New, Digital Learning Spaces in Library Revamp
The AUC Library will include innovative areas and facilities funded by USAID.
A major transformation lies ahead for the AUC Library, which holds the largest English-language research collection in Egypt, with the help of a $2 million American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA) grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). After the upgrade, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, the AUC Library will include a digital exhibit corridor, active collaboration zones, new seating options, communal spaces, planters and a cafe.
“This revamp will launch learning into the future, with design requirements that enable effective, next-generation, collaborative learning,” said Hoda Mostafa, director of AUC’s Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) and principal investigator of the USAID/ASHA Learning Transformation grant, alongside co-principal investigator Lamia Eid '88, ’92, dean of the University’s Libraries and Learning Technologies.
This ASHA grant is the latest of three awarded to CLT by USAID, totaling $3.7 million. The previous two funded the development of new learning spaces on both the New Cairo and Tahrir Square campuses: digitally empowered classrooms in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (2021) as well as the construction of additional hybrid learning spaces, a data visualization lab and dual delivery classrooms (2022). In Fall 2023, 11 of these classrooms were launched, where 92 faculty members are teaching more than 1,700 students across a variety of courses.
“This revamp will launch learning into the future, with design requirements that enable effective, next-generation, collaborative learning."
“By reimagining our learning spaces, we are creating a landscape that we hope will enable our goal of accelerating transformative teaching as well as active and engaged learning at AUC,” said Mostafa, who is the principal investigator for the three USAID-funded ASHAawards; AUC Learning Landscape Transformation. “The impact of the three awards extends to our entire AUC community, where thousands of our students, faculty and staff will experience futuristic, formal and informal, collaborative learning spaces.”
Read more about these projects here.
Spanning 45 years, AUC’s partnership with USAID/ASHA has fostered innovation, scientific research, education and economic development in the Egyptian community, withapproximately $35 million awarded grants to date.
The three latest awards are an additional part of the legacy of Aziza Ellozy ’64, ’67, adviser to the provost for transformative learning and teaching at AUC who previously served as founding director of CLT. Ellozy has spearheaded innovative teaching and learning initiatives at the University for more than 20 years.
