Public Affairs

AUK Director of the Center for Gulf Studies Conducts Short Course at Sheikh Saud Nasser Al-Sabah Kuwait Diplomatic Institute

10th Feb 2021 | by the Department of PR & Marketing

AUK director of the Center for Gulf Studies, Dr. Shareefa Al-Adwani offered a short course titled Kuwait Foreign Policy at the Sheikh Saud Nasser Al-Sabah Kuwait Diplomatic Institute. The course was at the invitation of His Excellency Ambassador Abdulaziz Al-Sharekh, director general of the Kuwait Diplomatic Institute. 

The one-week distance-learning course involved eight lectures, a review, and an exam. Among the students in the class were 39 diplomat students—including 7 AUK alumni.

The following is an interview with Dr. Shareefa about her experience teaching the course:

1) What was the course objective?
The main course objective is for the participants to understand, analyze, and evaluate Kuwait’s international tools, strategies, and policies within the dynamic and interactive globalized environment over time.  

2) What areas were covered in the course and how was it modified to fit the needs of Kuwait Diplomatic Institute?
Similar to the undergraduate upper-level course that I teach at AUK, several key areas were addressed in the course, including Kuwait’s security threats, trade, alliances, organizational memberships, and diplomatic strategies and tools. However, there were several adjustments made to the course for the diplomat-scholars, such as condensing the material to fit within a week, presenting the material through historical, pragmatic, and diplomatic lenses, and adjusting the material for a post-graduate level audience.

3) Were there particular criteria for the selection of the participants attending the course?
The participants are the diplomat trainees selected through an application, examination, and interview process by the Kuwait Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA).

4) How will the course affect the participants’ future and career?
This course is a single course among many that the diplomat trainees receive at the KDI. The training duration is several months long after which the diplomat trainees will be assigned to various offices within the Kuwait Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Within any of those offices, it is critical for all members of MoFA to be experts on Kuwait’s foreign policy. Each and every member of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs must be well-versed on their own country’s foreign policies.

5) How was your experience in conducting the course with KDI?
The diplomat trainees are some of our best and brightest post-graduate youths in Kuwait. They are passionate and pragmatic about Kuwait’s foreign policy, and would engage in high-level discussions during the course’s sessions. The experience of teaching the course and discussing concepts, approaches, and ideas was very exciting and I enjoyed the shared discourse throughout the course’s sessions.  

The following AUK alumni partook in this course:
 

ALUMNI	DEGREE	GRADUATION YEAR
Mawada Al-Mansour	Bachelor of Arts in International Relations	Class of 2018
Fatma Al Mezyad	Bachelor of Arts in International Relations	Class of 2019
Ali Al-Khuraibet	Bachelor of Arts in International Relations	Class of 2019
Khalid Al-Sabah	Bachelor of Arts in International Relations	Class of 2019
Razan AlDehani	Bachelor of Arts in International Relations	Class of 2019
Omar Al-Luqman	Bachelor of Arts in International Relations	Class of 2019
Reem Al-Sharhan	Bachelor of Arts in International Relations	Class of 2018