Temple has signed a collaborative agreement with Future University of Egypt for the exchange program of faculty and students in engineering, dentistry and pharmacy.

The agreement was signed at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo last month by Provost Lisa Staiano-Coico and FUE President Ebada Sarhan.

The agreement calls for the exchange of faculty and undergraduate, professional and graduate students; exchange of scholars for lectures, talks, conferences, colloquia, symposia and other academic experiences; development of joint programs as specified in individual school agreements; and collaborative research activities and publications developed through the research linkages of individual professors.

FUE features six schools: pharmacy, dentistry, engineering, economics and political science, computer science and commerce and business administration.

While the agreement currently involves Temple’s College of Engineering and schools of Dentistry and Pharmacy, it is hoped that it could be expanded into other programs and colleges such as Middle Eastern studies, linguistics and political science in the College of Liberal Arts.

The agreement was initiated last December during a visit to Cairo University by Magid Abou-Gharbia, associate dean and director of the Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research in Temple’s School of Pharmacy.

“While I was in Egypt, I was invited by the dean of the school of pharmacy at Future University in Egypt to give a scientific lecture on drug discovery,” said Abou-Gharbia.

Following his presentation, he met with Khaled Azazy, chair of the board of trustees and son of FUE’s founder, along with the deans of FUE’s six schools.  They discussed the possibility of an agreement between the two schools.

“Azazy talked about their vision to make FUE one of the elite universities in the Middle East and doing a lot of collaborative agreements with top universities,” said Abou-Gharbia.

This past April, Abou-Gharbia, along with College of Engineering Dean Keya Sadeghipour, Maurice H. Kornberg School of Dentistry Dean Amid Ismail and Associate Dean Sarah Gray and School of Pharmacy Dean Peter Doukas, visited FUE and developed the framework for the collaboration agreement.

At the agreement signing, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey hailed the collaborative agreement as a model for others to follow.

“There is no other country in the Muslim world and Arab world with an older tradition of learning and respect for education than Egypt,” she said, adding that the new partnership is an example of “the commitment of Future University to offer its students access to the world. Temple University has recognized this opportunity for American students,” said Scobey.