Overview
LAU Fundraising Efforts
As a consequence of the country’s shift toward dollarizing overhead costs such as fuel, maintenance, laboratory consumables, equipment, supplies, research support, technologies and facilities, and the challenge of retaining faculty, physicians and staff in the ongoing brain drain, we were compelled to shift to dollar-based tuition as of fall 2022.
However, we also increased the Financial Aid budget to a record $100 million and reintroduced the educational loan to support the great majority of our students.
To help mitigate the financial difficulties that the deteriorating situation in the country imposed on students and patients - especially cancer sufferers - we intensified our fundraising campaigns with visits to the US, London, Paris, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the Talent Retention and Attraction Fund set up last year, a Solidarity Fund was launched with the inauguration of LAU President Michel E. Mawad to assist financially challenged LAU students as well as patients at the LAU medical centers.
To that end, a committee of six trustees and the spouses of three trustees volunteered their time and know-how to spearhead the “Give to Learn, Give to Live” Fundraising Gala in New York on September 9, 2022.
The committee was co-chaired by Trustee Nijad Fares and his wife Zeina, and included Board Chairman Philip Stolzfus, Mrs. May Makhzoumi, Dr. Francois and Mrs. Micheline Nader, Raymond Debbane, Ambassador Edward Gabriel, Dr. Mawad, Dr. George Najjar, and Manal Saab. At the gala, alumna Maha Kaddoura and General Director of Middle East Airlines USA, Adib Kassis, received the Sarah Huntington Smith Award in recognition of their philanthropic work and long-standing commitment to Lebanon.
In parallel, a benefit online art auction, titled Art to Learn, Art to Live, in collaboration with Artscoops ran from September 7 to 12, featuring a wide range of works by notable multimedia artists from Lebanon that spanned inventive abstract work and thought-provoking portraits to photography and design.
The ongoing fundraising campaign has raised thousands of dollars to support LAU financial aid programs as well as cancer patients in fulfillment of a promise made by LAU to stand by its vulnerable family members and assist them through difficult times.
Rankings
Despite the many challenges posed by the compounded crises in the country, the university continued to shine nationally and regionally in AY2021-2022.
The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2022 placed LAU at No. 1 in Lebanon, and in the 101-200 bracket worldwide, on two UN Sustainable Development Goals indicators: SDG 1, no poverty, and SDG 8, decent work and economic growth.
Once again, impact and excellence earned LAU second place nationwide in Webometrics, a ranking that measures a university’s performance, based on the relevance and impact of its activities and outputs.
LAU was also named as one of the world’s top universities for the study of three subjects, performing best in Petroleum Engineering, according to the 12th edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022.
The university’s Petroleum Engineering program and Business & Management Studies ranked No. 2 in Lebanon for the second year running, while Computer Science & Information Systems achieved third place in its very first ranking by QS.
For two consecutive years, 2021 and 2022, LAU was ranked No. 1 among private universities in Lebanon by the QS World University Rankings by Subject for Petroleum Engineering, placing in the 101-150 bracket.
The 2022 Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings ranked LAU as No. 1 in teaching and international outlook and No. 2 overall nationally.
Research and Faculty Achievements
Collaborative research between faculty and students is on the rise, as is research output both in quantity and quality.
In November 2021, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the School of Arts and Sciences Elias Akoury led a research group of undergraduate students on a field trip around Palm Islands Natural Reserve to gather samples and further assess toxicity levels in seawater from microplastics.
Lecturer at the School of Architecture and Design and Director of the LAU Louis Cardahi Foundation Rachid Chamoun was appointed special advisor for the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism in December 2021 by virtue of his invaluable contributions to cultural tourism. Dr. Chamoun, who is also president of the Confederation of the Phoenicians’ Route, will represent Lebanon in the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe Programme.
In February 2022, a proposal submitted by the School of Engineering to USAID-TIF (Trade Investment Facilitation project) to establish a pilot for local manufacturing/assembly and quality testing of PV (solar) modules in Lebanon has moved to the co-creation phase with industry partners.
A paper co-authored by Associate Professor of Marketing Zahy Ramadan, and said to “contribute a seminal work in the field of virtual influencers,” has been featured in Forbes Middle East. The study - published by Marketing Intelligence & Planning - defines the key components of a computer-generated influencer’s (CGI) identity and analyzes the ensuing relationship between the CGI and its digital environment.
Associate Professor of Finance Elie Bouri became the first in Lebanon to be listed among the 2021 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers in Economics and Business. Each year, Clarivate identifies the world’s most influential researchers ─ a select few who have been most frequently cited by their peers over the last decade. In 2021, less than 6,700, or about 0.1 percent, of the world’s researchers in 21 research fields and across multiple fields, have earned this exclusive merit.
A study on corporate environmental ethics co-authored by Assistant Professor of Marketing Omar Itani has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, one of the 50 journals used in the Financial Times research rank. The paper shows that employee brand advocacy and customer satisfaction are increased when firms activate their corporate environmental ethics through eco-capabilities, as environmental stewards find more meaning in their work.
Thanks to a project initiated by the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to donate and help set up a Tier-2 data center in Lebanon as part of its High-Performance Computing for Lebanon (HPC4L) project, the LAU community will have access to high-performance computing. As one of a five-university consortium, LAU will lead the system administration of this HPC setup, a key role that requires technical expertise and that will offer a unique learning experience for undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines.
Driven by the sight of long queues at Lebanese gas stations in the summer of 2021, Assistant Professor of Practice Nabil Nehme and his students set out to design a smart gas distribution network. The innovative project addresses a host of common issues plaguing the sector in the country, including corruption and illegal smuggling. “A pathway to build gasoline supply chain resilience in Lebanon,” as described by Dr. Nehme, the idea is to track and monitor fuel upon its arrival in Lebanon, all the way till it reaches the end users.
In June 2022, Dr. Nehme was elected president of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers’ Engineering Economy Division.
Also in June, the Office of Graduate Studies and Research office granted three graduate students the Outstanding Research Award: Pierre Boutros (Social Sciences and Management), Tony Haykal (Life Sciences and Medicine), and Malak Sayour (Engineering and Technology). Their project mentors were Dr. Ali Fakih, Dr. Sanda Rizk and Dr. Samer Saab respectively.
In July 2022, electrical engineering student and Middle East Partnership Initiative (US MEPI) Gender Scholar Pia Kattoura was selected to give a presentation at the end-of-year conference on a gender-inclusive public sector in Lebanon and the region, for her impressive work on anti-corruption reform.
In August 2022, Dr. Maroun Daccache, chair of the Department of Architecture & Interior Design presented his project on the redesign of Beirut port following the tragic explosion of August 4 at the Order of Engineers and Architects. The project, which highlighted the possible extension of the port in the city, was featured in the An-Nahar newspaper.
Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Linguistic Studies at the LAU School of Arts and Sciences Andree Affeich was honored by the Arab Translators Association for her contributions to the field of translation in a ceremony held last month in Jordan.
The success of LAU’s strategy to establish itself as a research-active institution of higher learning in Lebanon and the region, without compromising its commitment to quality teaching, has been manifested in the upward trend in research over the past 25 years. The exponential increase has been both in quantity and in quality, remarkably with the same number of full-time faculty in professorial ranks.
Faculty Recognition
During the first faculty meeting in AY 2021-2022, the Excellence in Research Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award respectively went to Assistant Professor of Marketing Omar Itani and Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Information Technology and Operations Management Department Manal Yunis.
COVID-19 Measures, Research and Initiatives
Measures
As in-person and hybrid classes resumed in September 2021, a safety awareness campaign was mounted on campus with posters and a steady flow of communication on precautionary measures, such as masking and physical distancing. Vaccinated individuals were required to send proof of vaccination to the Health Services Office and the unvaccinated were to take a weekly PCR test at the LAU Medical Center-Rizk Hospital or LAU Medical Center-Saint John’s Hospital.
Travel to conferences was limited and quarantine was imposed on those returning from travel or those who had contracted COVID-19. Two negative PCR tests were mandatory before admission to the campus. All persons with upper respiratory illness symptoms (fever, runny nose, coughing, sneezing, headaches, sore throat, fatigue, muscle aches, or shortness of breath) had to be cleared by the Health Services Office before returning to campus.
LAU’s Emergency Health Response Committee, LAU’s Vaccination Committee, LAU’s Health Clinics and LAU Health consistently provided guidance to members of our LAU community on the progression of COVID-19 and the emergence of new variants, such as the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Research
Pursuing her research on sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 genomes, Professor of Microbial Genomics Sima Tokajian published a paper showing that the Delta variant had replaced the Alpha variant at an alarming speed in Lebanon. The findings were based on the sequencing of more than 200 genomes at the LAU pathogenomics lab headed by Dr. Tokajian that were derived from SARS-CoV-2-positive samples. Alumnus Georgi Merhi (MS ‘19) and Biological Sciences master’s student Jad Koweyes assisted in the research.
As Dr. Tokajian’s lab has also served as a reference for the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in confirming circulating variants in the country, the sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 genomes at LAU later identified the Omicron variant in two suspected cases in Lebanon based on samples sent by the MoPH.
Following a WHO grant secured by Dr. Tokajian, her team also trained two researchers from the Ministry of Public Health on SARS-CoV-2 sequencing and data analysis at the pathogenomics lab, with similar training offered to 30 LAU senior biology students.
Initiatives
The LAU Mobile Clinic carried on with vaccinations nationally and on scheduled runs to both the Beirut and Byblos campus.
Also this year, the LAU Health Clinics were established on both campuses to provide accessible healthcare for the faculty, staff and students and ensure their wellbeing by providing medical and mental health support.
The Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) webpage was regularly updated with announcements, guidelines, insight from medical faculty, and resources.
Learning
With the shift to digital pedagogical delivery expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic, the university launched two online master’s degree programs, the MBA in Global Business Administration in fall 2021 and the Master of Science in Computer Science in January 2022. An online MBA in Business Analytics followed this year.
In April 2022, the Office of Graduate Studies and Research (GSR) launched the Graduate Program Scholarships - initiated in 2020 - for the fall term. This year, a monthly stipend of $200 allocated for the duration of the program was added to the student waiver. The goal was to allow students to focus on their studies and research, which will create appropriate conditions for their future success, be it in academia or industry, said GSR Dean Samer Saab.
In November 2021, the school celebrated two classes of 129 pharmacists at the annual White Coat Ceremony which was not held the year before due to health restrictions. Delivering a message of hope, Dean Imad Btaiche encouraged the students to keep fighting, “as we as faculty are empowered by your presence.”
After a two-year hiatus, the classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022 were honored in jubilant celebrations over five days on Beirut and Byblos campuses for the university’s 97th commencement exercises. More than 6,200 graduates celebrated with their families and friends, and LAU bestowed the honorary doctorates on pianist and composer Abdel Rahman El Basha, and pioneer in cardiology, echocardiography and cardiac imaging Dr. William A. Zoghbi.
The GSR held its second Student Research Awards ceremony online, granting three graduate students the Outstanding Research Award. The awards fell into three categories: social sciences and management, life sciences and medicine, and engineering and technology. The recipients were Pierre Boutros (Social Sciences and Management), Tony Haykal (Life Sciences and Medicine), and Malak Sayour (Engineering and Technology).
In June 2022, the sixth cohort of fashion designers put on an eclectic show, titled Ignite, that combined craftsmanship, innovation and vision. This was the first live fashion show since the outbreak of the pandemic and the first to be held in the Gezairi building.
In that same month, 65 medical students donned the white coat, marking their transition from pre-clinical learning to the clinical wards at the annual White Coat Ceremony. At the event, Dr. Mawad exhorted them to stay humble, as “humility, humanity and self-exertion are three qualities you should never part company with.”
Honoring the “generation that stepped up to serve,” the School of Medicine recognized its 10th graduating class, seventh group of residents and third group of graduating fellows, whose journeys have been a baptism by fire in the face of health emergencies and crises in Lebanon.
Following a three-year hiatus due to health restrictions, ARCSON honored the classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022 at the pinning ceremony. They were urged to “reimagine, transform and disrupt the ways nurses lead and impact society.”
At the annual School of Pharmacy Hooding and Graduation of Residents, 29 new PharmD graduates and two postgraduate residents pledged to support the uplifting of the Lebanese health sector.
In partnership with USAID, LAU held graduation ceremonies to celebrate 76 Higher Education Scholarship graduates, and, in partnership with the American University of Beirut, another one to honor 32 MEPI-TL graduates.
With scarce job opportunities in Lebanon for young graduates, a student-led initiative, the LAU Case Competition was brought back after the pandemic. More than 450 students from different Lebanese universities competed to “win” internships and job opportunities at leading multinational companies, including Deloitte, Leo Burnett, Merck & Co. (MSD), Unilever and PepsiCo, and IBM.
Partnerships
In February 2022, The Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing signed an agreement with UK-Med to provide training on health emergency preparedness for medical and paramedical students, and to foster research in this area.
In April 2022, a memorandum of understanding between LAU and the Intisar Foundation established by trustee HE Sheikha Intisar AlSabah created the opportunity for LAU students to gain professional training in an innovative approach to empowering women and peacebuilding through internships at the NGO.
LAU formalized its partnership with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and hosted a workshop to promote zero-waste design in collaboration with the UNEP Sustainable Fashion Academy.