Along with six other candidates from different universities and educational institutions in Iraq, Dr. Saffeen N. Arif, an instructor at the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Koya University, was selected to take part in the ten-week Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program for Iraq (June 29, 2014 - September 6, 2014). The host city chosen was Boston, and the host institution was the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston), one of the distinguished universities in the United States.
The activities of this program fell in two parts: academic and cultural. The academic part of this non-degree Fulbright grant was designed to introduce the participants to new teaching and research methods, observe classes, attend seminars and workshops, and develop long-term relationships with American faculty members. A central goal of the program was to refine the candidates' educational, scholarly, and professional skills. Basically, the cultural side of this Fulbright program was to introduce the Iraqi scholars, who were all university academic members, to the culture and history of their host city by means of arranging visits and field trips to many cultural sites and inviting the participants to attend various cultural events.
Koya University is escalating its presence in the global academic arena. In the latest Webometics ranking of 2014 Koya University has ranked as 20th best university in Iraq and 12096 globally. This is a remarkable achievement by a young and dynamic university in Middle East.
