CAIRO: For the third consecutive year, the American University in Cairo (AUC) has been selected as a recipient of the European Union (EU) Tempus grant. It is the university’s third consecutive year winning the award.

The proposal, Leadership in Higher Education Management, “focuses on how to improve the way higher education institutions in the Mediterranean region operate under the stewardship of AUC,” a press release from the university read.

The project will begin this January and continue for the coming three years, with the total funds allocated over one million euros.

AUC’s role as an international university makes this project particularly significant. “As AUC is a key partner in the education system in Egypt, it has the responsibility to convey best practices to other Egyptian institutions and other universities in the region,” said Ehab Abdel-Rahman, physics professor who submitted the proposal.

“We are at a crossroads—today’s emerging practices must guarantee that international higher education is beneficial to the public and not simply profit-oriented, and that is exactly what this project is all about,” he added.

The selected institutional partners are joined in a structural network to respond to the modernization agenda of the EU, which focuses on the intersections of education, research and innovation; and to the need of human capital investment, support for future leaders and the encouragement of the professionalization of higher education management at all levels.

The goal of the Tempus program, which was established in 1990 and is now in its fourth phase, is to support the modernization of higher education in 27 countries in regions surrounding the European Union, including, in addition to the Mediterranean region, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Western Balkans.

These projects are “geared toward increasing the capacity of higher education institutions in fields such as international cooperation, inter-disciplinary university faculties, employability of university graduates and increased understanding of the people and cultures of the EU,” AUC said.

AUC has been the recipient of two other Tempus funded projects in the past three years, both of which were also authored by Abdel-Rahman, the statement said.

In 2006, AUC received a grant for a project titled Euro-Egyptian Partnership for Physics Teaching Reform in Egypt, which was completed in August 2009. The project selected in 2008, Enterprise-University Partnership (EUPART), established four technology transfer offices.

Implementation of the project began in January 2009 and is ongoing.

BM

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