American University in Cairo

I spent the entire day today in central Cairo at the American University in Cairo, which is easily one of the finest, if not the finest, university in the Middle East. I received a really nice campus tour, and the campus is beautiful - and wonderfully quiet and shady in the midst of the heat and bustle of downtown Cairo. The university has a little over five-thousand students, which makes it an easier fit for our Global Modules network than some of the huge schools like Alexandria University, the University of Jordan or Goteborg University (Sweden). I met with Mohamed Abul Seoud, the Director of Study Abroad, Rana El-Harty, Assistant to the Associate Provost for International Programs, Dr. Helen Rizzo from Sociology (who hails from Canton, Ohio and who received who doctorate from Ohio State - but who not explain why the Buckeyes fail so miserably in college football national championship games), lunch with Dr. David Blanks who is the Chair of the History Department, Dr. Hoda Grant who is the Associate Director of the Core Curriculum and the FYE, and Emma (didn't catch her last name, and I am waiting for an email from her) who is an American student working on her masters and who is in charge of the university's innovative Dialogue program. Besides showing a lot of enthusiasm for the Global Modules program - Dr. Blanks and Dr. Grant are very enthusiastic in their support - they also asked us if Champlain would be interested in participating in their Dialogue program where students in their Cross-Cultural Representations rotate weeky video-conferencing classes with universities such as Georgetown and the University of Washington in Seattle. On the spot I signed us up and we'll set something up with one of our Seminar in Contemporary World Issues courses for this fall - I suppose I should have waited for official clearance - and to see if our video-conferencing equipment still works - and, well, you know - but patience is not one of my virtues. AUC is really a top-notch school and it says something great about Champlain that we are starting to get noticed by universities like this.

And that was the nice part of the day. By the time I was finally finished at AUC it was rush hour and the traffic was amazing - think of Boston on steroids. Although it was still not as bad as Mumbai, mainly because there were no cattle or elephants or monkeys or holy men in the streets. The traffic was so bad that no taxi driver, even for extra money, would take me across the Nile to Zamalek. So, I just had to hang around in the streets until the traffic finally began to clear around 7:30. It was also so hot I was actually beginning to get a little light-headed. I kept buying big cold containers of bottled water and just drinking them almost straight down. Finally, the traffic logjam broke and I was able to make my way back to the Longchamps.