Yusra Mouzughi, a British-Libyan academic, is set to take office as president of Bahrain’s Royal University for Women next month, adding a new experience to her pioneering career in setting up and designing educational programs that adapt to the surrounding environment’s context instead of fully importing foreign concepts.
“This is a new challenge I hope to pass successfully by benefiting from the legacy of the previous management team, paying attention to quality, and establishing a culture of innovation and change with all parties to the university’s educational process,” she said.
Born in Libya’s Tripoli and having moved early with her family to reside in Britain, Mouzughi has a special vision for developing the reality of education in the Arab world. She rejects the method embraced by some Arab countries of relying on foreign consultants and bringing in foreign university programs.
“I do not believe that importing complete, ready-made educational systems without evaluation is the most appropriate way to develop education in the region,” she said. “We need to benefit from development experiences abroad and work on what suits us with local cadres to achieve real progress.” (See a related article, “Importing Higher Education: A Qatari Experiment.”)
Before being named the next leader of Bahrain’s Royal University for Women, Mouzughi served as president of Muscat University in Oman, where she was the first woman to hold such a high leadership position in the sultanate.
“It was my great honor to have had the opportunity to lead Muscat University before and work on developing it,” she said. “I am glad to leave it after the university has proved itself to be one of the leading higher education institutions in the sultanate.”