3.1 Adopting the Model of the Research University with Tenure

3.1.1 PhD Programs

It is essential that the leading Lebanese universities and institutions of higher learning commit to quickly evolve into doctoral-granting graduate institutions, and scientific research would become a primary component of their mission, a component that should be on equal footing with teaching.

3.1.2 Tenure and Promotion

In order to effect this transition and attract world-class scientific talent, universities must adopt the tenure system, whereby professors and researchers are accorded the opportunity to exercise their right for academic freedom and are granted long-term employment security after demonstrating to their peers their ability to continue making significant scholarly contributions. It is also essential that promotion and tenure be directly linked to accomplishments and excellence in research, and not only to teaching, and that salaries be commensurate with those in the corporate sector. In granting tenure and promotions, concrete metrics for assessing the volume, importance and impact of the research output of each researcher should be used. Furthermore, tenure and other promotions, as well as appointments of professors, researchers, deans and even presidents of universities should be conducted through revolving promotion or search committees consisting of peers and not government officials.

Tenure is a particularly misunderstood concept in Lebanese society, and many business leaders, even those few who actively contribute to the leading universities and serve on their board of trustees, view tenure with suspicion and consider it a welfare type of security that may instill complacency. This unfortunate belief stems from a well-founded distrust of assured security, a distrust that is a justifiable tenet in the business world. It is the responsibility of university officials and faculty representatives to explain to them the necessity of tenure in the academic world, the thoroughness and rigor of the tenure review process, and the facts that 1) there is not a single leading research institution in the world that does not offer tenure; 2) practically every leading scientist in the world (including practically all Nobel prize winners) is tenured or becomes tenured; 3) tenure is the main means of attracting and retaining top scientific talent; 4) it is a statistical fact, established by many studies, that on the average the production and contributions of scientists increase significantly after tenure; 5) tenure instills in the tenured scientist a feeling of being invested in the evolution of the employing institution and a commitment to its mission; 6) without a properly adapted tenure system even the AUB, LAU, USJ, NDU and UoB will never be counted among the leading universities of the world, nor can they be considered truly research universities by world standards, and, therefore, will continue to fall short of attracting world-class scientific talent, with the exception of the very few brilliant scientists who have chosen to return to Lebanon for family and personal reasons, or driven by a pure and commendable altruism to contribute to research and education in their homeland.

3.1.3 Administrative Infrastructure for Research

Each university that offers programs in science and engineering must have the required research infrastructure, including an office of grants and contracts, financial officers, legal advisors for registration of patents and intellectual property (which can generate royalties that are a significant source of income for research universities), and a supportive administration that is above connections and politics, that values research excellence and academic freedom, and that provides incentives and rewards to productive faculty conducting research.

It is also critical for the major research-oriented universities to lobby the Lebanese government to establish a reasonably priced high-speed Internet service, which is essential for research and education in science and engineering.

3.2 Accreditation

A system of academic accreditation that judges and ranks universities and their undergraduate and graduate programs according to high international standards can go a long way in elevating the stature, visibility and ability of the top schools to attract international talent to their student bodies and research faculties. While the accreditation process recently initiated by the Ministry of Higher Education (mentioned in Section 2.7) is commendable, well-established European or American accreditation boards should also be used to insure that international standards are impartially applied.

3.3. Increased Funding for Research and Education in Science and Engineering

The most obvious and most critical need is a substantial increase in governmental funding for science and engineering research projects that would be critical to allowing the retention of gifted Lebanese faculty and students in Lebanon and minimizing their exodus to America, Europe, and the Gulf States. Lebanese students must be retained long enough for them to complete their graduate studies rather than having them exit the country for a job in the Gulf or elsewhere as soon as they obtain their undergraduate degrees.

3.3.1 Funding and Competitive Grants

Greater funding from government is also required to support graduate students and Ph.D. programs, purchase equipment, build laboratories, and attract young dynamic faculty who publish in the highest-quality journals. Young Lebanese graduates are self-driven researchers who do not see research as an onerous duty. If retained in the country, they will spawn research ideas, convey enthusiasm for science or engineering, and thus engender more research funding and with it the hiring of postdoctoral fellows.

The sponsoring of scientific research and awarding of grants and contracts should not be based on internal and regional politics, ethnic and racial parity, nor demographics, but on merit-based competitions. The issuance of competitions and managing of research contracts should be entrusted to national science foundations. The Lebanese CRNS has been doing a commendable job at this despite meager budgets allocated by the government.

Proposal review committees consisting of scientific peers and experts, and not politicians or administrators, should determine the selection of competition winners. Furthermore, the establishment of government-funded research centers, national laboratories and think tanks should be a priority of national spending. According to the United Nations, until recently, no Arab country spends more than 0.3 percent of its gross national product on scientific research. By contrast, the United States spends more than 10 times that fraction. Universities, individual faculty, and political representatives should, therefore, lobby for an increase in the percentage of GDP spent on research and development. A good example that this goal can be achieved is provided by Tunisia, which more than tripled its R&D funding from 0.3% to 1% in the last 10 years.

3.3.2 The Importance of Overhead Fees

Universities and research institutions should be allowed and encouraged by the government to collect overhead fees on research contracts, a model that has proven to be critical to the success of scientific research at American universities and that has been copied by research institutions around the world. Individual researchers and faculty should not perceive such overhead fees members as a taxation burden imposed by their own institutions but as a well-proven financial incentive for their institutions to make research a priority. Overhead funds also go into improving the infrastructure of the institutions, increasing salaries across disciplines (even non-scientific ones) and providing financial headroom for various programs that benefit employees and students.

3.3.3 Other Funding Sources and Practices

The government, also, can further fuel the scientific enterprise by offering significant tax breaks and subsidies to companies, foundations and individuals that choose to sponsor scientific research; by creating a rigorous patent system that is efficient and has enforceable laws aimed at protecting intellectual rights; and by bestowing honors and awards on outstanding research scientists.

Governmental institutions, the banking sector and private foundations could collaborate or work separately to provide long-term, interest-free loans for science research, development and education projects, in the form of seed funding with the goal of having funding become self-sustaining after an "induction" period.

Research-oriented universities should give incentives to their individual faculty members to enter international research competitions, at least as collaborators with colleagues overseas, thus tapping the large research funding available through international development agencies, and research funding agencies in the US, Europe and Asia, many of which have competitions that are open to foreign participants or collaborators.

University officials, alumni and individual faculty members should use their connections through the large Lebanese Diaspora to raise funds specifically targeted for scientific research and education and to lobby foreign institutions (e.g. the National Science Foundation) to allow Lebanese scientists to enter some of their research funding competitions. In that latter direction, the ASL can play an active role.

3.4 Enhancing Collaborative Research and Improving Cooperation between Universities

Interdisciplinary collaborative research and a higher level of integration between research and education are critical for the advancement of science and engineering. Efforts should be made to facilitate the networking of local scientists with each other and with prominent scientists (particularly those in the Diaspora and among alumni), as a means of providing opportunities for collaborative research, possibly through co-mentoring of graduate students. The establishment of “visiting scientists" programs (ranging from one or more seminar presentation, to participating in courses, etc.) provides an effective mechanism for collaborative efforts in research and education.

There must be more seamless cooperation between universities. In education, such cooperation would involve developing and enforcing uniform standards for academic programs across institutions and strict guidelines for the licensing of graduates [e.g. licensed engineers]. Uniform standards would allow students taking courses at one university to receive credit at another. In research, inter-university cooperation would allow the exchanges of ideas and the sharing of equipment and laboratories, and thus precludes the need to duplicate expensive facilities.

The ideal is for each institution to have a critical mass of committed faculty carrying out collaborative, interdisciplinary research, and sharing facilities and expertise within and between universities. This goal is clearly achievable, as there is already precedence for such cooperation in the areas of telecommunications, management of water resources, and at least one joint degree program at the graduate level. Achieving this goal will require strong and stable leadership, which could be provided by enhancing the effectiveness of the current “Rabitat Al-Jamiaat fi Lubnan" or establishing a new committee charged specifically with fostering collaborations among the major research universities.

3.5 Identification of Areas of Excellence in Science and Engineering

3.5.1 Selective Excellence

The principle of selective excellence should be applied to maximize return on the limited available resources. It is important to recognize that no one university or institution can sustain excellent training and research programs in all fields of science and engineering. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on five or six of the best universities and to strengthen selectively education and research programs (and possibly establish rigorous PhD programs) in four or five fields of science and engineering within these universities. Ideally, the fields of excellence should be chosen and their supporting programs adjusted on the basis of both academic considerations and the employment opportunities available locally and regionally. The goal is to develop excellent training and research programs that are recognized as the number one choice for a given field, and to obtain the international accreditation that is critical for the success of these programs.

3.5.2 Research Priorities

The identification of specific areas of research in science and engineering that Lebanon must excel in is essential. Rather than attempting to duplicate research being carried out elsewhere, focus should be on local or regional problems with the goal of carving out niches of research topics that will be recognized as unique, groundbreaking, and, therefore, worthy of financial support. The creation of these unique areas of excellence might spur international companies to establish centers of employment within the country and thus alleviate the exodus of qualified personnel. Additionally, translational research, having the potential to address the most pressing societal needs, should be encouraged.

Given the limited resources of even the wealthiest nations, priorities for funding research should be established and continuously updated. For instance, in many research problems in the applied sciences that are of direct interest to industry, the government should give only seed funding to research institutions, then judge their performance by their ability to use their initial results to secure industrial funding and transfer technology to industry. There are, however, a number of research problems that are critical to the common good and that are not profitable enough to attract the attention of the industrial sector. Such research areas should receive high funding priorities by the government, private foundations and philanthropists.

The limitations on resources imposed by the size of the country cannot be seen as an obstacle or excuse for inaction. For example, Morocco has made progress by choosing solar energy and biomaterials as areas of focus. There is no reason why Lebanon cannot do the same taking into consideration the expected significant transformation in the Lebanese economy with the discovery of offshore gas fields. In engineering, areas of national priority might be in the energy sector addressing the forthcoming energy mix of the country, including both natural gas resources and green energy technologies such as hydroelectric power, and solar energy, while still promoting mitigation of climate change, environmental protection, and power distribution. In the life sciences, there are ample opportunities for unique groundbreaking research to be conducted in Lebanon. One example is in the field of genetics, in which the small size of the country and the tightly-knit communities allow for multi-generational sampling and rigorous analysis of diseases that are more common in Lebanon or surrounding countries than in other regions of the world. Another example is in the area of describing and preserving biodiversity, which has traditionally received little attention in Lebanon, but has tremendous potential both from a basic and applied perspective.

The ASL presents its own top-10 list of research priority areas for Lebanon in Section 4 of this report.

3.6 Improving Science Education and Instilling a Culture of Science in the Lebanese Population

Scientists, engineers, educators, officials, political and religious leaders and the media must strive to enhance the public’s appreciation of science and engineering. They must convey the potential that research has to address pressing societal issues and the positive impact it can have on people’s lives. In turn, this awareness will influence how supportive the government and university administrations are towards research.

3.6.1 Popularization of Science

For science and engineering to thrive, a culture of science must be instilled in the population from a young age. It is important to counter the common misconceptions regarding the excellence of science education and to lobby for a nation-wide review and reform of the current system of science education at the pre-university level in Lebanon.

Several activities would help jump-start science education in elementary and high schools. For example, universities could establish public service programs through which their science students would spend time away from campus, visiting primary schools (especially in underprivileged areas) and helping local teachers to practice an "inquiry-based science education" (IBSE), where children learn science by practicing it. (The ASL, a member of the IAP, would be willing to help by linking such programs to the IAP program on science education of children.)

Another possibility is to launch “laboratories on wheels" similar to Craig Venter’s “DNA Bus". Such mobile laboratories would bring to underprivileged schools one or two instructors recruited from university science students who would provide children and their teachers with hands-on experiences in a variety of science fields. Efforts should also be made to enhance the general public’s awareness and understanding of science and technology outside the classroom. A step in this direction is to increase access to computers, e.g. by equipping each underprivileged child with a laptop. Particularly suited for this effort is the “One Laptop Per Child" program , which provides “a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning".

A high-speed Internet network with affordable subscriptions for private homes and free access to students in public schools even in the most remote villages should be a national priority, much like the road network connecting Lebanese villages was a national priority in the 1950’s. Although significant leaps have occurred by which Internet speed has been increased 10 fold, it is still expensive and below level expected when compared to other countries in the region. This is not only impeding the scientific literacy of the population, but also handicapping Lebanon’s otherwise exemplary hospitality industry from having its facilities as viable locales for scientific conferences and meetings, as Internet connections in Lebanese hotels are among the slowest and most expensive in the world. In addition, this undermines the important role of high performance computing, big data and e-infrastructure in the information economy, e-health, and opportunities in the oil and gas sector in Lebanon and the wider region.

Another effective approach for the popularization of science is to engage the public in activities that are both informative and entertaining. The establishment of an educational center, such as a museum of natural history, a planetarium, or an “Exploratorium," would help realize a vision of “Science For All." To make science more understandable and demonstrate how science is experienced in everyday life, such a center would mount attractive exhibitions, provide simple hands-on science activities directed at a wide range of age groups (especially the young), and present a history of science that highlights the contributions of Lebanese and Arab scientists in the present and back to the golden age of the Islamic world. An additional benefit of such a center would be to augment the training of undergraduate and graduate students in the sciences by recruiting them to participate in center activities and to convey the excitement of science to the general public.

3.6.2 Science and Culture

On the cultural level, there is much that can be done by the media to enhance the image of the scientist and to show that a career in the sciences can be rewarding. Today, fewer than one in 20 Lebanese university students pursue disciplines in the pure sciences, as the only opportunity after graduation for science majors is teaching in elementary or secondary schools. The Lebanese media, especially television, not unlike their counterparts in the US, are mostly focused on the entertainment industry and its celebrities. Comparatively, few people in Lebanon and the Arab world know the names of prominent Arab scientists, who would be inspiring role models for young aspiring scientists but who remain practically unknown in Lebanon despite their international prominence. The fledgling science journalism movement in Lebanon has great potential, but it is not commercially viable on its own. A very modest investment would enable it to prosper, leveraging the low cost of electronic news outlets such as websites and social media.

3.6.3 Science and Religion

Religion plays a far more important role in Lebanese society than it does in most Western and Eastern countries, which is not surprising since three of the world's greatest religions originated from the region. The prominence of religion could be made an asset for the promulgation of scientific values and not seen as an inherent impediment, especially since all three of these religions, when free from the aberration of fundamentalism, put great value on learning, inquiry and independent thinking.

3.6.4 The Lingua Franca of Science

We must also learn a lesson from the failed experiment of the Arabization of scientific teaching in some Arab countries, where students were kept from learning science in English and became severely handicapped in engaging in the inherently international discourse of science. The innocuous fact that, since the middle of the 20th century, English has become the lingua francaof science in the world should not be interpreted as cultural bias. (Today, Chinese applicants to graduate schools in the US often score higher on English comprehension tests than native Americans.) Most of the leading scientific journals in the West and East are written in English. Lebanese youth should become well versed in English, especially in the context of the sciences, starting at an early age. French-speaking universities, aspiring to train scientists and engineers who would interact with their counterparts globally, should require their science students to be proficient in expressing scientific ideas in written English, much like research universities do in France. (In that context, the USJ is setting a good example by requiring English proficiency from its graduates.)

3.6.5 The Role of National Academies

Another component of the formula that has proved successful in continuously correcting the path of scientific progress and enhancing the standing of science in the West, Russia and the Far East, is the role played by the national science academies. Their charters perform an invaluable public service by bringing together committees of distinguished experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor. These experts serve pro bono to address critical national issues and give advice to the government and the public on research priorities. The Lebanese Academy of Sciences is striving to play this role.

ASL News (October 29-31, 2008): First Meetings of the ASL Executive Committee in Beirut