LAU must compete with other universities for top faculty. An endowed chair honors and recognizes the distinction of superior faculty while providing invaluable financial support for use in research, teaching and other activities. It is a powerful recruitment and retainment tool, too- the more chairs a school has endowed, the more prestigious and attractive our university will be to potential faculty.
Demand for an LAU education has reached unprecedented levels in the past 10 years. Our student population has almost doubled from 5,572 in 2001 to 8,273 students in 2011-2012. While burgeoning numbers demonstrate widespread faith in LAU’s mission, our campus facilities are struggling to keep pace. In order to provide our students with a learning environment equal to the quality of instruction they receive, we must renovate construct several critically important facilities.
LAU is rapidly emerging as a preeminent university in the Arab region. To reach the summit of excellence, however, much more needs to be done to strengthen the university’s academic artillery.
A key way to do this is by promoting a culture of research. This is not without its challenges, however: according to the United Nations, the Arab world produces the least amount of research in the world, and grants or funding to conduct research are often hard to come by. Funding for junior faculty members is especially difficult to obtain.
Students are LAU's raison d'etre. Around 30 percent of our students receive some form of scholarship or financial aid from the university. As a core component of our Strategic Plan, we are looking to continuously increase the amount of financial aid available. But the university can't do this alone: LAU depends on the generosity of alumni, parents, friends and other donors to ensure it can continue to attract a diverse and academically gifted student body.
LAU is fortunate to have extraordinary strengths in a number of curricular and extra-curricular areas.
