The Erasmus+-funded Gas and Oil Processing: A European Lebanese Cooperation (GOPELC) project’s “Final Road Show” took place on Monday, October 8, 2018, in the Administration Building at the Lebanese University campus.
The project’s objective was to design and implement a master’s degree curriculum in Gas and Oil Processing with different upstream and downstream tracks. This new curriculum is the result of collaboration between different project partners:
- Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) ;
- Uni versitatea Petrol Si Gaze Ploiesti (UPG, Romania);
- Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan (KTH, Sweden);
- Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Mines De Saint-Etienne (EMSE, France) ;
- Lebanese University;
- University of Balamand (UOB);
- Beirut Arab University (BAU); abd
- General Directorate for Higher Education, Ministry of Higher Education.
Chairperson of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NDU Dr. Najib Metni and Dr. Johnny Fares both represented the University during the Final Road Show. NDUer Zakhia Abi Raad gave a presentation that touched on his experiences, during an internship in Romania in July 2018.
NDU was an active member in the project with seven faculty members attending workshops and seminars in Romania, France, and Sweden. In addition, five students were given internship opportunities to serve in different oil and gas companies in Romania over the course of two summers (2017 and 2018).
The University purchased supplementary equipment to upgrade its Chemical Engineering Laboratories, in order to meet the needs of the new master’s program, which was approved by the University Council of Deans (COD). Implementation of the M.S. in Chemical Engineering will begin shortly.
The new master’s program within the scope of the GOPELC project provides qualified professional resources capable of sustaining the development of the oil and gas industry and managing it locally and externally. Students enrolled in the new program learn new and advanced tools for gas and oil treatment and environmental sustainability. For this purpose, and under the GOPELC framework, five workshops and two online courses were organized to train trainers and transfer the accumulated skills and experience of European partners in the field of oil and gas treatment for Lebanese faculty members.
Thirty faculty members of EU-partner universities participated in the training courses for the preparation of materials and workshops. Fifty-five faculty members from four Lebanese partner universities were trained through workshops and seminars via the Internet. Twenty-eight students enrolled in the new program conducted a training period at EU-partner universities and in oil and gas plants for a total of 32 months.