About the ALA Initiatives

As part of celebrating a decade of academic excellence, the Academy of Liberal Arts is introducing 10 initiatives dedicated to development, innovation and transformative education. These initiatives are designed to provide valuable opportunities for growth and learning for both ALA faculty and students in 2023-2024.

10 Main Initiatives

Core Curriculum Pathways

Core Pathways integrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the Core Curriculum to allow students to choose a core "concentration" at the secondary and capstone levels. Pathways are thematic SDG tracks, providing students with a multidisciplinary understanding of their selected SDG concentration. Students will explore themes through various lenses, developing a well-rounded understanding of the issues at hand and building academic, intellectual, and civic skills. All courses address the Core skills of enhancing writing, reasoning, research and argumentation skills as students engage in critical questions around the theme of SDGs.

Open Classroom: Excellence in Teaching Practice

The Open Classroom initiative creates a space for faculty members to showcase their teaching excellence. Faculty members will open their classrooms for colleagues to witness their teaching approaches firsthand and develop their own in a collaborative learning environment that encourages best practices, innovation and discussion of best-fit pedagogies. This initiative will start in the spring of 2024, encouraging a wide exchange of teaching expertise across the academic arena.

Advanced Academic English for the Liberal Arts

In fall 2024, the ALA will be launching a course (English 0211) that bridges the gap in writing proficiency for students placed between English 0210 with developed language skills yet still need further improvement in their writing skills before progressing to the RHET 1010 courses.

Online Arabic for Career Advancement

This is an online self-paced course to develop the Arabic language skills of students in the areas of Arabic Communication for Career Advancement and Entrepreneurship العربية لتعزيز المسار الوظيفي والاتصال في مجال ريادة الأعمال. The program empowers students at the upper intermediate and advanced levels (B1 and B2) in developing their Arabic language skills in the work environment, enabling them to effectively communicate, interact, and engage in impactful entrepreneurship endeavors. Departments of majors may require students to complete the entire course as supplements to their courses or select modules of the course, as appropriate.

Learning Enhancement for Academic Progress (LEAP)

The Advising Center is launching the Learning Empowerment of Academic Progress (LEAP). This program is focused on offering a holistic approach to students struggling academically. The program collaborates with various offices and departments on campus to create a comprehensive support system for helping students on probation or at risk enabling them to take control over their academics and identify the areas that need improvement and support.

Student Research Publication Writing Support

The Undergraduate Research program and the Writing and Communication Center join forces to shape a valuable learning experience for undergraduate students. Student researchers seeking publication work within a comprehensive support system, combining discipline-specific feedback with writing expert guidance, to refine and elevate the quality of the research and/or creative work before publication.

AUC Road to College Freshman Seminars

AUC Road to College is expanding its self-paced online courses for Egyptian high school students to include a number of freshman “seminar-type” courses themed around the SDGs. These courses continue to develop the English language proficiency skills of advanced students while immersing them in student-centered explorations of issues and challenges of the SDGs, including Climate Change, Global Health challenges and explorations of the self. ALA partners with CLT to bring AUC’s liberal arts education to students in every Egyptian governorate.

Summer@AUC: Climate Change Institute

With a special focus on SDGs, Summer@AUC offered a two-day Institute on Climate Change in September 2023, focusing on understanding global climate change, discussing greenhouse gases, and investigating case studies on the different climate change challenges. The program addresses high-school and first-year university students from different Egyptian governorates to educate them about the layers of climate change conversations and reflect upon our role in mitigating its effects.

Faculty Development: Leveraging AI for Effective Research and Teaching

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers huge opportunities for researchers and educators to enhance their professional experiences. With the objective of identifying and showcasing the AI tools that are significant for those in the field of education, the RHET department will be offering educational sessions to shed light on some of the latest artificial intelligence advancements and how these technologies can be applied in both research and teaching environments.

The Palestinian Experience: Common Reading Experience

This year’s theme, The Palestinian Experience, brings to our reading community three fine works: Minor Detail, I Saw Ramallah, and Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands to immerse students and the community in the literature of Palestine at a time when it is critical to understand the Palestine experience and engage in reading panels and discussions that invite students to reflect upon the experiences of occupied peoples.

Other Initiatives

Arabic from K to 16: Adjusting to New Realities Conference

Partnering with the international community of Arabic language researchers and pedagogues, The Department of Applied Linguistics, ALI Department, Qatar Foundation, and UNESCO are offering a fresh perspective on teaching Arabic as a global language. The conference tackles issues in the field from different academic perspectives on a global scale. Topics will include pedagogy (teaching methods), assessment strategies, sociolinguistics, and others.

Economics Session at EURECA 2024

This year EURECA is collaborating with AUC’s economics department to organize a session for students to present their research to a panel of potential employers, receive constructive feedback and build professional relationships and networks with entrepreneurs in the field.

Summer@AUC MajorQuest

Introducing MajorQuest, an innovative program tailored for high-school students seeking to explore diverse academic disciplines. MajorQuest offers a unique opportunity with several tracks, each featuring a series of engaging three-day workshops. The workshops delve into the various disciplines within each major, providing students with a comprehensive understanding of academic fields. Through immersive experiences and hands-on activities, students will actively engage in experiential learning, empowering students with insights into different disciplines, and helping them make informed decisions about their academic and career paths.

Summer@AUC Spring Event

Summer@AUC will be hosting a full-day event during the spring semester dedicated to high-school students, showcasing the Summer@AUC experience. The event will invite previous Summer@AUC students to talk about their experiences at AUC with prospective learners and will engage students in stimulating activities, representing the type of skills they will be developing while joining the program. The event will also include demo sessions, offered by our esteemed faculty members, on the courses being offered in the program, providing them with insights into the courses offered and helping them gain a better understanding of their interests.

First Year Experience

ALA partners with FYE to create a new academic curriculum for freshman students starting in fall 2023. Students engage in a year-long academic learning journey that focuses on the outcomes of academic readiness, social connectedness and belonging, personal awareness and wellbeing and community engagement. Sessions are taught by AUC faculty, and students select different topics that address each of the four learning outcomes.