The country's oldest university has an ambitious mission to secure its place among the top universities of the world, having already placed in the top 400 this year.
To achieve the goal, UAE University (UAEU) together with the Abu Dhabi government is establishing state-of-the-art facilities, funnelling money into research and growing its Emirati faculty and student base to produce home-grown experts.
New campus and growth
Al Ain may have been a quiet town some years ago, but the rapid expansion of UAEU's campuses shows its drive to become a hub of academia.
Evidence of this is UAEU's current construction of a three-phase campus that "for the first time will have all its facilities on one campus for both males and females," said Provost Professor Wyatt Rory Hume.
Hume joined UAE University in 2008 as its provost. Prior to this he spent 15 years as the provost of the University of California at Los Angeles. He is currently overseeing the university's transformation to become research intensive to support the ambitions and needs of the UAE.
The first-phase female wing of the futuristic campus building was recently completed and students have been using the facilities since the beginning of the semester, he said.
Of its 14,000 students about 75 per cent is female, which Professor Hume said he was "delighted" about. "Young men have many options and are more free to travel overseas — our female students are a great asset for the future of the country. We have 55,000 graduates from the UAE and 24 per cent of our faculty members are Emiratis.”
Rankings
UAEU is also steadily improving its world ranking . Last year it placed 374th and rose two spots, coming in at 372 this year in the QS World University Rankings 2010. The organisation ranks top universities in the world.
"We are the strongest university in the region. We ranked 202 in the Life Sciences and Medicine and 235 in the Arts and and Humanities — that's an extraordinarily high ranking for a university this size and relative youth," said Professor Hume.
Dr Donald Baker, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences comments: "As a Canadian, I know the cringe that goes with living beside a huge neighbour — that is, the idea that until someone outside the country recognises the quality of what we are doing, no one believes in it. How many people in the country know that we are ranked 372 out of thousands of universities, or that we are tied for 202 in the Life sciences and Medicine and tied for 235 in the arts and humanities, the area in which I am involved as dean?"
Dr Baker added: "...it is sometimes discouraging to see governments hiring consultants from universities ranked well below us, just because they come from somewhere else. We need to build capacity here. We have a strong pedestal on which to build minarets of excellence, and if we had the resources to build them we would move up the rankings quickly."
Research
The UAE government has awarded research grants to 37 faculty members to the tune of Dh12.5 million.
Professor Hume said some of the current projects are in genes and related diseases, engineering experts looking at the oil and gas and environment management, food and agriculture and developing new methods of food security. From building high tech IT facilities and aerospace projects to social issues such as divorce, UAEU's scholars are guiding the UAE government with their expert advice.
"I would like to emphasise that UAEU is here to ... also help other universities in the emirates. We are not here to compete or undercut but support the development of the nation. We're the national university."
