President of the University of Jordan, Professor Nathir Obeidat
The University of Jordan, the name, the history, the achievement and the conscience; it is also the university of the future and the hopes of the people. The university will continue to carry the eternal Hashemite message of a prosperous and developed Jordan, to remain an inexhaustible source of knowledge and competence, and a high and unbreakable Jordanian and Hashemite banner.
This requires the university to establish a real partnership with the institutions of the community it serves. Through this partnership, the university senses people's changing needs. That is through consultation and cooperation with the various institutions of society so that the university provides the nation with a generation capable of advancing its institutions and bringing our country to a better status among nations. We stress that this intertwining with the nation's institutions should not affect the university's independence, privacy, and preservation of its glorious legacy.
The time has come for the University of Jordan to employ its capabilities to achieve new visions through further partnership with the university's students and faculty members, and to create a cross-disciplinary interaction with the university's schools and centers. We hope that the university can also provide a suitable and mature environment for dialogue among the students themselves, individuals and groups, which would lead to the consolidation and development of the values of love, justice and equality and to avoid animosity and discord.
The university's distinguished academic reputation, and its distinct regional and global status, necessitates that the University should reconsider its educational programs and find programs that are more diversified, effective and influential. These programs should meet the needs of society and keep pace with the development that the world is witnessing. This will be reflected positively not only on the educational process and its outcomes, but will also go beyond that to bring scientific research to a level at which the University of Jordan contributes by writing new chapters containing scientific answers to various issues that humanity is still searching for answers to.
The objectives of the University of Jordan must reflect its name; and its vision, goals and mission must be clear. These goals are achieved when our university is strong with our unity, strong with the confidence of the university’s partners, and strong with the university's ability to achieve a better relationship with the various institutions of the country. This, in turn, makes the university able to provide our society with what it aspires to, in an era of rapid and unprecedented geopolitical and technological changes.
In order to achieve these goals, the University of Jordan has the ambition to expand to achieve the development mentioned above. In addition, the university has the ambition to respond to the requirements of the current stage and the questions of society, especially as we are still experiencing the repercussions of the Corona virus pandemic. Thus, it has become evident to us that we need to face the current and future repercussions of this epidemic by enhancing academic and research interest in public health, which can be achieved through the establishment of educational programs concerned with population, the elderly, climate change, water and mental health of the community; and programs dealing with epidemics in particular. Therefore, it is necessary that these programs be localized at a school with professors and experts from the various schools of the university.
In addition, societal changes and developments have shown that there is a need for the University of Jordan Hospital to play the role expected of it, to perform tasks and functions that focus on specializations concerned with the effective treatment of emergency cases that require rapid intervention, such as fractures and acute heart, lung and cerebral clots; and to take more care of its infrastructure to achieve its mission by providing an outstanding health service.
The university is required, immediately and without delay, to achieve great and tangible results for all, based on thoughtful plans, away from those scattered results, which do not take into account the needs of people and the needs of students. When the university succeeds in achieving the foregoing, students from Jordan and abroad will find the University of Jordan the right place to gain the knowledge and skills they need for their future scientific and practical development, in light of the changes anticipated, to eventually lead a better life for themselves and their communities.
We have to bring faculty members at the University of Jordan to a degree of satisfaction through which they see their university as a place that enables them to create opportunities for cooperation and discovery, and the ability to influence within and outside their communities; and to find the time, opportunity, and appropriate environment to create solutions that reflect their spirit, aspirations and the aspirations of their societies.
I would also like to emphasize that achieving our ambitions can only be accomplished by empowering our educational and administrative staffs, developing them and involving them in achieving the University’s visions and goals. It is also necessary to bridge all the gaps in the educational environment and infrastructure of the university in order to be compatible with the aspirations, goals and noble mission adopted by the university.
It must be noted here that the University of Jordan must focus on the system of values and principles that the teaching and administrative staff must possess, and that this should be reflected in the learning outcomes and program outcomes of the various programs, including the professional and applied ones. The university stresses that it is concerned with consolidating the principles of integrity, transparency, justice, equality and acceptance of the other; the university even emphasizes that diversity is the main factor in achieving a stronger and more prosperous society.
One of the major challenges facing the university is the financial funding necessary to achieve the ambitions I mentioned earlier. This requires working to enhance investment in the university's capabilities, as well as working to enhance partnership with national institutions; and to encourage a culture of donation for specific projects that the donor believes in their necessity and their positive impact on us as a university and society. We also have to strengthen our relations with the international community’s institutions concerned with providing support and expertise to our researchers and academic programs, with our continuous emphasis on the independence of the university’s decisions and their `consistency with the great message of Islam, the society’s values, and our great cultural heritage.
At a time when our university is preparing for a safe return to teaching in all its forms: face-to-face, blended, and distant, at the beginning of the next academic year, I would like to ask our dear faculty members and students for more cooperation and commitment, and that we remain united to achieve the supreme goal that we all strive towards: that the university would achieve a safe return to teaching, and achieve safety for all. I would also ask that we do everything in our power to protect ourselves, our families and our community by following the instructions for this safe return. The university will do everything in its power to secure the requirements for this return in all its forms, including face-to-face and hybrid education, and the appropriate educational and technical environment that it requires to serve the interest of the university and its partners in the local and global community.
Finally, I would like to thank the family of the University of Jordan for what they have done and what they will do for the university, wishing them and their families safety, happiness and well-being. I wish our students success and joy; and our beloved Jordan progress, strength and rectitude under the Hashemite rule, led by His Majesty King Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein; may God bless and protect him. May God protect Jordan, its people, its leader, and its faithful Crown Prince, His Highness Prince Hussein bin Abdullah II. I wish you all love; with respect and appreciation!