Dear friends and colleagues in the AUB community,
I want to salute the entire community for the abundance of world-class
activities being staged at AUB at this busy time in the University year. In the
last two weeks or so AUB collaborated with the Constantine Zurayk Cultural
Foundation to host a seminar on the impact of that renowned thought leader;
the Olayan School of Business hosted entrepreneur Tony Fadell who
electrified students with his talk on “Technology as a Disruptive Change”; the
School also staged an international conference on Cognitive Analytics
Management; the Arab Foundation for Environment and Development (AFED)
held its annual conference on sustainable development in a changing Arab
climate at AUB; and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences celebrated the
publication of more than 40 scholarly books by faculty members published in
the last year. On the health front, the Office of Strategic Health Initiatives
signed a memorandum of understanding with the Municipal Council of Beirut
to cooperate in establishing the “Beirut: Healthy City 2022” vision.
Among our engineers, all eyes are on mechanical
engineering instructor Sevag Babikian, a strong
contender for the Stars of Science TV reality show,
whose final is next Saturday (you can vote at
www.starsofscience.com until November 17). Good
luck, Sevag! And that’s just a small taste of the
pulsating and accomplished goings-on in our
community, edited down for reasons of space!
State-of-the-art emergency medicine
Having recently had cause to visit a patient at the Emergency Department (ED)
at the AUB Medical Center, I was struck by and wanted to take this
opportunity to highlight the great strides that have been taken in the key area
of Emergency Medicine (EM) in recent years, setting us apart in many ways.
AUBMC has the only ED in Lebanon which has moved to 100% attending
physician-level coverage for every patient who comes through the door—the
norm being that the least trained medical personnel usually care for these
most critical patients—and all seven faculty are American Board of Emergency
Medicine certified from top US universities.
Under the leadership of Dr. Eveline Hitti, a new
emphasis has been placed on improving processes,
with protocolization of emergency procedures
following global best practice, ensuring the provision
of optimum levels of care and quick access to all
clinical services around the Medical Center, so that all
emergency patients get the attention they deserve
irrespective of the time of day.
This is a landmark year for the Department of Emergency Medicine as 2016
has beheld the graduation of the first members of its residency program,
which started in 2012. The fact that Lebanon can produce its own,
internationally accredited, emergency specialists—small in number now, but
gathering momentum—is a major advance, allows the seeding of new
standards for emergency medical service throughout the country. Moreover,
its burgeoning toxicology specialism is not just unique in the region but has
global impact, given the research potential with the types of poisonings which
are seen in this country, organophosphates being an example. Other foci of
exceptional work include the provision of pediatric emergency care, led by Dr.
Rasha Sawaya, which is unique to Lebanon, and work done by Dr. Mazen El
Sayed with pre-hospital care providers, so that time spent in ambulances in
traffic can be used to save patients. A few months ago, the department took
formal responsibility for emergency cases on campus, which has certainly
improved the speed of response and standard of care available to our
community here. All told, AUBMC is now unequivocally the home for EM in
Lebanon which contributes significantly in building trust and patient
satisfaction in our community, especially now that the ED evaluates more than
58,000 patients annually.
Transforming our schools
I want to shine a light on another extraordinary service where our faculty have
been a pioneering force—that is the school-based improvement project
known as Tamam (from the Arabic المدرسة إلى المستند التطوير.(
Drs. Saouma Boujaoude and Rima Karami and their
colleagues in the Department of Education hold the
distinction of receiving the longest-running singlesource
research and development grant that we are
aware of, which they use to conduct “action
research” in schools around the Arab world. Ten
years and much hard work later, they have now made
durable connections with more than 40 schools
across the Arab world which have adopted and helped refine the Tamam
“journey” leading to the transformation of educational practices and
governance structures. Excitingly, the latest schools to join this growing family
this semester are in Palestine and Sudan, in addition to existing partners in
Egypt, Jordan, KSA, Lebanon, Oman and Qatar.
The journey is so effective because it is the
educational practitioners themselves, teachers,
principals, with parental backing, who choose their
improvement needs, set their own goals, design and
plan their interventions, and evaluate and document
their own work. Unusually, in this part of the world,
the top-down, governmental influence is one of
support and reinforcement, not enforced policy
implementation or change for change’s sake. This makes the transformation
not only more impactful, but focused as it is on participative leadership for
continuous improvement, the model is genuinely self-sustaining and it evolves
and spreads. If we are to change this region for the better, schools needs to
become the centers of their communities, providing leadership and
opportunities for all members to become their best possible selves. There is
no doubt that Tamam has done incredible work in this field, and we can look
forward to even greater impact as the project continues and spreads, like the
ripple effect that the team has adopted as its emblem.
Community architecture for senior citizens
Finally, I would like to congratulate fourth-year architecture students Yasmine
Arkadan and Yasmine Atoui who split this year’s $15,000 Fawzi Azar award
for outstanding achievement in the field of architectural design. This year’s
theme was “a community for seniors” with the proposed site in the Abadieh
municipality in Mount Lebanon. Students worked alone throughout the
summer vacation to develop designs that addressed and proposed innovative
spatial configurations for a community catering for the needs of seniors
(health, living facilities, supported and independent living, etc). The jury
decided to split the first prize because both students had developed
outstanding projects with strong design concepts and great quality of
architectural graphic presentation techniques, that provided comfortable
facilities for the elderly while enhancing the relationship with the community
and their provision of indoor and outdoor activities. Thank you to the Azar
family for their generosity, which goes towards covering the students’ final
year’s tuition. You are among many, many unstinting donors who give so
much support to AUB and its students by recognizing and rewarding
excellence and achievement.
Best regards,
Fadlo R. Khuri, MD
President