Hosting the Future

Summer 2023 will stand out in the annals of LAU as a major turning point. It will be remembered as the period when we put behind the effects, and particularly after-effects of the crushing crisis and surged ahead.

Three commencements are scheduled for June, a healthy crop of incoming students prepare to join, our faculty, staff, and physician ranks have all but recovered, and multiple new innovations are up and running. Summer 2023 will also mark the completion of our first semester of dollar-based tuition thereby starting the long journey of our business model toward sustainability.

This latter development is of immense importance for two major reasons:  

• A dollar-based business model is a fundamental prerequisite for building institutional immunity against currency fluctuations, and the twists and turns that have rocked the Lebanese higher education system. It is a requirement for stability and long-term planning essential for university strategy. 
• It allows us to offer financial aid on a scale larger than anything we have had in the past. This alleviates a major burden affecting, in varying degrees, about 85 percent of our students. It also enables LAU to deliver on its commitment to diversity, inclusiveness and sensitivity to the challenges our students are facing. Such sensitivity is a major pillar of our institutional culture. 
  

Summer 2023 will mark as well a noted upsurge in LAU’s innovation edge with a number of decisive steps in that direction: 

• The Industrial Park is now up and running on the Byblos campus. This kind of interface with industry is being introduced to Lebanon for the first time.
• A Consulting Outfit marshaling LAU expertise in the service of the region is being put together. This will carry our interface with industry locally and regionally to a new level. 
• An LAU Leadership Program is currently being planned as a first-of-a-kind. It aims to empower our human capital, invest in its development, introduce a leadership multiplier effect, and prepare for succession planning.
• The LAU Leadership program will be followed by an LAU Healthcare Provider Management Program, also a first-of-a-kind. These two programs will establish LAU as a world-class hub for advanced leadership practices and healthcare quality standards delivered as efficiently, effectively, and humanely as can be.
• We are closer than ever to starting to put into effect our policy of “LAU without Borders” through two additional campuses in the MENA region and in New York.
• The Bio-Equivalence Center is well on its way towards fruition thereby becoming Lebanon’s first such asset so crucial to the pharma industry. The country has no such center and is in dire need of one. 

Perhaps one of the most visible signs of recovery in Summer 2023 is LAU’s restoration of its position as the “employer of choice” in the country, as well as being a competitive player in the international talent market. Our ranks are healthy again with needed numbers of faculty, physicians, and staff. Our loyal workforce is being competitively compensated with morale restored on a firmer foundation of belief that LAU will always look after its loyal family members. This is one development of exceptional importance as it relates to our most strategic of all assets: LAU’s Talent Pool. 

A Summer of Transitions 

Stated simply, Summer 2023 will show a healthy mix of success indicators in putting behind all the ad hoc measures imposed by the prolonged crisis. This is necessary in order to start planning for and implementing the next level of LAU’s ascendance into local leadership, regional eminence, and global visibility.

Besides the key items already mentioned, we also have in the works more online graduate programs (two were introduced last year), and new institutional innovations never introduced before in Lebanon. These include an Office for Ethics and Professional Standards, a Sustainability Office, and a Center for Public Good. The list also includes establishing LAU presence in Lebanese cities other than Beirut, and introducing new inter-disciplinary degree programs that capture post-digital (smart) technologies, particularly AI applications. We are obviously mindful of the caveats associated with the introduction and use of new technologies. Most of these caveats have to do with unintended consequences. We follow closely the international debate on this issue.

Part of this transition as well is LAU’s plan to grow its endowment, further activate fundraising especially in the US, resume capital projects, and develop a framework for engaging industry on an unprecedented scale. 

Transitioning to What?  

LAU is very clear about its future trajectory which has already started. We want to be a top-tier classical university that has passed in flying colors the test of self-renewal into the post-digital “smart” age. The evidence should be clearly visible in our academic programs, and in our approach to professional practice in a broad range of specialty areas. It should be equally felt in our emphasis on quality and the existence of a cluster of institutional resources focusing on ethics, integrity, equal opportunity and sustainability. The most visible and telling sign, however, should be our ability to design new interdisciplinary programs cutting across academic departments and schools to offer solutions to emerging challenges of all kinds. This is a tall order but LAU does not shy away from tall orders. On our list are areas such as the environment, climate change, renewable energy, robotics, policy analysis, and hydroponic agriculture. Some of these are already under implementation such as AI, machine learning, and policy analysis.

Understanding Our Limitations 

LAU has no issue accepting the fact that its aspirations can at times outrun its resources. We think big but we plan and implement prudently based on two fundamental principles:  

• The principle of selectivity whereby we go by a strict priority list, and  
  
• The principle of resourcability, whereby we try not to start something we may not have the resources to finish. 
  

These two principles together are a key to understanding our strategic plans, our academic and industry initiatives, our capital projects agenda, and in general, our approach to moving LAU to the next level. We want to be the university of choice for specific majors, a research hub in selected areas, an industry magnet in particular fields. Whatever we do, however, has to meet the twin criteria of rigor and relevance. Summer 2023 promises to see LAU leave the station to a future we cannot even fully imagine at this point. One thing we do know, however, is that it will be a future of our own making. 

A Summer of Content

An introspective look leaves LAU contented with its achievements during the crisis. They should be primarily credited to institutional learning at a speed commensurate with the pace of events we had to adjust to. The shock was quickly absorbed. It took a while but equilibrium was eventually restored, and lessons of experience sunk in with biting clarity. We could easily see the end of an era, and the dawn of a new age that bears little resemblance to what was. The world was changing beyond recognition and we saw the risk of universities being left behind. Not LAU. We have always been the harbingers of a future in the making. Summer 2023 carries crystal clear  portents of how we are preparing for this future. The best, however, is yet to come.