The conference was supported by the Quality Development Fund of the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education through World Bank funding, and took place at the Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Auditorium in the New Campus.

The conference comes as a result of the IT BRIDGE initiative World Bank funded project which aims at updating the IT curriculum by linking it to the IT Private Sector.

In the opening speech, Professor Maher Natsheh, Acting President of An-Najah welcomed the guests and pointed out that An-Najah is working hard on integrating technology in the educational processes to improve the quality of higher education on campus.

He stressed the importance of the conference and said that it comes as a result of the university’s efforts to develop academic relations with the Palestinian community institutions and to link education with the work environments. One way for achieving this goal is to higher professionals to work as trainers and course teachers on full or part time basis. He also pointed out to the students’ involvement in companies’ internships and the role of those companies in developing the curriculum especially at the Faculty of Engineering and IT..

Prof. Natsheh also referred to the recent agreements An-Najah has recently signed with the University of Technology Belfort Montbéliard –France.

In turn, Dr. Mohammad El-Subu, Head of the Accreditation and Quality Assurance Commission, talked about the difficulties which encounter the linkage process between institutions of higher education and work environments. He also mentioned that this conference and other related events should come up with proposals to make balance between the number of graduates and the local market needs.

The first session also included keynote presentation by Dr. Raed Kouta, Assistant Professor at the University of Technology Belfort and Dr. Abdulkareem Daraghmeh, Director of the CELT on engineers training at the University of Technology and improvement of the learning environments in higher education.

During the conference sessions the speakers presented An-Najah’s project based and community based apprenticeship models, improving entrepreneurial skills and preparing learners for work. The speakers included both academic faculty and company CEOs: Dr. Abdel Razzak Natsheh, Assistant Professor at the Computerized Information Systems Department; Dr. Emad Dawwas, Assistant Professor at the Urban Planning Department; Mr. Omar Rayyan, Palestinian Entrepreneur and Ms Ola Anabtwi from the Department of Nutrition and Food Processing at An-Najah. The conference’s sessions also included open discussions on various topics.

The conference also featured awards presented by professor Natsheh to honor the conference main speakers, company representatives and Najah guest speaker from UTBM.

The conference guests were also invited to attend the Students Projects’ Exhibition at the Faculty of Fine Arts Court

The conference was also attended by An-Najah vice presidents, president’s assistants, deans and heads of departments, Dr. Yahya Salkan, Executive Director for Jaffa Net Software and representatives from the public and private sectors and local companies including Isra Software and Computer, IBDAA, ULTIMIT, Edubook, Innerchip, SPARK, Cortoba Technologies and ASD in addition to other notable figures.