currawonger
Joined: 03 Dec 2009 Posts: 18
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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 7:12 pm Post subject: BENTLEY U CAMPUS IN BAHRAIN? |
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Bentley University eyeing Bahrain, ME
Bentley University, a well known United States-based business oriented co-educational university is considering Bahrain and the Middle East to set up its first overseas institute. Its president, Gloria Cordes Larson visited the Kingdom to discuss and explore possibilities of a joint venture. She met the Crown Prince Shaikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa in addition to senior government and education officials and business institutes like the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance. �With hundreds of our alumni in the Middle East (including around 80 from Bahrain), it seemed to be most obvious place to attempt our first major overseas venture,�
Larson told the Bahrain Tribune yesterday, �We have programs with universities in Netherlands, Spain and Brazil but the Middle East venture would be different.� Bentley University offers a wide range of business related education programs including a faculty of experienced teachers with realworld research and consulting experience. �Students can choose majors, minors and courses that fully explore the impact of information technology including e-business, emarketing, cyber-literature, journalism for the World Wide Web, web design, IT and public relations, IT auditing, and information economics,� Larson said The university also gives its students the opportunity of using their skills and knowledge learning first hand in virtual laboratories including a trading room, center for marketing technology, accounting center for Electronic Learning and Business Measurement among others. Students can at these laboratories create business models or companies and make decisions that will affect their �firms�, similar to Donald Trump�s TV programme The Apprentice. But unlike in the programmewhere a mistake can cost the participant his job, the university uses the mistake to analyse and inform the student how he could do things differently.
The president said if their intent to set up a direct partnership in Bahrain was successful then students would be able to use this infrastructure as part of their education.. �Ideally the students will visit and spend time in Boston to experience and learn at the university campus,� she said. Larson was impressed at the importance the government had given on education in the Kingdom through its Educational Reform program. She also expressed her appreciation for the Kingdom�s 2030 program which she said �Outlines where Bahrain is now and where it will be in the specified time frame.� Shaikh Abdulla K. Al Khalifa, CEO of Lightspeed Communications, an alumni of the university who accompanied Larson on her visits to various places in Bahrain told the Tribune that the presence of the university in Bahrain would be a push forward for the Kingdoms education.
�It will put us in the forefront and will support the education reform policy initiated by the Crown Prince. It will also facilitate and increase the value of the Bahraini workforce,� he said, �With universities like Bentley the quality of education in the Kingdom will certainly be improved. It�s always better to be able to choose from quality rather than quantity.� Shaikh Abdulla is also on the University�s International Advisor Council, a board which counsels the university on how to improve on their global image. |
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