can listen to our previous conversation with president Timur shortly after she became president here.
You can listen to our conversation about FGCU's new Strategic Plan here.

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