Dean Najjar to Outlook: We want to produce leaders who are capable of life-long learning."

Following the meeting of the Business School sub-committee of the Board of Trustees held last June in New York, Dr. George Khalil Najjar, Vice President for Regional External Programs at AUB, was appointed Dean of the American University of Beirut School of Business.

The decision to upgrade the Graduate School of Business Management into an independent faculty and accreditation was taken a couple of years ago; the appointment of a dean was made recently and came into effect on September 1, 2000. Dr. Najjar, who still occupies the position of Vice President for REP, along with his Associate Dean, Dr. Said Fakhani, and the rest of the Business Transition Team, are tackling the colossal task of reengineering the undergraduate and graduate business programs.

The new faculty will be organized like any other faculty at AUB; it will be composed of several departments, standing committees and ad-hoc committees.

The School of Business intends to have very close inter-faculty cooperation with all the faculties at AUB, in particular with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will continue to have uninhibited access to business courses as long as no prerequisites are violated, which is a condition that applies equally to business students themselves.

AUB started business education in the beginning of the twentieth century. At the turn of the millennium, AUB is renewing its commitment to business education in the region through “a new independent business school representing major innovation over what we now have,” Dean Najjar explained. “What we now have has been very successful in serving specific needs at specific points in time, but the world is moving ahead at the speed of thought and business education has to catch up. Establishing a new business school is AUB’s response to the challenges of business education at the beginning of a new century.

“Business education today is a big lead activity, it is a world class activity. Those who are not prepared to play at that level will have to leave the game. It is a globalized economy. It is a situation where people have access to quality wherever it is. Borders are no longer meaningful in that respect.”

The GSBM currently has almost 800 undergraduate students and nearly 200 graduate students. Both programs are going to be revisited with the view of upgrading the programs to make them more relevant and sensitive to local and regional needs, all in line with the best academic international practices followed in the United States and Europe. According to the new School’s mandate, both programs will be reviewed, using the available resources at the School of Business and aided by the input of outside experts.

The undergraduate degree offered at the AUB School of Business could be correctly referred to as a generic degree. “There are several choices available in business education at the undergraduate level, and these choices tend to polarize either in terms of a generic degree of the kind that we have or in terms of the series of specialized degrees in marketing, management, finance, accounting...,” Dean Najjar explained. “There is always the ‘happy medium’ of an undergraduate program with a generic core of courses that leaves open for students the possibility of pursuing a concentration in their area of choice. The upside of a generic degree is that the student graduates with a well-rounded background. The downside is that perhaps the market expects more specialization in certain areas.

“The reverse is equally true with respect to specialized degrees. The upside, of course, is being specialized in a manner which perhaps is better suited to the immediate needs of the market. The downside is that you are talking about a narrow specialization, which possibly sometimes leads to diluting the generic makeup of the student. Yet, all options will be reviewed.

“One thing is for sure, a general core of business courses that we consider to be essential for undergraduate students irrespective of their future interests in an area of specialization will be given. There are certain core competencies that business students should be expected to have. Beyond that, we will open the door for a limited number of concentrations.

“We are also working very hard on new concentrations that reflect the fact that we belong to a particular part of the world that has special business related problems and challenges. One example is entrepreneurship. Students will also be allowed to cut across concentrations and develop specific themes for themselves. The very same philosophy will also be pursued at the MBA level. The new program will be there in the fall of 2001.

“The restructuring of the programs offered does not imply that the ‘rules of the game’ will be changed for the students who are currently in the midst of either programs. The students who are now in the pipeline can expect to continue on the same terms under which they were accepted.” Najjar insisted that the School of Business administration “will not change the rules of the game for anybody in the middle of the game. As a matter of course, people who are admitted into a particular system can expect to graduate under the same rules and regulations under which they were admitted. You do not normally tell students mid-course that we have a new set of rules for you.”

Among the pledges that the new School of Business has taken is serious commitment to student service. Two new positions introduced are the Student Services Officer and the Corporate Communications Officer. The administration of the School of Business is now actively seeking applicants for both positions. The activities of the Student Services Officer “will not only be to significantly improve the registration and advising process, both of which need improvement, but also to be instrumental in making sure that students are made aware of new opportunities available for them: internships, practicons, links with industry, all of which is part of the new portfolio that the School is trying to implement.” The Corporate Communications Officer will be responsible for counseling. This officer “will play the role of a link between the School of Business and the corporate community at the local and regional levels for the distinctive purpose of giving our students the best service we can offer: training, internship, and certainly placement after graduation.”

As for the name of the new School of Business, Dean Najjar explained that “it depends on the philosophy that you would like to propagate. There are those who would like to think of the school as a School of Business and those who prefer to think of it as a School of Business and Management, in the sense that management is a generic activity that cuts across all organizational types. This is part of the lively intellectual debate that we are going through, and it won’t be long before that kind of brainstorming leads us to the formal recommendation of either the first or second option.”

Concerning the physical situation of the School of Business, Dean Najjar said, “Master planning is now being practiced on a world-class scale by a committee of experts who will come up with a rational and optimal modality for space utilization. We expect the results of that exercise to include the identification of the optimal site for the School of Business.”

With the generous funding AUB has been endowed, Dean Najjar with which was happy to announce, “We now have resources for a new building to house the new business school and to accommodate our ambitions for a world-class business program. In all likelihood, this will be located somewhere on the lower campus. It will not take long before we can all talk about this matter with greater specificity.

“We want our students to have a general education. We are not interested in straight-jacketing them. We want our students to be broadly educated in the liberal arts tradition because this is in their best interest.

“We want to produce leaders who are capable of life-long learning, people who are tuned to the pulse of the times, people who are aware of the major trends and debates, people who comprehend the farthest reaches of the horizon which is changing constantly; but people who are equally capable of zeroing in on specific micro-issues. We have made a decision in favor of general grounding leading to specific focusing. We are getting the best out of both worlds.

“In my professional judgment, having been in this business for over a quarter of a century, the optimal approach for this day and age is an approach generic enough to allow for a well-rounded liberal arts background with a general grounding in business and management, and yet flexible enough to allow for focusing on a concentration area.”

By Zina Sanyoura