Entrepreneurship and Youth

Based at Columbia Global Center in Amman, this initiative reaches out to young people to promote and advance youth leadership development. Four young leaders from the MENA region were hosted during the first year of the program, from November 2016 to May 2017, who spoke and interacted with fellow youth who stand to benefit from positive role models.

The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination will open its doors in Paris in fall 2018. Its annual cohort will comprise seven Columbia University faculty fellows and seven fellows - scholars, writers and creative artists -  from outside the USA. Its purpose is to question the established ways in which knowledge is defined, produced, and taught. 

The Tamer Fund for Social Ventures (“the Fund”) provides seed grants to nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid early-stage Columbia University affiliated social and environmental ventures. Preference will be given to start-up ventures that have the potential to be financially self-sustaining in the longer term.

Provost John H. Coatsworth has announced the fifth round of grants from the President’s Global Innovation Fund (PGIF) on June 1, 2017. 11 projects received awards this year after being selected by a review committee of senior faculty drawn from both the Morningside and medical campuses.

In 1940, a young refugee named Arno Penzias fled Nazi-controlled Germany and settled in New York City. He went on to study at the City College of New York and Columbia University, where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1962.

The organizing committee of the Tunis International Book Fair announced that Columbia University in the City of New York and the Lebanese Republic will be the guests of honor for 2017. The 33^rd Tunis International Book Fair takes place on March 24 - April 2 in the city of Tunis, Tunisia. The University’s participation in the book fair shows the growing ties between Columbia and Tunisia. Honored guests at previous fairs have included France and Egypt, among others.

The Soraya Salti Youth for Youth Series was launched on Wednesday with the support of Waleed Al Banawi, the founder and chairman at JISR Venture Partners

Columbia Global Centers — Amman, a hub for Columbia University research and educational initiatives in the Middle East and one in a network of eight global centres around the world, has announced the Soraya Salti Youth for Youth Series.

Historic waves of migration, unprecedented digital activism, challenges to religious pluralism: amid all of these developments in the Middle East, Columbia Global Centers – Columbia University’s network of eight education and learning centers around the world – are exploring the implications of these changes on culture, health and safety, and politics in the region.

NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- "With civil conflict, terrorist threats, and major health crises causing unprecedented disruption in communities all over the world, universities must step up to a new level of globalism in our outlook and in our activities," says Professor Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University. 

Columbia Global Centers | Amman is launching a series inspired by the legacy of the late Soraya Salti, former President and CEO for Middle East and North Africa at INJAZ Al-Arab, a non-profit organization that supports youth education and training in the Arab world.

The Amman Center hosts regular public talks for members of the local community to engage with scholars and learn more about a wide range of topics, from current affairs, to history, to the arts.

Results for the fourth President’s Global Innovation Fund (PGIF) round this year were announced on May 6, 2016.

In collaboration with the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the Amman Center is working with engineering faculty at five leading Tunisian universities to introduce critical elements of an entrepreneurship curriculum and consult on how to build an ecosystem that will support entrepreneurial activities in the Tunisian context.

Hugh Herr is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Herr heads the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab, which is creating bionic limbs that emulate the function of natural limbs. 

Columbia Global Centers | Amman, a hub for Columbia University research and educational initiatives in the Middle East and one in a network of eight global centers around the world, announces the Soraya Salti Youth for Youth Series. 

Schools are widely recognized as being on the frontline of countering violent extremism. And a campaign is now underway to push the Jordanian government to reform the nation’s education system. 

In the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the presence of U.S. universities and colleges in the Middle East, with many elite schools setting up outposts in the GCC countries.

Columbia and New York University may both lead the pack when it comes to developing a presence abroad, but they have markedly distinct ideologies that have informed their global campus footprints.

Given the current governmental priorities for social service development in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, a trained cadre of professional social workers is needed in a fast growing economically, and socially evolving country to take on the multi-level roles of program design, development, implementation, evaluation and management.

Columbia Global Centers | Middle East will hosted the award ceremony of the iSustain Initiative on August 2, 2015.

As the Ministry of Education in Jordan continues the implementation of the first phase of a process aimed at developing curricula and textbooks, the views of education experts vary. Professor Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University, explained that the reform process of curricula seems superficial.

Safwan Masri is quoted in the second column of this viewpoint by Matt McAllester.