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AKU-Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Aga Khan University (AKU), based in Karachi, is in
the process of creating a Faculty of Arts and Sciences
(FAS).
AKU has established an international reputation for
innovation and rigour in medical, nursing and teacher
education at both undergraduate and graduate levels
and in its developmental and training work for schools,
including a very successful Master's programme. It
currently operates on 11 campuses in Pakistan, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt and the United Kingdom, and
has programmes in Syria and Afghanistan.
Early in the next decade, AKU will open a residential
Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) that will provide
a general education curriculum at both undergraduate
and graduate levels. It will develop a new breed of
leaders, in government and business, who are equipped
with critical-thinking and problem-solving capabilities,
and a global outlook.
This new campus, to be located on 1,100 acres on the
outskirts of Karachi, will offer a range of undergraduate
and graduate courses, from archeology to quantum physics,
from music to South Asian history. In the first phase,
FAS will enroll 1,500 undergraduate and 100 postgraduate
students. Undergraduates will receive an education
which encompasses the natural and social sciences,
alongside the humanities. Teaching will be student-centred
and will draw on the latest tools of information technology.
Students will begin with a broad core curriculum and
then proceed to a single or dual area of concentration
for advanced work. Special encouragement will be given
to interdisciplinary work.
A new campus in East Africa will serve as AKU'S principal
site for the region and will support existing nursing
and medical education programmes in Kenya, Tanzania
and Uganda. The campus will serve the University's
planned academic programmes in the liberal arts in
East Africa. Students from all over Africa and beyond
are expected to enroll. These developments would be
in addition to the already significant investments
in medical education planned for the Nairobi campus.
Expansion at these two new main campuses is expected
to double the student body and triple the size of the
overall physical campus.
The University is in the process of developing institutional
strategies for a number of new graduate disciplines
which will be located either in Karachi or in East
Africa. These are likely to include Architecture and
Human Settlement; Government, Civil Society and Public
Policy; Media and Communications; Leisure and Tourism;
and Education and Human Development.
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