Under the shade of the AUC Tahrir Square gardens, students from Sudan, Egypt, the United Kingdom and beyond shared proverbs in their native languages. The exercise brought together undergraduates from the Core Curriculum Global Studies course — Digital Literacies, AI Literacy and Intercultural Learning — and CASA@AUC fellows studying Translation in the Age of AI to explore sociolinguistics, translation and cross-cultural meaning in Arabic.

Niobe Tsoutsouris studies Arabic in the CASA@program, a rigorous, yearlong Arabic-language program designed for advanced Arabic learners; she called the chance to speak with peers her age incredible. “There’s no other way to learn the Arabic I should be speaking as a 22 year old,” Tsoutsouris said. 

The collaboration is part of the Tuesdays in Tahrir initiative, which supports leveraging the historic AUC Tahrir Square campus for hands-on learning experiences.

“During this intercultural encounter, students met for cross-cultural insight building around language and translation,” said Maha Bali ’01, professor of practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching and the Core Curriculum course instructor. Shereen El Ezabi is a senior instructor II in the Department of Arabic Language Instruction and teaches the CASA@AUC course. El Ezabi said the collaboration helped her students "come away with new, nuanced Arabic words and idioms to experiment with, over and above the intercultural understanding they gained and the social interaction they enjoyed."

Undergraduate students who hailed from across the Arabic-speaking world were eager to speak with CASA@AUC international fellows, whose advanced Arabic skills enriched the exchange. “I enjoyed just the very different experience of talking to someone from a whole other country and background, yet talking my native language. It was such an unfamiliar experience but in a good way,” said Global Studies student Zeina Mostafa.

Bali has taught the Digital Literacies, AI Literacy and Intercultural Learning course since 2017. Her students typically spend part of the semester interacting in English with peers from international universities. Last year, her class connected with an American university in English, “but in this case, it's reversed, since the interaction is with students who are fluent Arabic speakers,” Bali said.

In several activities, undergraduate students and CASA@AUC fellows discussed sociolinguistics, sharing cultural expressions difficult to translate into Arabic and explaining how each represents different aspects of their cultures. The activity revealed phrases that AUC student Omar Ibrahim didn’t expect to have in common with foreigners. “We found that there are proverbs in Poland and the U.S. similar to the ones we grew up hearing in Egypt. I could feel the hybridity because we were all speaking the same language even though we all came from different places,” Ibrahim said.

For student Ismail Tolba, the experience broke down his preconceived notions of Arabic. “I went in assuming a kind of natural ownership over my own language, and I left humbled. Hearing foreigners speak Arabic at a level that surpassed my own familiarity with the classical roots of the language forced me to question an assumption I hadn’t realized I was carrying — that native speakers are automatically the most competent custodians of their tongue,” Tolba said.

Yet even for advanced learners, adapting to the accents of native Arabic speakers was a new challenge. Tsoutsouris remembers adjusting to the accent of a Sudanese student. “It was cool listening to her,” she said. “I could understand her just fine, but I had to shift my brain a little bit to stay attuned to what she was saying.” 

CASA@AUC fellow Eli Siegel-Bernstein spoke with AUC students about how they approach pursuing a liberal arts education in Egypt. “This characterized my own educational experience at Wesleyan University, which is a classic American liberal arts school,” he said.

El Ezabi also said a number of undergraduate students asked if similar advanced Arabic courses were offered on New Cairo’s campus.  

“I was very glad to see how the Egyptian and Arab undergraduate students seemed thrilled to see their own language so actively sought and so highly valued by others,” El Ezabi said. “Many expressed that this rekindled their interest in their own language which has been largely overshadowed by English, especially in their academic and professional pursuits.”

Kashlan joins the University from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she served for the past 12 years. She arrives with over 15 years of experience in advancement leadership, strategic fundraising and stakeholder engagement. “I came to AUC because the University has always been the beacon of education,” said Kashlan. “I see this as an opportunity for us to go international with the capabilities of our students and faculty.”

Most recently, Kashlan served as director of development for the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. Earlier in her career, Kashlan held advancement and development roles at Agnes Scott College. She has also worked in business development and strategic analysis in the technology, communications and consulting sectors. 

“I'm very passionate about education and the opportunities that we can create for civil society,” she said. “I'm also a firm believer that education is the greatest equalizer in life, and so universities should be the place where thought capital is expressed. Every day, in ways both seen and unseen, people are using critical thinking to move us closer to solving the challenges we face as a world.”

As vice president for institutional advancement and alumni relations, Kashlan will lead University-wide strategies on advancement, fundraising and alumni engagement. In the short term, she plans to focus on building AUC’s legacy of academic excellence, lifelong learning and civic engagement.

“All four of these pillars are crucial to the development of our students and to the betterment of our community and surroundings. We want our alumni to come and say, ‘I graduated from this institution and it continues to make change in the world.’” 

In the long term, Kashlan plans to continue to empower faculty to innovate, foster a healthy University environment for students and continue existing collaborations to steer AUC into the future. She will work closely with academic and administrative University leaders to strengthen AUC’s culture of philanthropy, deepen relationships with stakeholders, and expand the University’s global donor and alumni networks. 

“I want to see AUC keep rocking,” she affirmed. “It's the epicenter of historical changes and huge innovations, all tied together by the sense of commitment to social equity and community. This University is the beacon for the region, and the fact that it has maintained its stability through all the geopolitical unrest is a testament to how dedicated everyone is to making sure that AUC thrives.”

More about Farah Kashlan:

What’s something people don’t know about you?

Born in Lebanon and raised in the American South, I happily blend both cultures and take the best of both. I’m in the stage of completing my PhD in healthcare technology policy from Georgia Institute of Technology and I’m also a classically trained violinist.

What do you do in your free time?

I come from a big family. I love to travel; I have family all over the world. I love being outdoors and also love fishing — just don’t ask me to put the worm on the hook. 

Now that I’m in Egypt, I’m getting much more into museums, movies and the art scene. I’m a huge fan of Umm Kulthum and Mohamed Abdel Wahab. That’s such a passion of mine. Plus, we have these padel courts and I’m looking to get into racquet sports. 

What’s your favorite memory from when you were a student?  

In my freshman year of college, I was a biology major. I remember going into my arts class, and for the first time in my life, I had a D on something that I had designed. 

I thought to myself, “Surely I could go and convince this teacher that I deserved a better grade,” and it was humbling because it taught me this idea that there is such a thing as perspective. In the world of sciences, you have the rhetoric, you have the formula, you have all these things that give you an outline or structure for what you need.

It was very humbling because in the conversation with a teacher, I learned that there are actually more ways than one to get to a solution. That conversation helped me realize, even in science and math, that there isn’t just one straight path to the answer. And that's kind of how life is. There's no one way to get somewhere.

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

Being a mother to a very bright young lady. To be able to say I poured into a life is probably my proudest accomplishment. You can have all these degrees and accolades, but family comes first. Being born into a wonderful family and helping create another one is my most prideful moment.

If there is one world issue you could solve, what would it be and why?

I would really like to end wars. You don’t choose where you’re born or what family you’re born into, but things that are manmade are absolutely destructive.

Any advice to a current student at AUC?

Do the hard things first. Try and try and try. College is the only time in your life when you can make mistakes and fail and be absolutely forgiven and never judged. And this is where you learn to build success — through trial and error.