Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University celebrated the graduation and honoring of 34 graduates from the 1st edition of the Academic Departments Leaders Fellowship Program for the year 2023, which is organized by the University Vice-President for Development and Community Partnership, represented by the Leadership Center. The celebration was attended by the University President, Dr. Abdullah Al-Rubaish, and the Vice Presidents as well.

The President of the University stated that “the academic field is an integrated system that graduate national cadres who serves in advancing the development of the country. This program came to emphasize our keenness to prepare leaders to supervise and lead the academic work, and it will reflect positively on the way the university work and on its outcomes.” Finally, Dr. Al-Rubaish appreciated the Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Ghazi Al-Otaibi, and the entire team for all the great efforts made to achieve such distinguished outcomes.

The Director of the Leadership Center, Dr. Huda Abualsamah, said “this program is one of the promising programs that was inaugurated by the University President and saw light in 2022.” She noted that this program is a development program that aims to provide all the participants with the basic skills and knowledge that will help them perform tasks and fulfill their requirements as heads of departments and it will help them in their self-development which will affect their professional and academic career. The goal of the program is to develop the leadership skills of the department heads and to enable them to understand their roles, perform their work and to build advanced projects that aim at developing the university and their departments. At the end, she appreciated the Vice President of the University for Academic Affairs who made great efforts in developing the program.

Moreover, the training hours in the program has reached 60 hours given in 3 semesters in a total of 15 weeks and the number of trainees has reached 34 faculty members, and the number of experts and trainers has reached 28 from inside and outside the university. Further, several distinguished development projects have been presented to the President of the University as well as the attendees, as one of the program graduation requirements depends on applying the acquired skills and knowledge to provide contributions and initiatives that add value to the participating individuals, the university, and the society, considering the integrated view and future depth in achieving the Kingdom’s 2030 vision.

She added that the program includes several topics: leadership, strategic planning, leadership with kindness, motivation and empowerment, emotional intelligence, and advanced skills of communication, decision-making, conflict management, negotiation, creative leadership, and transformational leadership. She also noted that the center looks forward to work with all the employees of university and take on major roles, it also looks to work on innovation and continuousness through the provided programs for the center to be in progress.

While Dr. Dalal Al Shanqeeti, Head of the Project Evaluation Committee, stated that the committee was very pleased about the participants’ ability to work collectively and to find innovative solutions to the problems that were discussed in the case study. Finally, the outputs were reassuring and showed the great progress of the participants, which varied in many fields, including scientific research, investment, and others.