In einem Interview mit Arab News spricht der aktuelle Dekan über den Plan der König Abdulaziz Universität (KAU, King Abdulaziz University) in diesem Jahr eine Ingenieursausbildung für Frauen zu starten.
The Faculty of Engineering at Jeddah's King Abdulaziz University is one of the oldest engineering colleges in Saudi Arabia. Since its establishment in 1975, it has produced about 9,000 engineers. Its famous alumni include Labor Minister Adel Fakeih, Jeddah Mayor Hani Aburas and Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) Gov. Abdul Rahman Al-Ibrahim. In an exclusive interview with Arab News, Abdulmalik bin Ali Aljinaidi, the present dean of the faculty, unveiled KAU's plan to start the Kingdom's first public sector engineering college for women this year. The new college will admit expatriate girls at a later stage. A graduate of the faculty, Aljinaidi has an ambition to make his college a world-class institution. He urged brilliant students in the Makkah province to join the college, saying they would find the best programs, equipment and highly qualified teachers there. "We aim to achieve sustainable improvement. My job as dean is to ensure progress and improve the system, and not just signing papers. I have to add value to the system, otherwise there is no point to my presence here," said the dynamic dean. Aljinaidi obtained his bachelor's degree from the faculty in 1988 in chemical engineering and a Master's degree in 1991 from the KAU. He obtained a second Master’s in 1994 and a Ph.D. in applied mechanics in 1995 from the University of Maryland, US. He was appointed vice dean of Jeddah Community College in 2003 before becoming its dean in 2004. He has also worked as dean of the Scientific Research Institute in 2006 before assuming his present position in 2011. He has written or coauthored six books and presented 88 research papers at national and international conferences and seminars. He has to his credit four patents from oil giant Saudi Aramco. Following is the full text of the interview: Arab News (AN): Yours is one of the oldest engineering colleges in the Kingdom. What are its contributions to the Kingdom's development? How many engineers have so far graduated from it? Aljinaidi: So far the number of graduates is about 9,000 engineers. They include Minister of Labor Adel Fakeih, who is a graduate of the Industrial Engineering Department. The current Jeddah Mayor Hani Aburas, also from the same department, is another famous alumnus. Abdul Rahman Al-Ibrahim, a graduate of the Mechanical Engineering Department, has been appointed the SWCC governor recently. Hundreds of our graduates work at various government departments as well as major private companies such as Saudi Aramco and SABIC. AN: Your faculty has a vision to become the best college in the Arab world by 2015. What are the measures taken to achieve this goal? Aljinaidi: Like other colleges, we also want to be listed among the best colleges in the world. First, we aim to achieve excellence at a national level before achieving the same at regional and international levels. We know that it is not an easy task, especially in engineering, which is a challenging discipline. Engineering colleges all over the world get big support from the private sector, from cutting-edge technology and government and semi-government institutions. They get a lot of funding for project and product development. AN: Cooperation with the private sector is essential to strengthen the college and create job opportunities for graduates. Has your college made any major move in this respect? Aljinaidi: Yes, we have established good cooperation with the private sector. We also encourage our students and staff members to tackle problems related to local industries and businesses. While assigning them to do special projects, we encourage our students to focus on matters related to industry, traffic, management, banking, etc. Our staff members do research for big companies such as Saudi Telecom, Saudi Aramco, Savola and SABIC. Some of them work as full-time consultants. Right now, there are 10 staff members working as consultants in different companies and government bodies. The college benefits from this program as the staff member comes back from the assignment with practical knowledge and learning from the company's best practices. He will then tailor his class and subjects accordingly to meet local needs. AN: There were complaints that Saudi university programs do not cater to job market requirements. Has your college made any special effort to address this complaint? Aljinaidi: We are trying our best to meet job market requirements. Last February we organized a Dacum workshop to review the academic program of the Mining Engineering Department. We invited top companies in the industry and a panel of experts. We told them that we have specific university courses that nobody can touch and there are other subjects that can be changed or modified and this process helped in modifying 50 percent of the department's courses. Experts told us some existing courses do not serve the mining industry in the Kingdom and new courses were introduced based on their recommendations. We'll conduct another workshop in September to change some other courses in accordance with the private sector and job market requirements. Our mining graduates can certainly help build the new mining city in the north, ordered by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. AN: What is your faculty doing to develop the creativity of your students? Aljinaidi: An engineer should be creative to solve problems. We train our students to become problem-solvers. In order to have this capability they should have a good dosage of creativity, which is embedded in more than one course. Our Design-I and Design-II courses throw students into the deep end and ask them to look around and present innovative solutions to local problems. Our students have developed devices to make the lives of the handicapped and people with special needs better. This project was carried out with the financial support of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Every semester we change the theme. Next semester we would like to take up the transportation issues in Jeddah. Our students will study how congestion in Jeddah streets could be reduced. Every semester we give them new projects to make them proud of their work and enhance their self-confidence. For creativity, we need four Cs — curiosity, confidence, courage and consistency. AN: We have learned that the KAU has a plan to establish an engineering faculty for girls. Is it the first engineering college for girls? What are the academic programs it plans to offer? Aljinaidi: Engineering subjects for girls are taught in the private sector institutions such as Effat University and Dar Al-Hekma College. The KAU will be the first public university to have an engineering college for girls in the Kingdom. We will give them courses that suit their personality such as electronics, architecture and computer engineering. Even at an international level you will not see many girls in engineering disciplines such as mining, civil and mechanical. So we will start with those disciplines that suit their personality and working environment. The college will be launched in September 2012, offering courses in computer and biomedical engineering, two courses in high demand. The new college will operate in the Girls Campus as a branch of the Faculty of Engineering. We'll open this college to expatriate girls after it is properly established. In the first year we'll focus on Saudi girls and expatriate girls would be given admission at a later stage. We have experience in opening our college for expatriate boys and hopefully we can apply the same experience for expatriate girls. Once we see the system is running smoothly, we can open the college to expatriates. AN: Do you provide scholarships to outstanding students? Aljinaidi: We don't provide scholarships, but we encourage companies to sponsor our students and we consider it part of our mission. For example, petrochemical giant SABIC came and selected some of our best students. Companies come and sponsor students in the third year after seeing their performance in the first two years. AN: Recently, the faculty organized an exhibition of projects presented by senior engineering students. How do you evaluate their work? Aljinaidi: Every year we mark the Engineering Day in April when we invite companies to see the projects of our students. It is a kind of career day. We also allow companies to talk about them, make PowerPoint presentations and interact with students. We also encourage our students to participate in national, regional and international science and technology exhibitions. The projects presented by our students in the last show were impressive. I would like to tell you that various companies pick our engineering graduates within two months of their graduation. AN: Do you have plans to organize international conferences and workshops at the college to enhance knowledge and skills of students and faculty members? Aljinaidi: We encourage our staff members to attend regional as well as international scientific and technological conferences, especially those focusing on engineering subjects. Every year ABET conducts a large gathering in the US attended by nearly 3,000 delegates from all over the world. We send our team to this annual conference to see new trends and developments in the field in order to update our programs accordingly. We'll soon establish the Saudi Society for Engineering Applications, which will be first of its kind in the Kingdom. AN: Your college has obtained ABET accreditation. What are the measures taken to achieve this accreditation? Aljinaidi: ABET has a set of programs to improve standards. They sit with our students during and after graduation to evaluate their performance. We also allow them to enter our classrooms to see how we teach our students. We use international textbooks because engineering is an international subject. We also show ABET experts samples of our exams and answers given by students. For accreditation we have to upgrade our curriculum and textbooks, appoint the best teachers and improve standard of students by applying strict admission procedures. Being an international subject, we cannot tolerate any low-level performance in engineering. I used to tell our students that they have to compete with international graduates to succeed and excel in their profession. We make sure our students are competent to work anywhere in the world.KAU to start engineering college for women