Dr. Hopper was accompanied with Ms Cheryl Collins, Public Diplomacy Officer and Ms Maureen Marroum, Academic Affairs Specialist at the U.S Consulate General Jerusalem.

The delegation met with Dr. Mohammad Al-Amleh, Vice President of Academic Affairs to discuss new methods to develop the higher education system in Palestine in general and An-Najah University in particular.

At the beginning of the meeting, Dr. Al-Amleh, briefed the delegation on An-Najah’s history, faculties, academic programmes and academic and research achievements. He stressed the importance of the partnership that links An-Najah with several American universities in terms of joint research.

Dr. Khaled Sahli, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and IT talked about the engineering faculty as An-Najah’s largest offering 17 academic programmes nine of which are accredited by ABET. He also talked about the benefits of the ABET accreditation with regard to the accredited engineering programmes.

Dr. Hopper in turn talked about his long year experience in higher education and discussed several topics to improve higher education in Palestine through employing technology in the teaching-learning process.

In the same context, Dr. Hopper gave a workshop to a number of An-Najah’s faculty staff on universities role in developing higher education quality assurance and the accreditation process.

The workshop shed light on different topics, most important of which are sharing data, institutional accreditation, regional accreditation in the U.S, benefits of the process of accreditation and the importance of ranking in Palestine and the U.S.

Dr. Hopper was also given a tour of the New Campus faculties and An-Najah Broadcasting Channel (NBC) where he was interviewed by the staff.

Notes:

• The meeting was also attended by Dr. Nidal Dweikat, Director of Planning, Development and Quality Assurance Unit; Mr. Khaled Mufleh, Acting Director of the Public Relations Department and Ms Shatha Jararaa from PR at An-Najah.
• The workshop was organized by the Planning, Development and Quality Assurance Unit and took place at the Scientific Centres’ conference room in the New Campus.
• Dr. Hopper has come to KVCC from the World Bank where he was most recently Senior Education Specialist for the Europe and Central Asia Region.  A technical specialist in education reform with the World Bank since 1999, Dr. Hopper has 27 years of professional experience in teaching, higher education administration and international development. His formal academic training is in economics (George Washington University), international affairs (Webster University, Geneva, Switzerland) and education policy (Harvard University). In addition to teaching for several years each in France, Switzerland, and Japan, he has managed US higher education programs abroad, assisted in the establishment of new universities and advised governments and individual institutions on reforms.