The agreement is known as a “2+2 Program”, meaning 50% of the classes will be held at each institution, for both students from UofL and AIU. Students in this program will earn a UofL degree.

UofL and AIU intend to enhance relations between the two universities by developing an academic and cultural exchange in teaching, research, and other activities. UofL seeks to increase opportunities for students outside the United States to take UofL classes and obtain UofL degrees, while AIU has expertise and endeavors to support UofL with on-site recruitment, logistical and administrative support, and academic delivery of the program.

Present at the official virtual signing ceremony on November 16, 2021 were Professor Khaled Atef Abdel-Ghaffar, Minster of Higher ����ֱ��; Professor Essam Elkordi, President of AIU; Professor Roshdy Zahran, AIU Director of Board of Trustees; Professor Mustafa ElNainay, dean of the Faculty of Computers Science and Engineering at AIU; Lori Gonzalez, UofL executive vice president and provost; Emmanuel Collins, dean of the UofL JB Speed School of Engineering; Tom Rockaway, associate dean of Programs and Initiatives for UofL JB Speed School of Engineering; and Ayman El-Baz, chair of Department of Bioengineering for UofL JB Speed School of Engineering.

“I am excited about this new partnership with AIU. It provides Speed School with the opportunity to experience an influx of students from a growing region of the world and have fruitful cross-cultural fertilization with our partners in Egypt,” said Collins. “Our agreement also opens up opportunities for other colleges within UofL and AIU to establish similar partnerships and share in these benefits.

The 2+2 Program brings to fruition a program that was the brainchild of El-Baz, who worked with Rockaway and Collins to secure the details of the partnership.

El-Baz’s ultimate vision was to create an avenue for Egyptian students to obtain a degree from UofL. To that end, El-Baz approached Professor Khaled Atef Abdel-Ghaffar, the Minister of Higher ����ֱ�� and hosted Abdel-Ghaffar at the UofL campus in January 2020, to show the world class research, facilities and resources available to offer a high quality education to Egyptian students.

The bioengineering professor said an international partnership like this will reap benefits for both universities, including student recruitment for Speed School and offering a high-quality engineering education for Egyptian students while offering an enhanced cultural experience for all students in the program.

The agreement will enable UofL to start offering classes to students at AIU in the Fall 2022 academic term. Under the agreement, students will spend their first three years of their engineering program at Al Alamein University in Egypt, and two subsequent years at University of Louisville to complete their degrees. (In Egypt, a Bachelor’s degree requires five years). Both universities plan to start similar partnerships with other disciplines that are offered at UofL, both in and out of the engineering school. “This is just the beginning,” said El-Baz.

Under the new memorandums of understanding, UofL has teamed up with Assiut University, south of Cairo in Asyut, and the newly established Al-Alamain University, near Alexandria.

The agreements will allow those students to spend the first two years of their education at their home universities before completing their degrees at UofL.

“This is what we need, in terms of international collaboration, to lift us up,” said UofL president Dr. Neeli Bendapudi.

The first memoranda was signed in January with Egyptian Minister of Higher ����ֱ�� and Scientific Research, Dr. Abdel-Ghaffar, to forge the new relationship between UofL and Al-Almain University. The school is slated to open this year, and under this agreement, the first students would be Cardinals.

While the agreement will begin with undergraduate bioengineering programming, UofL’s bioengineering chair, Dr. Ayman El-Baz, said it could potentially expand later to include both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

“These agreements are just the first step in expanding the reach of Speed School and UofL to provide high quality education,” he said. “Once established, these programs will confer economic and societal benefits to both Egypt and Kentucky.”

The second agreement was signed with Dr. Tarek El-Gammal, president of Assiut University. Under this agreement, El-Baz said, students at Assiut would complete two years of their undergraduate engineering degrees in Egypt before coming to UofL.

“We are excited to move forward with this MOU,” El-Gammal said. He was in Louisville for the signing. 

The program places early career educators as foreign language teaching assistants at U.S. colleges and universities with an objective of improving U.S. students’ foreign language abilities and knowledge of other countries. In addition to performing teaching duties, FLTAs engage in coursework, conduct language and cultural activities in their host communities, and improve their English language skills and knowledge of the United States.

Moustafa is an assistant lecturer at Misr University in Cairo and holds a master’s in Media and Mass Communications, a rare degree among Egyptian Fulbright scholars. Back home, she is working on a dissertation investigating the effects of social media on the children of immigrants. She selected UofL from a list of five possible institutions, citing her love of country music as one reason she chose to make the journey to Kentucky.

Moustafa said she has been inspired by many professors, including her Fulbright advisor, Arabic program coordinator Khaldoun Almousily; Spanish professor Gregory Hutcheson, who serves as her academic advisor; Classical and Modern Languages department chair Alan Leidner; and English professor Hristomir Stanev.

“I hope to apply everything I learn here back home, from writing syllabi to making students love the course,” she said.

Living and working here has been a horizon-broadening experience for Moustafa, but she said she will also walk away from it with a new appreciation for her own country.

“When I got here, part of me was happy to be in the U.S. and learning something new, but also part of me acknowledged that Egypt is good, Egypt is great,” said Moustafa. “I will come back thinking I’m actually proud to be an Egyptian.”