From the President’s Desk

Dear friends,

Welcome to the Summer 2018 edition of the LAU Magazine & Alumni Bulletin.

For us here in Lebanon, summer is a time of welcoming, as during this season we receive thousands of tourists, returning emigrants and curious wanderers on our shores. We open our homes, restaurants, streets and beaches to those who come to experience the unique energy and dynamism Lebanon offers.

We welcome refugees, foreign workers, visiting students and professors, and global professionals. We welcome the inflow of new ideas, new business models, and new ways of living. And we welcome each other, as residents of the same land, to come together and help Lebanon live up to its reputation of kindness, acceptance and generosity.

In this issue of the magazine, we explore how Welcome applies in Lebanon in general, and at LAU in particular.

One of the ways we at LAU embrace the idea of Welcome is with our extensive financial aid packages, among the most generous of any in the region. As one of the top universities in the Middle East, we want to make sure anyone with intelligence, ambition and creativity can study with us. And we welcome those with different needs, for example, ensuring access to all that our campuses have to offer for our students and faculty members with disabilities.

We also take our mission of Welcome beyond our gates. Across the university, our schools, departments and institutes are researching ways to accommodate and include others, whether they are the tourists who boost our economy, the migrants Lebanon has hosted despite its limited resources, and the international personnel who use our country as a base for the important work they do across the region.

And we welcome new programs, ideas and concepts, in line with our embrace of innovation as a driving force of positive change.

All of this is to say that welcoming others comes not just from the heart, but also from the mind. And its importance goes beyond making our guests and our friends feel comfortable: Welcoming others is the first step in forming new relations, which leads to new partnerships, new ideas and new advantages.

So I welcome you, our loyal readers, to learn more about the ways welcoming others increases the kind of inclusivity, creativity and innovation that are part of our mission at LAU. 

Joseph G. Jabbra

President