Difference between revisions of "Category:American University of Beirut"

Overview

Founded in 1866, the American University of Beirut (AUB) is one of the leading institutions in its region with a very rich history. AUB currently has around 8,000 students and 800 instructional faculty offering more than 130 programs leading to bachelor's, master's and Phd degrees.

Over the last year (2021), Lebanon has been going through an unprecedented economic crisis with some issues being a lack of fuel for cars, lack of electricity, and inflation of the Lebanese pound. Even though all these problems exist in the country AUB is still able to show why it stands as one of the best in the region.

I&E at AUB

The last couple of years at AUB have shown great strides for I&E by hosting yearly events, competitions, hackathons, and incubators. The President Innovation Challenge is a yearly event where all AUB member's are invited to apply and present their startup ideas to receive $15,000 and $30,000 cash prizes. The FYP accelerator program is a course where students can use their final year project idea's and turn them into successful startups. The last phase of this accelerator has a competition where the participating students can earn funding for their projects. The Darwazah startup accelerate competition is another startup incubator where students can enter with ideas and exit with startups. AUB also has ties with Beirut Digital District and have a facility called the Talal and Mahida Zein AUB Innovation Part, that hosts an incubation program and hackathons for students.

Other than that AUB also has the Entrepreneurship Initiative in the engineering department and the Darwazah Center for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship in the business faculty that constantly work on expanding I&E at AUB through incubators, hackathons, etc.

AUB also has a yearly teaching excellence award where teachers with exemplary teaching techniques can get recognizes In 2021, they also introduced the "AUB Innovation in Teaching with Technology Award" which honors faculty members who used creative and innovative techniques to teach during the online phase.

Finally, the Interdisciplinary Design Practice Program at AUB works on having students and faculty take on projects to innovate and spark change on campus. Moreover, the IDDP introduced a Human-centered design course to introduce students to design thinking practices.

Regional and Local Development at AUB

The Neighborhood Initiative is one of the many ways AUB gives back to Lebanon, it helps my mobilizing campus resources by starting outside of the campus walls. They highlight hidden gems and stores near campus, open weekly farmer's market to provide a variety of local Lebanese products, and restore damaged buildings.

AUB also hosts a yearly event called AUB Outdoors where people from all over Lebanon can come to participate in festival games and attend a concert on campus!!

Moreover, AUB's high research output provides global, regional and local development. The faculty of medicine has research centers for genetics, cancer, infectious diseases, neuroscience, etc. The faculty of engineering has centers to tackle problems in Lebanon for energy, water, transportation, pollution, etc.

One of the special parts of the faculty of engineering is the hub for Arabic Typography and Comics with the goal of preserving and promoting Arabic cultural heritage. AUB has also worked on making artificial intelligence models for the Arabic language to help computer and data scientists all around the world.

There is also a center for civic engagement and community service at AUB bridges between the university community, stakeholders, humanitarian agencies, policymakers, and community partners, with an overarching mission to integrate developmental planning aimed at empowering marginalized communities with experiential learning for leadership development and transformative education. Since 2015, 75,000 volunteering ours have been completed and engaged with 700 NGO's.

The course “Design of Engineering Solutions for Health Challenges in Crises” encourages participants to use engineering design to address humanitarian challenges, bridging the gap between practitioners, engineers , scientists, NGOs, and social entrepreneurs to generate health solutions for populations in protracted crises. The course model is made of several components including interactive lectures and field visits to humanitarian settings, including interactive lectures, field work and mentorship.