Ahmed Baghdady

EdD - Distance Learning

Email: amib1@le.ac.uk

Research Topic

What are the leadership challenges that Western university branch campus leaders in Qatar face?

Research Summary

The growth and development of global higher education is associated with some leadership challenges that come as a result of crossing borders and operating in new environments. Qatar has established branch campuses of leading Western universities to provide quality higher education to its citizens locally and help the country build a knowledge economy. Campus leaders, usually from the home university, are faced with challenges related to operating in a new cultural context.

Two campuses were recently closed in a neighbouring country and recent literature indicates that campuses in Qatar are facing some resistance from the society for cultural reasons. This study will address this problem by attempting to answer these questions: 1) what challenges, if any, does the cultural context impose on branch campus leaders in Qatar?; 2) how are the campus leaders dealing with these challenges; and 3) what else can they do to better address these challenges? Lessons learned from this study might be useful for branch campus leaders and host country officials who are currently involved in or are contemplating branch campus agreements.

Research Supervisor

Dr Alison Taysum

Research Institutes, Centres and/or Research Clusters Memberships

None

Publications

None so far

Conferences

• Baghdady, A. (2011), Leadership at university branch campuses in Qatar: challenges and the way forward, University of Leicester Annual Postgraduate Student Conference 2011, July 2011, University of Leicester, UK
• Baghdady, A. (2011), Leadership challenges in Middle East’s university branch campuses, First QS Middle East and Africa Professional Leaders in Education (QS MAPLE) 2011, May 2011, Dubai, UAE
• Baghdady, A. (2011), Leadership challenges in Middle East’s university branch campuses, Gulf Comparative Education Society (GCES) Annual Symposium, 2011, March 2011, Ras Al-Khaima, UAE
• Baghdady, A. (2010), How effective are the student recruitment methods used by Qatar’s Education City universities? Qatar Foundation First Annual Research Froum, 2010, Dec. 2010, Doha, Qatar

Additional Information:

I am an English language instructor by training. Early in my career, I taught EFL/ESL at various adult education programmes and institutions. Later I moved to programme administration and was responsible for large scale adult EFL programmes in Egypt. In 2005, I moved to Qatar where I was a Program Manager responsible for reforming and leading a government scholarship programme. I am currently a Policy Analyst with a US research and policy analysis institution in Qatar. I work on areas related to education reform, strategic planning and restructuring, accreditation systems, educational vouchers programmes, program assessment, and leadership and human resources development in higher education. I completed my MA in Educational Leadership at the University of Leicester in 2009 and am currently working towards the Doctor of Education (EdD) degree in Educational Leadership.