JEDDAH, 7 April 2008 — The American University in Cairo has been in the business of expanding minds for almost 90 years. Now the university is moving from its 7.3-acre campus in downtown Cairo to a sprawling 260-acre campus in New Cairo. University President David D. Arnold, who is currently in the Kingdom, spoke to Arab News yesterday about the move and the institution’s longstanding ties with Saudi Arabia, which are growing as alliances with the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology are taking shape.
“We will soon be shifting from our wonderful historic downtown campus in the center of Cairo to a state-of-the-art facility in New Cairo,” said Arnold. “This is creating an exciting new set of opportunities in terms of expanding our research programs and activities, strengthening our historic undergraduate liberal arts and also expanding the graduate studies that AUC offers.”
The new campus is also proving to be attractive to Saudi students, who are finding it a viable educational alternative. “AUC has the advantage of offering a fully-accredited US standard of education that is very close and convenient and accessible for students coming from Saudi Arabia,” Arnold said. “They can easily get on an airplane and come home for weekends to visit their families and their families too can come and visit them in Cairo. In this new facility, there will be state-of-the-art student housing, athletic facilities and a food court. We are creating a residential campus where Arab students from all over the region will feel comfortable.”
Arnold has extensive experience in American governmental think-tanks and served as the Ford Foundation’s representative to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. He said AUC prefers private funding and endowments as opposed to government contributions. “We are a private, not-for-profit institution, and we cherish our independence,” he said. “So we actually have been putting a lot more priority on mobilizing contributions from private individuals, business families, foundations and corporations that really see the value and importance of an investment in education for the region’s future.”
Many of those contributors are Saudis.
“Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal has been a major donor, and one of the buildings that will be on the new campus will bear his name — Prince Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research,” Arnold said. “Other generous donors include the Jameel family, which for many years supported the Management Center. Youssef Jameel, who is an alumnus of AUC, has done three things of great importance for us. He has supported AUC’s Jameel Management Center. Second, he has provided support for our Science and Technology Research Center (STRC), which is doing cutting-edge work in the field of nanotechnology and nanoscience. And third, he has provided support for the Jameel MBA Fellows Program. This is bringing students from Egypt and Palestine who have first degrees in science and engineering who have had experience in the industry for three to five years and who are coming back to AUC to do an MBA to combine the business-management skills with the science-and-engineering skills that they would have as a result of their undergraduate studies.”
Juffali Family’s Contribution
Arnold said the Juffali family had been very generous in supporting new spaces on the new campus. “Among other things, the main reading room in the new AUC library will be named after them,” he said. “We have been fortunate to receive support from these people who really understand and value the importance of education and the difference that education can make for the next generation in terms of the future development and prosperity of the region.”
Saudi Arabia is lagging behind many nations in the language abilities of students, particularly in English. Arnold said AUC tries to get such students up to international standards.
“We are seeing more and more private schools that are developing graduates who have the kind of background and skills that enable them to succeed,” he said of the Kingdom’s educational system. “One of the greatest barriers we find is English language capabilities. We at AUC have tried to address this by developing a very, very intensive program of English language training that is pre-academic. That is to say a student can come to AUC, be admitted, take an intensive English language course for one semester or even one academic year and then be fully prepared and ready to do a complete undergraduate study program or even graduate studies at AUC.”
Alliance With KAUST
Arnold is excited about the potential of KAUST, and both he and AUC are playing important roles to ensure its success. “We are very proud of the cooperative agreements that we are working out with KAUST,” he said. “I served on the search committee for the founding president of the new university. I think Professor Shih Choon Fong is an outstanding choice, and he will do a terrific job as the founding president of KAUST. We are cooperating in several respects. Among the first KAUST Discovery Scholars — there were about 200 worldwide — 30 were from AUC; from our School of Science and Engineering.”
The future holds the prospect of even more fascinating alliances. “We are also working on some collaborative research projects in several fields,” Arnold said. “One is in the area of marine biology and marine genomics that will take advantage of AUC’s Biology Department and the facilities we have on the Red Sea. We have a field research station, and we will be working with KAUST and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute as part of a cooperative and collaborative research project. We are doing collaborative research in the area of nanotechnology and nanoscience. Important both for Saudi Arabia and Egypt is the work that we are going to be doing in the area of desert technology, water resource management — really looking at new technologies for desert development and making the most effective use of scare water resources.”
AUC also plans to go into other disciplines with an emphasis on quality. “AUC has a very solid base for undergraduate liberal arts education, and the new campus gives us the ability to really grow and develop in the research and graduate education arena,” Arnold said. “We have more than three times the amount of space, for example. We will have the ability to develop and offer high-end MBA programs. We are looking at creating a new graduate school of education. We are looking at new programs ... Programs that really respond to needs of the dynamic and changing region by producing people who are educated... are of world standard and serve the societies they come from.”
Although Arnold notes the many changes on the horizon for AUC, he said some things will never change. “People have come to trust and respect AUC as an institution that is committed to an academic agenda,” he said. “We don’t have a political agenda. We don’t have a foreign policy agenda. We are an academic and educational institution. That is our priority. That is our mission.
AUC’s core values will remain the same. “We do three things,” Arnold said. “We help train and educate successive generations of leaders for the Arab world — people such as Queen Rania, Samir Shahabi, Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to the United Nations, and Youssef Jameel — people who have distinguished themselves in business and government and diplomacy and philanthropic and charity work. Second, we are committed to being of service to Egypt and the region, and we provide a wide range of community service and outreach programs and activities including our continuing education programs that reach 40,000 adult part-timers every year. Finally, we have a very important historic role as a cultural bridge enabling students from the Arab world to gain access and exposure to the global environment and to the West and, similarly, bringing students from the US, from Europe, from Asia to come and study about Arab culture and Islamic civilization and other subjects that get beyond the stereotypes and the images they see on television, so they can really gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the rich cultural heritage and traditions... the political developments, the religious developments and the language — all of which are part of the fabric of Arab society.”
Of particular interest to educators here should be AUC’s system where men and women study side by side without being forced to compromise their traditional values. “AUC has been a coeducational institution since the 1920s. And we provide a very hospitable environment,” Arnold said. “Our dormitories have special facilities for women’s residence — separate from the male students. It is an environment that provides both the kind of privacy and space that is needed for women and men, but we provide excellent coeducational environment in the classrooms and on the campus itself. We find that our female students do extraordinarily well. And I think more than 60 percent of our summa cum laude — those who graduate with highest honors — are women students. Our women students always excel.”
Investing in Education
In the current booming times of high energy prices and extensive construction activity, Arnold said more and more parents are making one of the wisest investments that they can make — investing in their children’s education. “I think part of the rising number of students at AUC is that the economy of the region is enabling more and more families to afford to send their children to first-class universities and so part of the increase I believe is the function of the improved economic environment,” he said.
Such investments, over time, can make a huge difference for the people of the Middle East.
“This region is capable of producing world-class talent. People such as Egypt’s Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail — a young boy from a small village in the Delta region of Egypt who had the opportunity to study first at Alexandria University and then to do a PhD in the US ... to distinguish himself in the field of science,” Arnold said. “I think there are many, many more Ahmed Zewails all over the Arab world, but if we give them the opportunities, and we give them the world-class education that they need and deserve, I think this region can hold its own against top talent throughout the world.”
