The Ugly and True Face of AUM

#American_University_of_the_Middle_East  #AUM is a good project on paper, well why would not a university project aiming for learning, education, and development be a good project. However, in reality AUM in #Kuwait is a different story. It is a place where you, as an employee, will be frustrated, stressed, and not satisfied on a daily basis. You will end up, as many of the current academic staff, looking for jobs everyday elsewhere or even thinking to resign without a backup plan just to end this unpleasant experience.

The main problem is that AUM is run and managed by #Mohaned #Hassanin. Unfortunately Dr. Hassanin has all the characteristics of a bad manager: He has an extremely abrasive communication style. Employees are stressed out at some point; however he is not capable of communicating a problem or concern without berating or yelling. He has poor planning skills, firing, replacing and substituting staff at the last moment, without taking into account the needs of the students. He changes curriculum, syllabus, course offerings and class sections in the way he wants and always at the last moment.

Unfortunately, he cannot provide constructive criticism. We, as employees have a right to expect that line managers will be able to offer some mentoring and direction. However more than one member of the staff who were fired in the last couple of months have claimed he had no problem telling them that they are doing something wrong, but could not provide any insights regarding how to improve. Some other fired employees were dismissed without explanations.

Dr. Hassanin is unfortunately an arrogant character who believes to know everything and can do no wrong. It is also recently that he uses fear tactics as if he is intimidated or unsure about how to get results without relying on threats or other fear-mongering.

Another problem is that Dr. Hassanin surrounded himself and selected inexperienced and non-credible people, especially in high positions at the university, who only obey him. As we mentioned before, people who dare to express different opinions are quickly dismissed or degraded. Perhaps this behavior was acceptable a couple of decades ago in developing countries, but it cannot be tolerated in the academic world of today and when all the rest of the staff is working to take the university to the research and academic standards of developed countries. The university has talented and smart people within their students and staff in #Kuwait; however the poor management of Dr. Hassanin does not allow exploiting their potential. In short, he runs a university as if a corporation or industry business.

Now, I would like to discuss about the Dean of the College of Business. Her name is #Sabine #Hoffmann. It is worth to mention that before being appointed as the Dean, she was perceived as an administrative assistant who used to spend considerable amount of time shopping on-line. However I have to admit that I don’t have proof for this point. Nevertheless, I invite the readers to look at her profile on Linkedin and decide if she is qualified to be a Dean or not at a university affiliated with one of the best universities in the USA, I am referring to the claimed affiliation with #Purdue University. From my experience, Miss Sabine finds difficulty in answering simple academic matters and has little knowledge of curriculum, courses, and management on this senior and critical role as a Dean.

The attitude of the people mentioned above has cost so far around 10 staff members being fired or resigned only in the Fall Semester 2013. Therefore, at the moment, the school is seriously understaffed and are having very serious recruitment issues because of their bad reputation. No planning, no knowledge, no experience, no transparency – only the words of Dr. Hassanin prevail at AUM.

In the next couple of post, I will give more specific details on how the reputation of the university and the quality of the education given to the students is being severely affected by the unprofessional and unhealthy behavior of the people mentioned before who are unlikely to keep highly qualified employees for long and to take the university to the educational standards of Europe and developed countries.

So if you are planning to apply for a vacancy at AUM - Do not come, this is an honest opinion. Save yourself from all this humiliation, stress, and miserable life.

Your comments for this post are highly appreciated.

Please let me know if you have any specific questions regarding this university. I would gladly answer them.