The American University of Beirut has been a regional leader in campus safety and crisis response for decades.  The health, safety and security of all AUB community members, whatever their role or nationality, is of the highest importance to the University.  Since the creation of its Office of Environmental Health, Safety and Risk Management in 2000, AUB has practiced integrated campus safety on matters ranging from smoking cessation to full-scale crisis response; there is a permanent 25-member emergency response team, chaired by the Vice President of Human Resources and reporting to the President, which monitors sources of potential large-scale crisis on a daily basis. AUB’s Medical Center, while also a teaching hospital, is the nation’s premier trauma center, and members of the Health Sciences and Medical Faculties often serve as consultants to local municipalities and regional NGOs in the training of emergency medical personnel and the creation of crisis-response procedures. 

In keeping with best practice in the educational safety field, AUB’s integrated campus crisis response plan includes, but is not limited to, the following features:

• A detailed evacuation plan with appointed check-in points and associated procedures;
• A "shelter-in-place" plan to allow students and faculty who ordinarily reside off-campus to retreat within campus walls if it is found to be necessary;
• Stockpiling of food, water and medical supplies; as well as backup power generators in the event of a cessation of municipal services;
• A  fully articulated emergency communications protocol which includes SMS text messaging, a ready-to-roll crisis response website and social media strategy, as well as provisions for “mirroring” of the AUB electronic communications network through our New York facilities and for non-electronic backup methods of communication for on and off-campus populations in Beirut.

About International Students at AUB

For Academic Year 2011-2012

• 25% of AUB’s 8,000 member student body are citizens of a nation other than Lebanon. 
• AUB students come from 80+ nations and all five continents.
• 13.5% of the student body come from high schools or universities in Europe, Australia or North America.
• 8% of the student body come from US high schools or universities; most of them undergraduates.

Both degree-seeking and study abroad students at AUB are accounted for in AUB’s integrated emergency-response and risk-management approach; the latter are fully briefed on AUB policies and procedures via the pre-orientation materials and on-campus orientation delivered to them by Office of International Programs in accordance with internationally recognized best practice guidelines.

To our North American partners and prospective partners

As a member of the Forum on Education Abroad, which sets the ethical and professional standards of the international education abroad community, AUB understands and upholds the need to collect and convey accurate information about one’s education abroad partners to multiple stakeholders on your campus.  If you have not already done so, you may wish to review the list, above, of US universities who have permitted their students to study with us during this year of change and upheaval in other regional nations; most have been happily referring their students to us, formally or informally, for years.

Both visiting and continuing students of all nationalities continue to report that they feel extremely safe in Beirut and in Lebanon.  To learn more about the experiences of US students at AUB, you may wish to consult the following article featuring students who had previously been studying in Cairo, or read the following blog entry by a student from the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, at Rice University.

AUB has been formally reviewed and approved as an undergraduate education abroad destination by dozens of US colleges and universities, including several who are either founding or current members of the Interorganizational Advisory Committee on Health and Safety in Education Abroad and the NAFSA Subcommittee on Health And Safety in Education Abroad.  AUB’s Vice-President for Legal Affairs, Director of International Programs and Dean of Students are decades-long members of, respectively, NACUA, NAFSA and NASPA, and, as such, are frequently called upon to provide advice and training to their fellow university administration professionals in the US on topics relating to campus safety and choosing to work with partner universities in “politically tense” destinations.

AUB has also, by virtue of its participation in the above-named professional bodies and activities, received students from and signed formal affiliation agreements with a number of additional US institutions without a need for formal review.  AUB understands that decisions about perceived safety of a given country or region are both individual and institution-specific; nevertheless, if academic quality is important to you and your students, we urge you to consider joining our growing list of US sending schools and affiliates.  At AUB, your American students will be fully integrated into the student body and the local community, and they will be supported to the best of our professional abilities.