Keystone of Oman's future

When Sultan Qaboos of Oman came to power in 1970, the sultanate had a handful of teachers and education was scarce.

This was probably the most difficult challenge that faced the young ruler when he assumed authority and confronted the facts: There were three schools for approximately 900 students.

Within a year of his accession, Qaboos saw to it that 13 additional primary and elementary schools were established for 7,000 pupils. (It was raised to 45 institutions for 15,000 in 1972)

Oman then lacked qualified teachers and though Qaboos pledged to "provide education opportunities even in the shade of trees", he knew that such training would not crop up overnight. For a decade, Muscat poured in significant resources to improve both the quantity and the quality of its nascent educational institutions, often relying on foreign instructors.

Year after year, Qaboos revisited this in his annual declarations but believed, and stressed, that Omanis possessed "innate abilities", which required care. He concluded that providing such assistance was one of the fundamental responsibilities of the state and, in 1980, announced the creation of a national university.

This institution was originally expected to be located in Nizwah, the historical education capital of Oman. In the event, an imposing facility, now known as the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), was inaugurated on November 9, 1986, near the Al Khod valley on the Batinah coast not far from the capital.

The Omani monarch invited his "daughters and sons" to assume their responsibilities and "work wholeheartedly" to acquire desirable scientific degrees. Thousands flocked to enrol.

When the university opened its doors in 1986, it was equipped with colleges of medicine, engineering, sciences, agriculture, education and Islamic studies. A college of arts was added a year later, followed by a college of commerce and economics in 1993.

The college of law was inaugurated in 2006 and, in 2008, SQU boasted a major addition with the college of nursing. Over a very short period of time, SQU surmounted immense hurdles, always emphasising quality over quantity.

In fact, SQU was and remains one of the most demanding universities in the Arab world, subjecting its applicants to a stringent admissions policy that identifies the very best, irrespective of background and social station.

Foundation and growth

The design and construction of the SQU campus was carried out with great attention to the fulfilment of several objectives to better reflect the sultanate's traditions.

Set in a valley, SQU's stark architecture stands out with magnificent arches and courtyards, which were all constructed in white and pink sandstone. Buildings reflected Omani and Islamic designs that impress any visitor. Moreover, its initial landscaping, which this author first saw in 1989, highlighted the semi-arid area but has since become verdant gardens and flower beds.

Designers took care to include species native to Oman, which grow and flourish in the harsh environment. To say that the landscaping displays a splendid array of colour from flowers and foliage would be an understatement.

Given the country's time-honoured values, SQU architects introduced an ingenious system to provide males and females separate access to most buildings: lower and upper walkways for men and women and separate seating areas in classrooms, although students mingled in the library, the campus jewel, or in science laboratories.

Naturally, separate living quarters were built for men and women, even if the overall environment tended to be both functional and attractive for everyone.

Yet, beyond bricks and mortar, SQU boasted the graduation of qualified men and women who entered the workforce in droves. If the first graduating class in 2000 awarded a mere 557 bachelors degrees, by 2008, SQU could proudly claim to have bestowed 14,722 degrees, including 2 doctorates (one male and one female), 855 Masters, 455 postgraduate diplomas and 13,410 BAs.

Those numbers were impressive as Omanis congregated to study at SQU, aware of its reputation for excellence, which seldom compromised on requirements.

Campus

Like any major university, SQU's heart may well be its main library, which is centrally located in a three-storey building. In addition to its present holdings, the building hosts the Centre for Information Systems and the Centre for Educational Technology. In addition to these facilities, the college of commerce and economics maintains an information centre, just as the university mosque prides itself with a small library, too.

For technical reasons, a separate and self-sufficient medical library, which is adjacent to the college of medicine, caters to its specialised clientele.

Given its unique needs, the medical library maintains a significant collection of contemporary and retrospective medical literature in various media to support academic programmes and the university hospital and various healthcare facilities throughout the sultanate.

While the present library holds over a million volumes and has access to an electronic book service that contains over 30,000 books from 200 publishers, the main library has clearly run out of space.

To meet growing demand, SQU established the foundations of a state-of-the-art cultural centre, which will be a multipurpose hall, with a brand new library, a research centre and a royal reception hall. The complex will lie along the axis of the university clock tower towards the eastern side of the campus and, on six levels, including a basement and mezzanine, will be fully equipped with modern facilities to accommodate 5,000 users.

The new library will be a seven-level building with a seating capacity of 2,000 and enough room to hold six million books and periodicals.

Colleges and curricula

SQU students are assigned to one of the nine colleges and, depending on their special interests and needs, in a specialised department.

The college of agricultural and marine sciences aims to be the top agricultural school in the region to provide the sultanate with qualified manpower in the agricultural and fisheries sectors. In some ways, this school is responsible for training Omanis who may be called upon to help sustain the country's renewable resources for food production.

Based on an American curriculum, the school is divided into several sectors and concentrates on animal and veterinary sciences, crop sciences, food science and nutrition, marine science and fisheries, natural resource economics, soils, water and agricultural engineering, and runs an Agricultural Experiment Station.

Faculty members have the highest per capita rate of research funding and peer reviewed publications at SQU, which probably reflects the needs of the country.

Arts and social sciences aims to "facilitate the intellectual advancement of society and the development of culture and arts". It is in that spirit that the college "mirrors the past heritage, present character and future aspirations of Omani society".

Importantly, as a founding college, arts and social sciences reflected Omani society's thirst for critical thinking by studying disciplines that allowed intellectual work for its own sake. Towards that end, ten departments were created, including history, Arabic, mass communication, tourism, sociology and social work, geography, archaeology, theatre, library and information, music and musicology, and English.

The most notable absentee was the department of political science normally associated with such a college, although political sensitivities probably prevented its establishment. Still, it was important to note that the Omani political narrative was centuries old, with an incredibly rich oral history passed from one generation to the next.

The college of commerce and economics provides business and economics courses and enrols about 2,000 students, who are entrusted to 71 faculty members. Commerce departments include accounting, information systems, economics, finance, marketing, management, operations management and business statistics.

In 2004, the college started a three-year, part-time MBA programme to meet local needs.

Because of Oman's relatively young population, the college of education was destined to play a vital role, as it prepared the teachers who were delegated to look after the sultanate's vital K-12 population.

Here the emphasis was to abandon traditional rote learning methods for the highest calibre teachers, steeped in the latest pedagogical developments.

Any visit to either a public or private school in Oman will attest to this endeavour, as children are not taught by rote learning methods. Instead, Omani students benefited from extensive new curricula that valued reasoning and functionality and SQU pedagogy emphasised questioning and interpretation.

Those who witnessed such teaching methods could not help but notice how fundamental improvements altered the proclivity to adapt. Fundamental changes in education occurred largely because ordinary Omanis perceived the importance of learning and how this added tangible benefits to their lives.

In as much as Oman was a country of thought and knowledge, from famed Nizwah religious and legal schools to maritime institutes in Salalah and East Africa, SQU closed the link with modernisation.

And to better prepare tomorrow's instructors, the college offered courses in several subjects, including psychology, instructional and learning technologies, Islamic sciences, physical education, art education, and early childhood education, all of which served indigenous needs in toto.

With so much lacking in infrastructure and technical facilities, engineering education was bound to become a priority, too, and the college of engineering did not disappoint. Several departments, ranging from civil to electrical and computer engineering, as well as mechanical and industrial, supplemented studies in petroleum and chemical engineering.

The latter were valuable as Oman embarked on a gradual Omanisation programme that necessitated highly skilled nationals to assume their responsibilities.

Of course, an overall emphasis on sciences meant that a college of sciences would be vital, housing the departments of biology, chemistry, computer sciences, earth sciences, mathematics and statistics and physics.

These fields represented the core subjects on which more specialised research efforts were to be built, which were considered critical for Oman, and which served SQU students well.

Medicine and nursing stood out for their painstaking contributions as SQU graduates proudly served Oman and several other Gulf states. Simply stated, both schools were on the cutting edge, providing the sultanate with the highest medical education possible.

Finally, in 2006, a Royal Decree (38/2006) transformed the old College of Sharia and Law, which was established in 1997 under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education, to be affiliated with SQU as the college of law.

Located in Al Wataya, the college of law is the only off-campus presence of SQU, as it will continue on its existing premises. Its areas of expertise are numerous, including international law, legal administration, criminal law, administrative judiciary, public finance and tax systems, and constitutional affairs.

In fact, special attention was paid to the basic law of the state (the constitution), to better understand and analyse the ruling regime in the Sultanate of Oman. Remarkably, this emphasis on the rights of Omanis was new, as were courses on nationality laws and international relations.

Students and faculty

Because most SQU students live on campus, the university provides an energetic atmosphere that allows for their participation in social, cultural and sporting activities. One of the most interesting spots on campus is the Student Services Centre, a two-storey building with a banquet hall and cafeteria, where students mingle between classes.

A public space is available for them to rest and study, while a hall for games is also available with snooker, billiards and tennis tables, as well as a 12-lane bowling alley suitable for championship games.

Students are also cared for at the Health Services Clinic, which also boasts a pharmacy with necessary instruments and medications. The SQU mosque is considered the gem on the necklace of SQU buildings. It was erected on an area of 4,000 square metres and has a capacity of about 1,500. For female students, an oratory that accommodates about 400 was added a few years ago, along with other facilities for the comfort of visitors seeking tranquillity and spirituality.

To better serve SQU's estimated 11,000 students, a 2,000-strong faculty roster in all fields delves on teaching and research.

In fact many SQU students engage in research activities, either through their respective departments of colleges or through the university's nine research pivots, which are Oil and Gas Research Centre, Omani Studies Centre, Remote Sensing and GIS Centre, Earthquake Monitoring Centre, Communication and Information Research Centre, Environmental and Research Studies Centre, Water Research Centre, Centre of Excellence in Marine Biotechnology and Humanities Research Centre.

As a cursory examination will help determine, these centres act as communication channels between researchers within the sultanate and those in other countries but, equally important, channel the critical work of faculty members to society at large.

As space is limited, the following illustration highlights the type or present work under way, which is valuable for Oman, the region and all of mankind. Widely reported in Omani newspapers is the work on diabetes undertaken by Dr Jumana Saleh, an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry (college of medicine).

Professor Saleh, who earned her doctorate from McGill University in Montréal, Canada (1999), examined a hormone (ISB) that was responsible for storing fat in the human body by acting as a stimulus for obesity. At SQU she embarked on a study to identify links between ISB and body fat, focusing on the mechanisms that hormones use to cause the storage of fat.

In effect, she wished to find out whether ISB could "be responsible for the differences in the distribution of fat in men and women".

Her work confirmed "ISB was more strongly linked to obesity in females than in males, increasing during the second phase of a normal menstrual period", before dropping "when the amount of blood decreased". Remarkably, ISB levels in the body "rose dramatically during pregnancy", as fat levels jumped during the first trimester.

International colleagues and Saleh verified these findings as she published her results in prestigious refereed publications such as Hormones Research (the official journal of the European Association of Endocrinology) and the International Journal of Obesity.

Her most recent investigation concentrated on "the relationship between ISB and body weight among Omani newborns". She discovered that "the relationship was indeed positive, caused by the amount of fat in mothers who were healthy and did not suffer from diabetes", which was also helpful in recommending healthy diets to expecting mothers.

The value of an SQU degree

Over a short period, SQU channelled many of its top students into research facilities or placed them with leading institutions throughout the sultanate, both of which added value where most needed.

An SQU degree was of course about achievement on an individual level but, in the context of contemporary Omani history, one cannot but help to conclude that the 1970 pledge to "provide education opportunities even in the shade of trees", is fulfilled with each graduate who leaves its campus. That is genuine value that places the quest for knowledge to serve a nation.

Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is an author, most recently of Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons, Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2008. This article is part of an occasional series that will examine institutions of higher learning in the Arab World. Each essay aims to highlight an establishment that promises to fill the learning gap for a globalised generation in search of excellence.