The Pratt School of Engineering announced Wednesday that it will collaborate with Effat College in Saudi Arabia to develop the first undergraduate engineering curriculum for women in the kingdom.
The baccalaureate-level program in electrical and computer engineering will begin in Fall 2006. The curriculum will be designed to complement Effat’s existing academic program in computer science.
“I think this is an exciting opportunity for Pratt to be able to influence women’s engineering education globally,” said Marianne Risley, assistant dean for research and new initiatives.
Effat, a privately-funded women’s college on the coast of the Red Sea with an enrollment of about 250 students, approached Duke after researching the top undergraduate engineering programs in the United States, such those at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Washington.
“Duke was determined to be the best fit in terms of a partner for this new initiative,” Kerry Laufer, dean’s assistant for institutional development and quality control at Effat, wrote in an e-mail. “Duke’s strong commitment to internationalization and the fact that the Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering, Kristina Johnson, is a woman with a passion for expanding opportunities for women to excel in engineering were very significant in the decision.”
Johnson and Dr. Haifi Jamal Ali Lail, dean of Effat College, signed a cooperative agreement Jan. 30 that will provide a scheme for the first year of collaboration. The program will emphasize the planning of and development of an innovative and culturally appropriate engineering preparation program and an undergraduate curriculum in computer and electrical engineering.
The first-year costs of the program are estimated to be a little over $200,000, which will be covered in part by Effat and in part through the assistance of a $100,000 grant awarded through the U.S. State Department’s Middle East Partnership Program Initiative.
Personal visits, teleconferencing and web-based media will facilitate collaboration. The seven-member faculty committee appointed to oversee the project, headed by Senior Associate Dean for Education Tod Laursen, will visit Effat to essentially create a major from scratch. “We will not be restricted by what already exists,” he said. “Our educators are really excited about the opportunity to take from the best of what we have and create something better.”
Duke has a history of international collaboration. It currently has signed memoranda of understanding with the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan and St. Andrews College in Scotland. “We wish to promote cultural understanding between the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries through engineering and entrepreneurship,” Johnson said. “We see educating women in engineering fields as an opportunity for young women to explore new career opportunities that are culturally acceptable and that can accommodate family life.”
Johnson said she is confident that Duke has much to gain from this program. The University also hopes to use this initial collaboration as a jumping-off point for facilitating summer exchanges between Duke and Effat and for recruiting women from Saudi Arabia for its Masters in Engineering and Management program.
“Part of the Duke Endowment’s indenture was that women be admitted on equal footing as men, so expanding educational opportunities for women in part of Duke’s history and culture,” she said.
“It will provide Duke a level of prestige in an area of the world that we might not be as well-known in,” Risley said.
Since engineering will be an entirely new department at Effat and an entirely new major for women in Saudi Arabia, the college is conservative in its enrollment expectations even though the initial announcement of its partnership with Duke has already stimulated greater interest than originally expected among both high school and transfer students. Laufer said Effat’s aim is to begin this endeavor with a group of 15 students and to continue to accept 15 students each semester in the first five years of the program.
Public response to the program in Saudi Arabia is predicted to be overwhelmingly positive, according to a feasibility poll Effat conducted among students, parents and employers last spring. “We believe, based on our experience so far, that if we turn out graduates with the high level skills needed by employers, they will be hired regardless of gender,” Laufer said.
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