About LAU

History

An engraved stone in Beirut’s city center reads: “Site of the first edifice built in the Turkish empire for a girls school.” It refers to the American School for Girls (ASG), established in Beirut in 1835 by American Presbyterian missionaries. ASG inaugurated an important shift in education for women in Syria and the surrounding region.

After a sectarian conflict in 1860, ASG was renamed Beirut Female Seminary. It went through some difficult transformations—including occasionally shutting down—before reverting to its original name in 1868, and becoming a popular school for women which included secondary education. Over the decades it became known as the best female boarding school in the region as more and more students attended.

In the early 20th century post-secondary women’s education began to take hold. In 1921 the American University of Beirut (AUB) began accepting women into its schools of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy. In 1924, ASG started a two-year junior college curriculum that was mandatory at the time for young women wishing to pursue bachelor’s degrees at AUB.

In 1927, this program became known as the American Junior College for Women (AJCW) and was transferred to Ras Beirut. Six years later it moved to what is now LAU’s Beirut campus.

In 1948–49 the AJCW program was expanded under the name Beirut College for Women (BCW). In 1950, it was granted a provisional charter by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York and authorized to bestow the Bachelor of Arts degree requiring a four-year course and the Associate in Arts and Associate in Applied Science degrees for a two-year course. In 1955 the Board of Regents granted BCW an absolute charter with all its rights and privileges, including the authority to also hand out the Bachelor of Science degree. As a recognized liberal arts college, it played a key role in serving the educational, social and economic needs of the Middle East, attracting women from across the region.

In 1970 another milestone was reached when the Lebanese Government officially recognized BCW’s B.A. and B.S. degrees as equivalent to the national Licence.

Having accepted men into some programs, the college changed its name to Beirut University College (BUC) in 1973. By October 1975 men were admitted into all programs. In 1978, BUC established an off-campus program—the Louaizeh College of Higher Education—in the north (Zouk Mosbeh) and a year later another one—the Makassed Center for Higher Education—became operational in the southern city of Sidon, to provide educational opportunities to young people from various regions of the country as the Lebanese civil war raged in Beirut.

Despite numerous wartime difficulties, BUC kept evolving constantly. In 1985, the Board of Regents amended the charter to allow for the establishment of two additional branch campuses in Zouk Mosbeh and Sidon. In 1987, BUC opened its northern branch in rented buildings in Amsheet, on the outskirts of the historical port of Byblos. In October 1991 classes started in the newly built campus at Blat overlooking Byblos. It was officially inaugurated on July 16, 1992.

According to a BUC Board decision, the institution became a university in October 1992. In 1994, the Board of Regents in New York approved BUC’s request to change into the Lebanese American University (LAU), moved the Louaizeh branch in Zouk Mosbeh to the Byblos campus, renamed the Makassed branch in Sidon to Sidon campus, and provided the university with the authority to also confer the degrees of Bachelor of Architecture, Master of Science, and Master of Arts. The last-amended charter in 1999 also allowed LAU to grant the Bachelor of Engineering, Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy, and Doctor of Pharmacy degrees.

In September 2005 the Board of Trustees approved the 2005–2010 Strategic Plan focusing on academic excellence, enrollment management, information technology, public relations and marketing, fund raising, and finance and administration. Two years later, LAU attained accreditation candidacy by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

In July 2008 the official groundbreaking of the Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine took place. The first M.D. class will be admitted in September 2009.

Milestones

Browse this interactive timeline showing the highlights of our history.

LAU Presidents

The institution’s top leaders since 1924.

From the Archives

The campus in the 1940s.

In the 1970s, the institution became coeducational.

Byblos campus inauguration, 1991.

The late prime minister of Lebanon Rafic Hariri announces the Government’s approval of the name “Lebanese American University” during the 1996 commencement in Beirut.