BOT Chairman Dr. Richard Debs.

AUB's School of Business, recently renamed the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business, graduated 290 students on June 28, 2003 during AUB's 134th commencement exercises. The ceremony was attended by Minister Fouad Siniora, Minister Najib Mikati, Arab Fund Chairman Badr Hmaidi as well as the Jordanian and Pakistani ambassadors. Also present were the Board of Trustees Chairman Richard Debs and Trustees Ali Ghandour, Kamal Shair, Hutham Olayan, Nabil Chartouni, Farouk Jabre as well as President John Waterbury.

The ceremony began with the faculty procession in full regalia. Dean Najjar then took the floor, presenting Dr. Debs, BOT chairman. Dr. Debs announced the board's decision naming the school the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business. He said Suliman Olayan, who passed away in 2002, served as a trustee and received the university's Medal of Honor in 2000.

Dr. Debs said that Suliman Olayan was a giant in business, and built his empire through hard work, effort and absolute integrity. He also instilled these qualities in his children.

Dean Najjar then thanked Chairman Debs and the BOT as well as the president and the provost for their support for the school. He added, "The fact that the chairman, Trustees Ghandour, Shaire, Olayan, Chartouni and Jabr, as well as President Waterbury, chose to be with us, is indeed humbling."

Dean Najjar said the University started teaching business in 1900 and in 2000 established an independent faculty for business administration. He said that the school since then has upgraded its information technology systems to a state-of-the-art standard and has increased by three-fold the number of its faculty members. He said that the number of students has also increased, adding that in a bid to accommodate increased numbers of students, AUB decided to build a new headquarters for the school in the lower campus, in the Corniche area.

BOT Chairman Dr. Richard Debs.

Dr. Najjar observed that naming the school after Olayan proved that the University was attached to highest levels of distinction in the business programs. "For generations to come, our students will have before them a role model of a rare kind: visionary, self-made, widely successful and immensely modest. Such is the stuff of greatness."

Trustee Hutham S. Olayan, Suliman Olayan's daughter and President of Olayan America Corporation, spoke next. She thanked Dean Najjar for the opportunity to address the very first graduating class of the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business and said the occasion was a very special thrill for her, recalling that she graduated from AUB in 1975, at the start of the war in Lebanon, and that the commencement ceremony of 1975 had been canceled due to the war. She said she was thrilled finally to experience for herself all the excitement and joy of an AUB commencement, and for seeing "this city, this country, and this University not just alive and well, but fully resurgent!"

Trustee Olayan related to the graduates her father's admonition about the value of reputation in the success of individuals and companies, and how precious and fragile a reputation can be. She quoted him as saying, "What I have built in a lifetime, you can lose in a day."

She said both AUB and the Olayan Group go to great lengths to maximize their reputations, adding that now, with their names joined and their qualities and values shared, they cannot afford for the School of Business to be anything less than the best in the Middle East and among the very best in the world. And that, she added, is precisely the vision of President Waterbury, Dean Najjar, and the AUB trustees.

Trustee Olayan closed by recalling the qualities of her father, who taught by quiet example to be modest, thrifty and humble. She said he had no patience for big egos and never made any distinction at all between race, religion, nationality, or gender. These, she said, are exactly the traits that have long been embedded in AUB, and both institutions also share the quality of entrepreneurship which is alive and well at AUB and the Business School.

Hutham Olayan also said that AUB and Olayan served as a bridge between the so-called East and the so-called West and that human progress was only achieved in periods of maximum exchange between individuals of alien cultures. She called AUB one of the jewels in the region and called the graduating class a whole new cadre of budding entrepreneurs and business leaders who will lead all toward a better tomorrow.

Dean Najjar then presented faculty shields to Trustee Hutham Olayan and to former and current faculty members Drs. Aziz Marmoura, Emile Ghattas, and Nimr Eid.

The distribution of degrees by Dean Najjar concluded the ceremony.

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