As part of AUC's efforts to engage high school students, the Department of the Arts and the Office of Enrollment, Admissions and Student Service Center recently planned and held a Wall Art Competition for high school students from seven different schools in Cairo. The competition aims to get talented high school students involved with AUC's graphic design program and promote community engagement, since the paintings will be donated to decorate public schools. 

"The aim of the competition was to promote the arts at AUC and provide a platform for students from different schools in Cairo to meet, reflect and produce art around important issues such as global citizenship, gender equality and the environment," said Bahia Shehab (MA '09), associate professor of professional practice in the Department of the Arts. "We are hoping that this will become a yearly competition for different schools in Cairo to look forward to joining us in producing art on our beautiful campus."

The students, together with Tarek Abdelkawi, adjunct faculty member in the Department of the Arts, brainstormed and sketched three main themes for the workshop: global citizenship, gender equality and the environment. The event took place over two days, including an introductory workshop and a competition where the students implemented what was discussed at the workshop and painted the murals.

First Place: International School of Elite Education  (Malak Ibrahim, Sohaila Tamer and Malak Hussien)

Second Place: Narmer American College (Farah Nashaat and Daniel Essam)

Third Place: Hayah International Academy (Zeina Ashour, Jana El Zaghal and Alia Abdelghaffour)

All participating members will be given participation certificates. 

A Towering Win

Graphic design students on the team Ciel, Ghenwa Yehia ElMougy, Farah Habib, Nehal Ezz and Mariam Ismail won the TAMEER-AUC competition with their design of an amorphous dream-like sky. Their creative interpretation of the celestial sphere will soon decorate Egypt’s first beautified water tower.

The water tower in question is the bare concrete structure on the south side of the New Cairo campus, just visible from the AUC Sports Center. The decorated tower will become a monument for AUC and a marker for the New Cairo community.

And the prize for the winners? A fully funded educational trip to Beirut in collaboration with Solidere, an urban development company responsible for much of the reconstruction of Beirut’s central district after the war. The trip will include a presentation on urban planning and the cultural, economic and social aspects of their current projects. Bachir Moujaes, architect, urban designer and head of design at Solidere, was one of the judges of the challenge and was present at the finale.

“The trip to Beirut is intended to encourage students to explore art and architecture in a different country,” said Soha Hassan, experiential learning manager at AUC's Career Center.

The two other finalists were given a cash reward and honorable recognition. Colors of Life, with team members Haidy Helmy, Mostafa Ahmed and Merhan Amer, was awarded Best Story for its design, and HRSH Architects, with team members Rana Abdelkhalek, Hana Elshiaty, Hady Eissa and Sana Soliman, was awarded Best Architectural Design. 

All three teams will be offered a job shadowing experience with TAMEER in the department of their choice. 

Street Art With a Soul

Ciel’s design was ultimately selected for its creativity, technical feasibility and compliance to budgetary and logistical constraints.

Antoine El Khoury, managing director of TAMEER, expressed his pride in the students' work. “We will turn this functional structure into street art that has a soul,” he stated. “Today, TAMEER will take over your dream and make it a reality.”  

TAMEER will now take over the production of the students work. The award-winning team will have a say on the drawings before they are executed, to ensure that the final design conveys their original idea.

The finalists were humbled and excited about their win. “I have no words,” said Farah Habib, one of the winners.

“When we first started the competition, we didn’t really think we had a shot. We just said, 'let's try it out,'” team-member Mariam Ismail continued. “There were a lot of moments where we said ‘Oh, let's give up; we’re not going to win."

“We are all design students, so we got some background in architecture through this -- and we learned a lot,” Nehal Ezz affirmed.

Their hard work clearly showed to the judges and soon it will show to the whole New Cairo community -- a water tower painted in splashes of sky, standing out in hazy hues against its physical counterpart.

Serage Amatory, political science and multimedia journalism double major and recipient of the Tomorrow's Leaders Scholarship at AUC, was chosen to receive a fully funded scholarship to pursue his graduate studies at Stanford University as a member of the 2019 Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. AUC is the only University in the Middle East that has representatives in this year's cohort of the program.

Amatory, from Barouk-Chouf, Lebanon, will pursue a master’s degree in international policy at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences after graduating from AUC this year. He aspires through changes to the educational system in Lebanon to promote a secular, equal opportunity and gender-neutral society there. 

News@AUC spoke with Amatory to learn more about how AUC shaped his path to Stanford:

What was your path as an undergraduate at AUC like?

I chose AUC because of its location in Egypt and my strong urges to go somewhere new and grow independently. At AUC, I chose political science because of my fascination with power dynamics, the science of power and the big impact it has on every person in every aspect of his/her life. As for journalism, I found myself very passionate about storytelling and that I have a vehement fervor to take part in the usually marginalized struggles of some groups of people.

How has AUC influenced your academic studies and success?

Before I went for political science and journalism at AUC, I started taking classes in economics and business administration, believing that those were AUC’s best majors. I am thankful for AUC’s Core Curriculum that allowed me to make mistakes, experiment with different areas and, most importantly, find my most true passion at the end of the day.

AUC’s Career Center played a vital role in the Knight-Hennessy process. They offered all of the support, both emotional and professional, to applicants throughout the process. I personally would come to them every time I felt like I would never make it and would receive some pep-talk from Caroline Nassar, a great woman who never hesitated to help at any time and whose best asset is her genuineness and belief in the zeal of a freaking-out student.

What was your reaction to being selected as part of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program? What does it mean to you?

The first time, I received an acceptance to attend the interview as a part of Immersion Weekend in Palo Alto, California. Only around 150 out of the entire applicants' population were qualified for that stage, and seeing that my name was among them shocked me to my core.

I started jumping around — well, I am usually jumping in my everyday life, regardless — so imagine the extremity of my jumping that day. My three family members — my mom, my dad and my sister — all started jumping on our couch until we literally broke it in half.

The second decision, which was the final one, was meant to come on February 19. The day before, as I was grabbing coffee on campus, I received an email from the co-founder of Knight-Hennessy, John Hennessy, who gave me a number to call. With shivering fingers, I called, while, of course, surrounded by friends, and he calmly delivered the news. I was trying to maintain a calm voice, but I am positive he could tell I was also jumping. I jumped so hard that day in front of HUSS plaza that I fell down and injured my finger.

I did not think I would react as much to the second decision compared to the first because your chances are higher once you have been selected for Immersion Weekend. But the fact that the decision came one day earlier and through the phone made everything different. I remember hearing Mr. Hennessy say I am the first person from Lebanon to join them, and then toward the end of our very brief call, I went back seeking reassurance: “So now what? Am I accepted?” He said yes, and I asked, “To both Stanford and Knight-Hennessy?” I then realized that was what he was talking about the entire call! After that, I remained in a state of elation and ecstasy until this very day.

What do you hope to achieve at Stanford? What are your goals beyond Stanford?

At Stanford, I hope to achieve what I exactly promised both Stanford and Knight-Hennessy: I will actively use my potential Stanford degree as a weapon in my fight for human rights — one which I have always fought with education and knowledge, but also one that I have haplessly fought with guns, hindered with silencers of governmental, institutional and popular oppression. I will use this indescribable opportunity to work harder and harder on the causes I not only stand up for, but also live for.

Do you have a hero?

I am a firm believer that my main strength lies in my ability to appreciate anything. Hence, I do not have and never had one hero. I am, however, inspired to my very core by every heroic story that every one of us goes through. I know that everyone is fighting their own battles, and those fighters’ resilience, determination, successes and failures are my heroes. Even more specifically, the battles that children in general, and unprivileged children in particular, go through are what touch me and teach me the most.

Anything else?

This whole life-changing experience was easily going to be an eternal "What if?" I am so grateful to myself for deciding to apply to such a selective, world-leader university and such a competitive scholarship.

Please people, do everyone and yourselves a favor and go for your craziest, most unbelievable dreams. Do not settle and, most certainly, do not undermine yourselves and your potential. Dig deep in your heart. Find the wildest, most far-fetched of dreams and pursue them with faith, positivity, endurance, stamina and, above all, purpose. You can defy all odds.

I cannot end this without thanking from the bottom of my heart both Stanford and the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program for believing in me and giving me a chance to grow and work for what I claim is my whole life. I promise to use every platform and resource in order to fine-tune my voice, only to make it louder than ever.

Three student teams were recently selected as finalists for the AUC-TAMEER Water Tower Competition. These included "Colors of Life,” with team members Haidy Helmy, Mostafa Ahmed and Merhan Amer; “Ciel,” with team members Ghenwa Yehia ElMougy, Farah Habib, Nehal Ezz and Mariam Ismail; and “HRSH Architects,” with team members Rana Abdelkhalek, Hana Elshiaty, Hady Eissa and Sana Soliman.

The design that is ultimately selected in the final round of presentations will be used to transform the water tower outside of AUC’s New Cairo campus into a work of urban design, making it the first beautified water tower in Egypt. The competition is being run by AUC in partnership with TAMEER, a real estate development company that will work with the University to make the students’ designs a reality.

The Challenge

Seven teams presented their original designs at the final exhibition. Twenty-five students participated, with backgrounds in disciplines ranging from business to graphic design. After their presentations, teams were then asked questions and evaluated by a jury panel.

The challenge gave students the opportunity to work in a cross-disciplinary setting, applying their knowledge of design, marketing and architecture to a real-world situation. The students had six weeks to finish their first design proposals, working within academically diverse teams and taking part in guided workshops led by volunteer faculty members. The contestants had to grapple with creating a realistic, affordable and engaging design that reflected the values of the New Cairo community in a short-time frame.

“I’ve been at the majority of the workshops we’ve been running over the past month, so we’ve been seeing the progression of the designs. They really put a lot of work into the final stretch,” explained John Hoey, associate professor of practice in the Department of the Arts and non-voting jury member on the competition panel. “We hadn’t really talked about their planning for the budget or for the timeline of their designs. And no matter how great the idea is, if you can’t put it into place, it's kind of pointless.”

The rest of the jury included voting members Magda Mostafa, associate professor and associate chair of the Department of Architecture; Nagla Samir, associate professor of practice in the Department of Arts; Arch. Bachir Moujaes, architect, urban designer and head of design at Solidere; Engineer Mahmoud Hussein, vice president of New Cairo Municipality for Development; Engineer Gamal Taalat, vice minister of the new Urban Community Authority; and Mona Hussein ‘83, designer and owner of Mahally furniture store. Non-voting jury members included Hoey; Engineer Ghada Oteifa, construction engineer and project management professional; Engineer Sally Hussein, director of the Beautification Division of the New Cairo Municipality.

Jury members were looking for designs that were both realistic and artistic -- something that would inspire the New Cairo community. “I’m hoping that the ideas that will come will be beyond what we thought of,” Hussein stated before the competition. The judges acted as a sounding boarding for the designs, asking questions about how the models would be seen from multiple angels and at different times of day, and making sure that the materials utilized in the designs were easily maintained. They explained that they were taking creativity, durability, feasibility and environmental impact into account.

The Drawing Board

The student designs ranged from chromatic to organic, incorporating dazzling hues, 3D overlays and inventive technical effects. All the designs aimed to take Egyptian culture and the New Cairo community into account, attempting to be simultaneously inspirational and representative of the city. While the presentations were all expressive and stirring, they differed in vision. The team “Ciel” explained that they “avoided the abstract so that we could reach a wider audience." Meanwhile, “Gavel and Gravel” believed that “a good design should arouse curiosity, asking for another look. You should feel something but you don’t know what.”

“We wanted to create something everyone feels at home looking at,” the “The Globals" team members said as they presented their design: a brilliant vision of tiles and solar panels streaming down the side of the water tower like colored rain. The student visions also included a pink tree sprouting out of a jet-black background, a speckling of multidimensional cells in earthy green and shocking magenta, and a vivid patterned ribbon snaking its way around the structure.

The Finalists

The team “Colors of Life,” one of the competition finalists, presented this last design. As team members explained in their presentation, the inspiration for their project came from the “calling of the birds,” an event that takes place in Cairo at sunrise and sunset. “These birds represent the community, since they always fly together in a pack,” Merhan Amer, one of the students on the team, explained. They also focused on color, using vibrant greens and light blues to stand out against the sandy background of New Cairo. “Cairo is such a lively city, and we as people were never rigid and stiff. We were always dreamy and colorful, so we thought, 'Let's have flowing, dreamy artwork,'” the team explained.

While the other finalists’ designs were also impressive, they varied widely in appearance. The team “HRSH Architects” imagined a patchwork of windows opening into different pictures and scenes from everyday life. “Behind every window, there is a story. New Cairo is a community of people who are searching for new beginnings, and this becomes the story of the tower,” explained the team of architecture majors. The team’s design combined 2D and 3D objects, using window frames to illuminate scenes that represent different milestones. These images would be illuminated at night by a panel of LED lights.

“I love the kinetic vision of that instillation,” Hussein expressed.

“Don’t be afraid of keeping it flat.” Mostafa suggested, giving us a hint of what their design might look like at the final exposition. “You could do a 3D-effect with a subtle play of depth in each window.”

The last finalist, “Ciel,” tackled the project differently, creating a blended composition of the sky at different times of day, with phases of the moon being exposed by black light at night. Their submission also includes a crowd of people at the bottom looking up at the sky above them. “We wanted to have the chance to show Egypt different, but familiar faces -- the type of faces you feel like you could meet while walking down the street, inspired by the sight of the sky at different times,” the team explained.

A Global Initiative

All the judges were incredibly impressed with what the teams put forward. “They have achieved something that is exceptional,” stated Moujaes. “This started as a humble initiative, and it will end up having global impact.”

Antoine El Khoury, managing director of TAMEER, was also moved. "We are impressed –– impressed with your talent; impressed with your dedication, all the efforts, creativity, emotions and research that you have invested in this work; impressed with your courage in standing before a jury of this caliber and before your very demanding professors. We now understand why AUC is a leading University," he said.

“A lot of my friends ask me when I’m exhausted and running around why I do it, and the answer is getting to work with students,” expressed Mostafa. “I think this is a great example of how lucky we are.”

“Moments like this are what make me proud to be part of AUC -- this amazing energy,” affirmed Samir.

The jury members believe that the competition is an incredible opportunity to create a piece of community art while enriching the participating students’ education in the process. “Being able to do something on this scale while they’re still in school starts to seal the future for them. It has that credibility -- something that is intangible, and that goes beyond any sort of financial compensation,” said Hoey.

“Competitions like this expose us to different experiences outside of the University and coursework,” agreed Amer from the team “Colors of Life.”

“We’re happy, but we have a challenge ahead. We want to go to the next level, but it will be a challenge to change and modify the work for it to happen,” added the team members from “HRSH Architects.”

If the project goes well, jury-members hope it could be replicated in other neighborhoods throughout Cairo. As many of them expressed, it is an opportunity to interact with the community and encourage people to care more about the spaces they inhabit.

“Before this competition, I saw the tower every day and I never noticed it,” said a team member of “Wonderland.” While this might once have been the case, after its beautification, the water tower will certainly be noticeable. In whatever form it takes, it will be visible on a skyline, an enticing sight and monument for New Cairo.

As El Khoury said in his thank you speech, "Thank you for the beautiful stories you told us today. You are talented storytellers. You made us dream. Now, let's together make these dreams come true."

Click here for more information on the competition.

Bahia Shehab, associate professor of design and founder of the graphic design program at AUC, recalls feeling "liberated" the first time she spray-painted a wall in Cairo.

“It was a beautiful moment,” Shehab said.

Shehab had just spent the previous year developing her calligraphy book, A Thousand Times NO: The Visual History of Lam-Alif which contained a series of graffiti images that were inspired by the thousands of ways the word “no” — written as 'لا' in stylized Arabic calligraphy. Shehab said she first took to the streets during the Egyptian uprisings and began spray painting “no” in response to the violence that was occurring around her.

“I wanted to get across how people were feeling in the square and what it felt like to be part of that event,” she said.

Shehab, who was named a TED Senior Fellow in 2016, said the attention she has received since the revolution is “unexpected.”

“I wasn't really seeking that kind of attention or wanting it necessarily, but I found myself in a position where I needed to communicate what was going on to the world,” she said.

Shehab explained that the message behind her work didn’t change during the uprisings, but rather the uprisings amplified her voice.

“It’s like when someone is whispering, and then they use a loudspeaker so you suddenly hear their voice,” Shehab said. “When you take the loudspeaker away they are still having the same conversation.”

After the revolution, Shehab took her graffiti to other cities around the world, painting the words of the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, often relating them to the social issues related to the location of her art.

“Art can be used as space or a place to bridge cultures, and to bridge societies and to create more understanding between us as people living on this planet in a way that nothing else can,” said Shehab. 

In Madison, she painted “no to the impossible.” in Vancouver, she painted “stand at the corner of a dream and fight.” In Paris, she painted “I will dream.” In Morocco, she painted "we love life if we had access to it."

Though Shehab sees art as “a tool for social change,” she doesn’t consider herself an activist.

“I feel that artists are a mirror to their society. As an artist, it's the nature of my job,” said Shehab. “Whether I like it or not I am a cultural ambassador.”

The last wall Shehab painted was at the Doris Duke Museum for Islamic Art, Design and Culture in Hawaii, where she was the artist in residence. While studying Duke’s collection, she also installed an onsite mural called My People, that reads, “My people will return as light and air and water," a stanza from a poem by Darwish.

“I might be using Arabic, I might be using the poems of a Palestinian poet, but we in the struggle for equality, and our struggle for human dignity, we stand shoulder by shoulder, we are all the same,” Shehab said. 

One of the many projects Shehab is currently working on is Project Light — a global art campaign by Peek Vision and Fine Acts that aims to increase public understanding, engagement and support for the right to sight. Another project is a visual database of the history of Arabic script that she is hoping to launch sometime next year.

Shehab started the database for Arabic designers interested in creating new fonts, which she realized was desperately lacking.

“If you look at Arabic type design, for the ten-thousand plus Latin scripts that are available on your computer, on any computer, we have maybe now five-hundred Arabic scripts — and only around 20 web designed ones that a designer can use,” explained Shehab. “It's like if you're missing the color red in a color palette.”

Shehab, who is the first Arab woman to receive the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture, said out of everything she has accomplished, she is most proud of her students.

“They are the change I want to see in the world,” she said, smiling.

Shehab’s favorite course to teach is the History of Arabic Graphic Design, which was not available until this semester because it took her six years to do the research. In addition to designing the course, Shehab wrote A History of Arab Graphic Design with Haytham Nawar that will be available this summer.

“My students and my teaching assistant tell me, ‘Bahia, I have never seen you so happy. Every time you walk into this class you are beaming and you are smiling.’ It's because I worked so hard for this course,” she said.

As for heroes, Shehab finds herself “burdened” with being her own.

“As an Arab woman, I didn't grow up with role models that I looked up to. I didn't identify with the models of the heroes that were being represented to me and I find myself responsible for being a role model now,” said Shehab. “I mean, our lawyers, our scientists? They exist, they were just never represented to me as a younger woman, and I would like to do that for coming generations.”

In Shehab’s TED Talk she closed with a line that spoke to the fire she brings into her daily life: "you can crush the flowers but you can't delay the spring."

In Shehab’s world, the spring is always on time.

For a clinical psychologist, Kate Ellis, assistant professor of psychology, has a   uniquely hands-off approach to therapy. In fact, she is trying to make the demand for traditional therapy as minimal as possible in Egypt.  

Why would Ellis want to reduce the need for therapy when she herself is a clinician? In a region filled with stigma and lack of resources, Ellis is on a mission to bridge the gap between available human resources and those that are needed to give young refugees and trauma survivors more accessible mental health resources.

“Though meeting face-to-face is ideal, it is often more realistic to provide a community with resources and training needed to be self-sufficient, like training non-professionals to help alleviate distress,” said Ellis, who also serves as both the graduate program director in the Department of Psychology and the coordinator of the leadership in mental health course held at AUC.

Hailing from the United Kingdom, Ellis accepted a postdoctoral position at AUC before she even finished her second PhD for a clinical doctorate in psychology. After arriving in Egypt, Ellis began focusing more of her time working with refugees and trauma survivors due to the large need in the region.

“I've always been interested in how violence and conflict affect people both in terms of victims and perpetrators, and what makes us inflict these things in other people, as well as how those consequences are understood and experienced by people,” she said.

Currently, Ellis is involved in projects to develop and evaluate intervention programs in conflict-affected settings such as Egypt, upscaling mental health interventions in low-economic countries and developing accessible online, culturally appropriate interventions for trauma in Egyptian Arabic.

“It is a very fascinating area of work and one that is very much under-filled in the Middle East,” said Ellis. “There is a lot of need here for understanding mental health needs, what can be utilized and what isn't here that needs to be built.”

Through multiple projects, Ellis has become a pioneer in delivering new resources to a region that requires ingenuity to produce results.

Looking Back to Move Forward

While the most serious mental health cases should be directed to therapeutic resources whenever possible, Ellis said mental health problems or distress of a less serious nature can often be managed with psychoeducation, social support and a healthy lifestyle. According to Ellis, there is a movement for professionally trained clinicians in the region to train and supervise others, perhaps seeing fewer clients themselves.

“There will never be enough clinicians to provide therapy to all those in need, especially in a country or a region that has suffered many wars, and as a result currently has the largest refugee crisis in history," Ellis explained. "In many cases, a highly skilled expensive professional is not needed.”

Ellis recently completed a study training lay counselors from a Sudanese refugee population to deliver narrative exposure therapy within their community. This type of therapy does not need to be delivered by a professional and is usually delivered over just five or six sessions, which makes it an ideal therapy program for refugees who are often moving frequently.

“I wanted the therapy to be delivered to people from someone who is from their culture, who understands it, who has the same language, from the same tribe,” said Ellis.

In the initial session, the participant creates a "lifeline." They take a long piece of rope and small stones and flowers and map out all the significant events in their lives. For every sad event, a stone is placed, and for every happy event, a flower is placed. The participants are then asked about their hopes for the next five years. Throughout the following sessions, each life event is discussed. As details emerge, more events are added, allowing the participant to discuss each event in-depth throughout the sessions.

“The idea is that building the narrative and the story and talking about it over and over again with someone who is non-judgemental and supportive helps the participant to go through their past in a way that becomes less painful and scary for them,” Ellis said.

She noted that during implementation, she spoke with the community about things like social cohesion, feeling like belonging and coming together. As the therapy was being distributed, Ellis noticed refugees started coming to their community center and gathering together.

“I'd see them having tea together,” said Ellis. “I think that feeling valued was a really helpful part of it because they often hadn't felt that before.”

Other benefits of the therapy are that it gives refugees documentation that they can take with them when they are trying to get registered as a refugee or get settled somewhere, Ellis noted. The style of the therapy also helps to avoid the typical stigma against mental health.

“I think in this region culturally, narratives and storytelling are something that most people feel quite comfortable with, so certainly, the Sudanese culture fits very well,” Ellis said. “Telling stories is an acceptable way to talk about things. It's culturally appropriate.”

Though she is still waiting to publish the official study, Ellis said that in all but one participant, symptoms of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression significantly decreased. When she interviewed the participants for feedback, a recurring theme was that it was the first time they had ever been heard and that being able to speak about it was empowering.

“The study shows us that it's not about doing complicated therapy and needing professional psychologists or psychiatrists,” Ellis said. “These are normal people from that population who were trained in a relatively short space of time on how to do this. It's really about being heard and having a safe space.”

Mobilizing Mental Health

In a country that is lacking in mental health resources, Ellis noted, how do you keep up? She turned to online intervention in hopes of reaching a broader spectrum of people.

“[Online resources] get around stigma and financial barriers," she said. "The fact that you can do it whenever you want, on your own time, in your house, on your phone, wherever you are — it's really helpful, especially in Cairo. As a clinician, I sometimes have people waiting in two hours of traffic to get to me for an appointment.”

Through a study on the development of a free online application that follows cognitive behavioral therapy principles, Ellis and her colleague Laura Miller-Graff of the University of Notre Dame have adapted an existing intervention into a culturally appropriate program in Egyptian-Arabic — the first online Arabic intervention for post-traumatic stress disorder. The app contains 17 different tools the user can work on that help manage PTSD symptoms like anger, anxiety and sleep problems.

“Online interventions are really becoming an important tool for mental health,” said Ellis. “That's not to say that we should remove therapists — I wouldn't want to do that myself — but it is not feasible or accessible for everyone to be able to see a therapist."

Ellis said that there were two main aspects to tackle in creating the app: translation into Arabic and making it culturally appropriate.

“There is not a one-size-fits-all Arabic, so we had to do many focus groups and studies,” said Ellis. “The first translation was an absolute disaster. The terminology does not translate easily, and it was just too difficult for people to understand. The second time, we took a lot more advice and guidance in developing it.”

Ellis said making it culturally appropriate involved working with a lot of different people during the development phase. The target group was Egyptians between 18 and 40. The entire process took two years and is currently halfway through the pilot randomized control trial of 100 Egyptians undergoing the intervention. The first wave of data arrives next month, and the results will be published after. Once it is finalized, her team will be looking to get more funding to roll it out on a much larger scale.

“One of the problems with doing cultural research is that it's very difficult to determine who this is accessible to,” said Ellis. “Our thoughts at the moment are those who have at least finished high school or basic college. Ultimately, I would love to do a version of this that is all audio for people with literacy issues.”

Initially, Ellis said they were worried about not getting enough referrals for the study due to issues of stigma. They put the trial on a few social media platforms. For every post, they received more than 100 calls and emails.

“It just shows that the demand is massive,” Ellis said. “We've had people who have come to us and ask if we can translate this into other dialects of Arabic and create this for refugees. We truly hope so, but we must finish this first. it's been a long journey, and we're really excited now.”

Breaking Barriers

One of the biggest challenges Ellis continuously faces is the stigma of mental health, which she says is especially strong in the Middle East.

"People understand that they can be impacted by traumatic events and there are things that can help them, but a lot of people won't go to a psychologist or a psychotherapist or even to their doctor, because of the stigma attached to it,” said Ellis. “We have a lot of people, particularly who are victims of sexual assault and harassment who would not dream of going and asking for help because they end up getting re-traumatized in the process and sometimes blamed.”

This is one of the major reasons Ellis says she has become interested in bringing more accessible mental health solutions to the region.

“Mobile mental health is one of the biggest areas of development worldwide at the moment,” Ellis noted. “There is also a huge increase in the number of mobile phones these days, which is making it more possible to do those kinds of things.”

Ellis is also a member of the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium, a group of academics from universities in the United States, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. They are currently working on developing a tool and investigating training needs in the region for professionals, paraprofessionals and non-professionals as to what's needed to help manage the mental health needs of refugees. This is part of a wider project for transforming refugee mental health care in the Middle East.

Making Connections

For the past four years, Ellis has been the coordinator of a leadership in mental health course for the Eastern Mediterranean region in partnership with the World Health Organization. The World Health Organization approached the Department of Psychology about this partnership. Departmental faculty and international experts, as well as the Egyptian General Secretariat, collaborated with them in developing the course structure and curriculum. The 10-day intensive training course is held annually at AUC, bringing mental health professionals from all over the region to learn how to lead in mental health in the region.  

“We have an online network so participants can stay in touch and continue to network with each other [after the course], and it's really nice to see that the sharing of information continues," she said. "Knowing they have that as a resource that is so missing in this region is a great feeling and one we are proud of in the department.”

Ellis and her colleague Carie Forden, also a professor in the Department of Psychology, have written and recently submitted a paper for peer review, evaluating how participants have experienced the program and what they've gone and done after to see if they are implementing the ideas they’ve learned.

“What's great is they're actually making changes in policy; they're actually recruiting mental health professionals,” she said. “In an interview that we just did, someone told us how they didn't even have a mental health budget and now they have one and have increased it -- and that they're doing training based on the things they have learned.”

AUC and Beyond

In her journey to create more accessible mental health resources in Egypt and the Middle East, Ellis said it is encouraging to see the dialogue around mental health changing.

“So many more people are more open to hearing about [mental health] and understanding it,” said Ellis. “I first started coming to Egypt 10 years ago for vacations. I never thought I would be working here, teaching counseling psychology to graduate students, seeing clients for therapy and seeing so many developments in the field."

Ellis mentioned that she is very fortunate to work with a talented and varied faculty in the Department of Psychology. The last five years at AUC, she indicated, have opened the doors to and provided the chance to collaborate on innovative projects locally and internationally in an area of huge development, which has been and continues to be a great privilege.

"So many of our graduates from the counseling and community psychology master's programs are doing wonderful things and providing mental health services and awareness in an ethical and professional manner to the Egyptian population, both in the public and private sector and also in NGOs,” said Ellis. “They are real innovators and ambassadors in the field, creating dialogue, dispelling myths and developing new services here in Egypt.”

Though Ellis admits there is a very long way to go in delivering mental health resources — whether they are mobile or face-to-face services and to overcome stigma — the work of many passionate and skilled psychologists in the country toward making mental health more accessible has fueled a conversation that is continuing to grow.

The monthlong exhibition, Nothing Vanishes, Everything Transforms, at the Prince Mohamed Ali Tewfik Palace (Manial Palace) featured the works of 28 Egyptian artists, including AUC alumni Marwan El Gamal '12, Islam Shabana '13, Malak Yacout '15, in addition to Khaled Hafez, adjunct associate professor of design in the Department of the Arts, Shady El Noshokaty, professor of practice in the Department of the Arts, and Huda Lofti, who taught Arab cultural history at AUC from 1983 to 2009.

The show endeavored to highlight the diversity and complexity of Egypt's cultural landscape while simultaneously attracting the private sector's interest to give donations that help preserve the palace museum.

The show was curated by Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, founder of Art D'Egypte, a platform that organizes an annual contemporary Egyptian art exhibition in a different historical site every year. Last year's exhibition took place at the Egyptian Museum for one night. Malak Shenouda, '18 and Hana Al Beblawy '18 worked with Abdel Ghaffar on curating the art exhibit.

Several artists drew inspiration from the palace itself for their compositions. "I find it very interesting and challenging for me to think about creating a sight-specific idea for the Sham Reception Hall, thinking about the historical context of the palace," confessed El Noshokaty, as he explained how his project at the exhibition, "Colony-Sound of the Seven Tears" was inspired by the museum's historical collections.

Check out some of the exhibition art pieces below:

Focusing on antiquities theft in Egypt and around the world, students in the Core Curriculum class, Loot: The Research for Buried Treasures in Egypt and Beyond, gained hands-on experience in Egyptology through visits to historic sites.    

Offered for the third semester, the course encourages students to preserve their own cultural heritage by learning more about it through readings, presentations, activities, field trips and conflict resolution.

But why looting?

 “I got interested in this topic when I was doing research for a novel,” said Gretchen McCullough, senior instructor in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition who designed this course. “Theft of antiquities became a huge issue after the Arab Spring and the security breakdown. But then, I realized this was not only a big issue in the Arab world, but also in Turkey, Greece and so many other countries.”

McCullough added, “This course focuses on how antiquities intersect with issues of cultural identity and ownership. We decided to run it as a course within the Core Curriculum, and since there are so many things to see, we added field trips as part of the course. One semester, we went to Ibn Tulun, Sultan Hassan and Refai [mosques], and Coptic Cairo.”  

Mariam Habib, who is currently enrolled in the course, appreciates the chance to complement her interest in history with knowledge on this topic. “The theme of looting was interesting and eye-catching to me from the beginning, especially because I've always been interested in history and the importance of antiquities,” she said. “What I like most about the course is the fact that we learn so much about the different methods of looting, how looters think, how antiquities are smuggled and the importance of cultural identity.”

Kathleen Saville, senior instructor and associate chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Composition who is currently teaching the course for the first time, is enjoying the course and how the students get to know their own culture and visit its historical sites, which they might not have had the chance to visit before.

“Despite being a foreigner, I’ve gone to more sites than any of my students,” she explained. “Maybe this course will engender some interest in the students who’d like to study Egyptology.” Said Saville. “Only a few of the students have been to the pyramids for example, so we are working on helping them to know more about their country. We already went on a field visit to Saqqara.”

Monica Hanna ’04,’07, who studied Egyptology at AUC and received the SAFE [Saving Antiques for Everyone] Beacon Award one (SAFE) for her tireless efforts to publicize and expose the rampant looting of Egypt’s ancient Egyptian, Coptic and Islamic archaeological sites, was invited as a guest speaker during the class, talking to the students more about the dangers of looting antiquities and giving real-life examples.

“This is an excellent course,” said Hanna. “It keeps the students engaged and very-well informed. They actually built a solid background and arguments about the topic, which means that the content of the course is really strong. It’s not an abstract course. It’s very hands-on and triggers the students’ enthusiasm to learn and know more about their own heritage.”

According to Saville, the students were as much impressed with Hanna’s arguments and knowledge as she was with their enthusiasm. They were eager to know more about the real-life problems that the theft of antiquities might cause.

“The students were pretty impressed when Hanna explained how the mafia uses young children in the sites to help them search for antiquities because they can wiggle down in the tunnels,” said Saville. “Sometimes they destroy the sites, and sometimes the sites actually collapse on top of these kids and kill them.”  

 “There is a huge black market in terms of antiquities, and it’s often tied with the mafia,” added McCullough. “There are families in Upper Egypt who make their living by stealing antiquities.”  

An added value of the course and its importance to the students is learning to not only preserve their heritage, but also to value it as part of their own individual identity. “The course has taught me so many things that now I look at antiquities and looting in a very different way than I used to.,” said Habib.

Widely recognized as a hub for cultural and artistic expression, AUC’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS) recently received a $50,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a series of teaching, research and outreach programs for strengthening public humanities and civic discourse.

Bel Arabi Falsafa (“philosophy in plain Arabic”) is a public humanities venture designed to democratize access to philosophy and change popular perceptions of it not just in Egypt, but also in the Arabic-speaking world as a whole. Its purpose is to bring philosophy to a non-specialist audience, demonstrating the relevance of philosophy and philosophical methodologies to matters of both private interest and public concern.

A Philosophical Vision

The name of the initiative—Bel Arabi Falsafa—points to one of the project’s central goals, which strives to combine philosophy and plain speaking –– concepts that are often considered incompatible in the contemporary Arabic-speaking world.

The goal for the coming year is to host events at cities in the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt. The long-term aim is to establish a visible, active and sustainable presence in Egypt beyond the greater Cairo metropolitan area. Over the next 10 years, Bel Arabi Falsafa events are envisaged to be held in three different governorates every year. The project organizers hope to establish self-sustaining Bel Arabi Falsafa-type events across the MENA region.

The project will also create an online database of curated intellectual content, a portal through which the public may access videos, webinars and Arabic translations of philosophical texts (particularly contemporary philosophical texts, of which only a scant few have been translated) with commentaries. This online repository is intended as a supplement to the ongoing public outreach programs that allow people, who might otherwise not have access, an entry point into the academy.

Philosophical Culture on Campus 

At AUC, Bel Arabi Falsafa will make a significant impact in promoting a culture of philosophical inquiry on campus, where it will serve as an extension of the formal classroom. Undergraduate students who attend Bel Arabi Falsafa will have the opportunity to enrich their study of philosophy and to do so in their native language.

There are numerous perceived benefits to this initiative, including minimizing the perception that philosophy is inherently Eurocentric by preparing students to re-enter English-speaking classrooms with a newfound awareness of how philosophical concepts—especially concepts from contemporary philosophy—can be translated back into their own colloquial idiom and cultural context. Hence, Bel Arabi Falsafa envisions contributing to the teaching and study of philosophy by encouraging AUC’s philosophy classrooms to be more broadly inclusive and bilingual through the example and leadership of its speakers, most of whom are themselves recent graduates of the Department of Philosophy.

The project aims to bring philosophy to a larger audience as well as strengthen the ties between AUC students and the wider community and its concerns, changing perceptions about the field and demonstrating its universal applicability and relevance. 

According to Robert McIntyre, assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, postdoctoral teaching fellow and project director, participants at Bel Arabi Falsafa events should walk away from the public conversations and lectures with a greater appreciation for the relevance and usefulness of philosophical modes of discourse to their daily lives. The role of speakers and workshop leaders in this project is to place the tools and methods of rigorous philosophical investigation into the hands of the public and to disseminate scholarly knowledge as widely as possible. 

“There is a need, globally, to enhance the quality of civic discourse through sustained public philosophical activity. We can grow and nurture a respect for a diversity of opinions, the willingness to listen to dissenting points of view and intellectual integrity,” McIntyre said.

Student-Led Regional Model

As Bel Arabi Falsafa expands beyond Egypt, AUC’s model will provide an example to instructors in other universities in the MENA region, showing how to engage students in the active construction of philosophical learning. Even at universities that do not have robust graduate and undergraduate programs in philosophy, the Bel Arabi Falsafa model can still be successfully implemented as a teaching tool, McIntyre explained.

Bel Arabi Falsafa is a largely student-led initiative, and the founding members of its planning committee include many uniquely dedicated former and current graduate students: Yossra Hamouda, Hussein Barrada, Wafaa Wali, Sherif Salem, Wassim Sabry and Khadeega Gafar. As McIntyre noted, the initiative provides an opportunity for AUC graduate students involved as lecturers and speakers -- researching, writing and delivering workshop and lecture content and engaging in constructive debate with members of the general public -- to enrich their own educational experience and contextualize philosophical knowledge in a hands-on way.

Mcintyre believes that philosophical engagement is undeniably an essential feature of critical thinking and that it is a primary goal of post-secondary education to cultivate skillful critical thinking. "When students engage their own community by leading and participating in long-form philosophical debates and workshops, they inevitable sharpen their own critical abilities," he explained. "They will discover
that philosophy, though lampooned as idle wordplay—a parlor game for an elite few—is, in fact, at the very heart of human progress and the human experience."

After years of remote study and intermittent contact, AUC successfully signed an agreement with Harvard University to establish long-term relations and increased cooperation, especially between Harvard and AUC's Department of Egyptology. As part of this new partnership, AUC will be hosting a Harvard PhD student in Spring 2019.

During his career, Egyptologist and Harvard Professor George A. Reisner led the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition and excavated 23 sites in Egypt and Sudan. Today, Harvard carries on Reisner's legacy, strengthening its contact with Egypt through AUC. 

"Its good for Harvard to have this relationship with AUC, as we complement each other wonderfully," explained Salima Ikram, distinguished University professor and Egyptology unit head. "AUC has the on-the-ground research and presence, and Harvard has the professor at the forefront of digital Egyptology,"

Ikram refers to Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King professor of Egyptology in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He is also director of the Harvard Semitic Museum and founding director of The Giza Project, an international collaboration based at Harvard, serving as a free database for research materials and archaeological records pertaining to the Pyramids and Egypt's Giza Plateau. This digital teaching tool is an important resource for the field. 

"Bringing back Americans and others to study, teach and do research in Egypt and at AUC is a top priority in our quest for excellence as 'Egypt's global University,'" said President Francis Ricciardone. "Our current students, faculty and staff know the many unique attractions of this great country and our fine University.  I invite all to join in re-acquainting the outside world with Egypt, and with AUC.   And, as AUC and Harvard have just agreed -- what better field to advance this precise purpose than Egyptology?"

Manuelian believes the new agreement will enhance Harvard's Egyptology studies and will be an opportunity for Harvard students to study with AUC's distinguished Egyptology Department and gain field experience.

"We are very excited about this new collaborative exchange agreement between Harvard and AUC, and look forward to increased 'traffic' on this two-way street between Cairo and Cambridge," said Manuelian. "Where else to gain additional experience in Egyptology but in Egypt itself?"