Mounir Mabsout Builds Foundations for AUB's Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service

Professor Mounir Mabsout

Following the establishment in December 2007 of the Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service (CCECS) at AUB, Provost Peter Heath recently announced the appointment of Mounir Mabsout, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, as the center's director.

Heath said that Mabsout will work to coordinate and develop the University's activities and programs for community service, service learning, and community-based research in outreach to Lebanese communities, thus promoting AUB's mission of service within the University and to Lebanon.

Mabsout's interest in community service and development goes back a long way. "I was often involved in community/volunteering work, namely working with various teams in relief efforts and with the displaced populations during periods of the civil war and after. As an AUB faculty member, I always thought that students and faculty should be engaged in community service and development. I worked with a team of students from the Civil Engineering Society in June 2006 to make the first summer volunteering camp happen-an experience we repeated in August 2007. I was also involved as a member and then chair of the Task Force for Reconstruction and Community Service, which President Waterbury established in August 2006," said Mabsout.

The Task Force was appointed by the president during the July 2006 war to look into the University's strategies in trying to relieve the suffering and effects of the war. As described in the AUB website, "Its aim evolved to encompass community service and development as a strategic goal for the University, and to set and integrate this goal into AUB's educational mission and objectives."

Affirming that AUB has long been engaged in community service and development, mostly at individual levels and/or through scattered group activities, Mabsout said: "Perhaps these initiatives are not properly recognized or even acknowledged, and often are invisible to the AUB community. The center's purpose in that regard is to institutionalize those efforts, which consequently should instill the culture of community involvement in academia and in community-based research."

Given that the center involves service learning, Mabsout plans to incorporate the latter in the educational programs at AUB. "This is one issue that the center will need to investigate further before proposing an action plan. For example, we will look at several models available in universities and schools in the region and beyond, but it is equally important to create a model that suits AUB. So, whether it be by injecting 'community' components in certain courses, promoting community-based academic projects/research in courses or theses, or encouraging volunteering field work and summer camps, the aim is to eventually instill the culture of community engagement," he said.

The center is still in its formative stage. "During the upcoming months, a small advisory team from AUB and I will work with the Office of the Provost on setting a structure for the center and preparing action plans. As we do so, we will be meeting with various community partners at AUB and external organizations and individuals interested in sharing experiences and supporting our activities," explained Mabsout. Already, several potential partners have expressed interest in working with CCECS, such as UNESCO and UN-Habitat, Al-Majmoua, Micro-Loan NGO, and others.

An AUB alumnus (BE '81), Mabsout received his PhD in civil engineering in 1991 from the University of Texas at Austin and his master's (1987) in civil engineering from the University of Houston. He has published papers in international journals and coauthored a book on highway bridges.