SHE WAS SURPRISED but smiled the instant she heard the voice at the other end of the phone. It was a student who was testing her new cell phone and decided to call to say how much she had learned in class and to ask a question about her final report. While Maryann Wysor, an instructor in the business communications program at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, is used to being contacted by students, this was different – this student was calling from Egypt.
"I was a bit shocked at first but I recognized the voice instantly and I was thrilled to hear from her," said Wysor, who has been contacted via e-mail by other students in Egypt with questions about their final reports and to say how much they enjoyed her class.
Wysor, along with seven other Robinson faculty members (Michael Gallivan, Bijan Fazlollahi, Bala Ramesh, Arjan Raven, Ephraim McLean, Sevo Eroglu, and Wes Johnston), was part of a two-year capacity development program at Egypt’s Alexandria Institute of Technology (AIT), Egypt’s first private higher education institution. The project was the result of a grant that Robinson College received through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was developed with the cooperation of the Egyptian government and the private sector. Robinson was selected for this project based on its many ties to the region, including a joint MBA program between the
College and the University of Cairo, which began in 1998.
According to Mourad Dakhli, assistant professor of international business at Robinson and project director for the AIT partnership, the objective was to help boost
Egypt’s global competitiveness by helping AIT develop a distance learning, continuing education program. The goal was to grow a program that would offer Egyptian
managers practical, hands-on training in response to the growing market needs.
"AIT made a commitment to expand its continuing education offerings but needed additional faculty to help them expand their curriculum in international marketing
and e-commerce," explained Dakhli. "They also needed help with the technological infrastructure and in training personnel in distance education."
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