have an excellent team which has helped us connect with the needs of students, alumni, industry, and the wider community. We promote a culture of excellence among faculty, staff, and students, by identifying how they can make an impact and push the department forward. As part of this, we have revamped the curriculum to add needed electives in topics of interest to students and the market, digitized many of our student services to improve the students’ learning and university experience, developed several professional industrial academies to empower our students, established student and employer web portals for easier communication, developed stateof-the-art labs, and launched aggressive recruitment and outreach programs to engage with high school students, alumni, and industry professionals,” he said.
All of this – advising on high-impact research, winning international and national awards, and developing a highly successful model for a CSE Department – contribute to Dr. Aloul’s larger goal, which is to make the UAE stand out in the international advanced educational sector. “I hope to contribute to the achievement of a UAE university on the global list of the top 50 universities. Right now, we have some in the top 200, but I believe the top 50 is achievable if we push hard enough. For that, we need all the efforts to come together,” he revealed. That is the meaningful challenge that continues to make Dr. Aloul excited to work in his field of advanced engineering education, and the one that he is striving to achieve.
