Address at the Alumni Homecoming 2022
Dear Alumni,
This is a great evening because you made it so.
No words of welcome are necessary here as sons and daughters of LAU return home. Homecomings are very special occasions where emotions, sweet old times, and special moments rush down memory lane as we relive a very special phase of our lives. No words of welcome are necessary as you return to where it all started: education, awareness, friendships, bonds, and above all a sense of identity for life. You came back to your campus to be met with open arms. Your being here is the return of the faithful sons and daughters. LAU has no prodigal offspring.
LAU today is a proud mother that rejoices at having her children back home. Our pride in who you are and what you are is at once individual and collective. We are immensely proud of each of you individually, and equally proud of you collectively as an Alumni Community. You project your alma mater’s image, reflect its values, uphold its name, embody its achievements, and personify its commitment to serving society in every which way we can.
Dear Alumni,
You are the bright face of LAU and its success story. There is no shorter way to understand who and what LAU is than to look at you. Your success is our success, your achievements are our achievements, and your added value to society is the very core of our mission.
If time is the ultimate test, you should feel elated that your alma mater has been around since 1835 as an institution, and close to a hundred years as a university. During this extended period we produced well over 50,000 alumni in about 50 Chapters in every corner of the world. We were able to combine a time-honored tradition with ultra-modern programs and technologies, marry classical values of the world’s leading universities with state-of-the-art content and delivery methods, combine razor-sharp specialized know-how with genuine humility and an all-encompassing service ethic.
During the last years, LAU scored achievements that can be accurately described as unparalleled: Institutional accreditation (NECHE), professional accreditation for each of our seven schools through the leading US-based accrediting body, top ranking in Lebanon and the region with a solid position in global ranking, a campus in New York that is getting ready to assume its own identity and start offering degrees, two major medical centers, the first health system in the country, and one could go on and on.
Our biggest achievement, however, is that we stayed student-centered and kept our students as the main focus of all that we do. No one at LAU forgets that our students and our patients are the reason we come to work every morning, and our alumni are our gift to the country and the world.
Dear Alumni
Sons and Daughters of LAU,
You have at this point even more reason to be proud of your alma mater than you already are. It has already withstood three difficult years of adversity and crisis affecting, without exception, every aspect of its work. To be sure, the crisis has had its toll on us as many examples show. We have lost faculty, physicians and staff, put a freeze on recruitment, put capital projects on hold, and a freeze on salary increases. This was a price we had to pay in order to address an existential risk that threatens the entirety of the higher education sector.
The other side, however, is a story of triumph and resolve.
We were able to raise our financial aid budget to $70 million covering 75 percent of our 8,300-student body, to be increased again to $100 million for AY 2022-2023. This is but one of many indicators of the depth of our commitment to our students. Other indicators include leading the country’s shift to online delivery, setting up highly effective student helplines during the crisis, and acquiring through fundraising vaccines for our entire faculty, staff and student body in addition to many members of our beloved alumni community and the broader eco system.
Our recent decision to switch to a dollar-based tuition was made when the very existence of the university as a major center of learning and healing was threatened. We do our students and alumni no favor by compromising standards, which we never will.
Even then, the decision was made with utmost regard to student welfare, a major expansion of financial aid, and a commitment that on average no student will have to pay more than 35 cents to the dollar. LAU was, is, and will always remain a caring institution before anything else.
Dear Alumni,
Your university is now on the verge of great transformations that carry the potential of changing the face of higher education in Lebanon. Some examples: Establishing an industrial hub on the Byblos campus; exploring prospects for implementing our strategy of LAU without Borders by setting up campuses in more than one country in the MENA region; transforming the New York center into a full-blown campus issuing degrees in the US; allocating $1 million to support research as intramural seed money to attract more extramural grants; and opening a new medical center in the heart of Jounieh (Saint John’s Hospital) which is now operating at full capacity.
In closing, let me just remind you that LAU was, is, and will always be your home. The alumni body is an integral part of the university. Your fortunes and those of the university are intertwined and appreciate together. Your help for your alma mater is always needed morally, materially and in terms of advocacy. Please stay tuned to its pulse, connected to its vital signs, aligned to its vision and mission, and stand by it at all times through thick and thin.
We are all aware that such a magnificent gathering requires days of planning and careful execution. We owe this to Abdallah El-Khal and his team in Alumni Affairs, and we owe it to our hospitality team.
Our deepest thanks to you Abdallah, to Manwa, to Ghada, and to you Gaby, Loubna and Caroline.
أهلا” وسهلا” فيكم ببيتكم
Have a great reunion
Michel E. Mawad, M.D.
President