Innovative Experiential College

In the context of ambitious, multi-year planning work undertaken in the UAE education ecosystem and knowledge economy, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi will support the development, accreditation, and launch of a post-secondary college granting, initially, an Associate Degree of Arts and Sciences imbued with the philosophy and practice of experiential learning.   

The College has established as its vision the cultivation of future generations of ambitious, responsible, empathetic, and community oriented leaders through post-secondary education guided by three pillars:  

• Innovative curriculum: a course of study in applied liberal arts and sciences designed to fuse world class content and standards with a UAE perspective on knowledge acquisition taught by world-leading instructors in a model that balances core required courses and student choice
• Community-building cultural practices: strengthening identity through shared cultural practices and responsibility for individual and collective learning outcomes
• Service-oriented labor: required routines of daily responsibilities and the manual labor necessary for collective living in the College to foster self-reliance, accountability to the community, and respect for place

Sponsors of this initiative have developed detailed initial plans and projections and have begun to develop the curriculum. The current timeline for the College calls for it to secure full accreditation and matriculate its first cohort of students in the fall of 2025. The Board anticipates welcoming the College’s inaugural President in the first half of 2024 – by which time it will have established the name and location of the College and will have appointed the majority of its Board.

Mission and Values:

Two years of comprehensive analysis conducted by a cross-disciplinary group of subject-matter experts and national leaders at the highest levels of government has developed a framework for education transformation in the UAE. The goal is to pioneer a new type of college that combines academic excellence with experiential learning, Emirati values, and character-building to cultivate well-rounded future leaders. Offering a curriculum that is holistic, immersive, and community-oriented, the College is a centerpiece of this transformation program.

The visioning exercise that has brought the sponsors of this program to the point of creating the organizational model, governance structure, financial plan, and launch plan for the College crystalizes a range of principles that the College will actualize:

• Tradition-embedded experiential learning: hands-on learning that integrates cultural heritage, practical life skills, social values, and language
• Holistic education: fostering the student’s full human development within daily life
• Integrated, community-based learning: interconnected learning environments that extend beyond the traditional classroom, seamlessly blending curricular and co-curricular elements
• Immersive and practical learning: hands-on, practical learning tied to real-world skills and a comprehensive approach to self-sufficiency and sustainability
• Immersive intercultural learning: Values firsthand experiences and cultural immersion as potent tools for understanding foreign cultures, learning languages, and broadening worldviews.

At this still-early point of development, it is anticipated that the College’s curriculum will traverse the liberal arts and sciences with strategic attention to disciplines foundational to math and sciences while also sustaining a core engagement with the arts, humanities, and social sciences that will enable students to engage and advance national and regional heritage in a global context.

As the College establishes itself, students will benefit from an expanding array of matriculation arrangements that will enable them to advance their education at colleges and universities around the world, leveraging their distinctive two-year experience at the College to take full advantage of bachelors and post-graduate programs elsewhere.

The College will launch with a significant multi-year funding commitment from its sponsors.  The location, which will be identified within the next few months, will be a desert, mountain, or coastal site within a two-three hours’ drive from Abu Dhabi.

Governance 

The College will be an educational institution formed and supported by the government of Abu Dhabi. Its governing board will hold ultimate responsibility for the College’s compliance with the requirements of its accreditor and its success relative to the expectations of its sponsor. The President of the College serves ex officio on the Board.