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Catering to both a local pool of self-driven professionals and local corporations alike, Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) Executive Education Center (EEC) is adopting a number of courses that seek to advance Qatar’s continuing education sector with a growing range of executive trainings to be launched in Fall 2018 through Spring 2019. The upcoming range of courses explore the following subjects: executive leadership; policy leadership and law; basic training for corporate secretaries; creativity and innovation accelerator training; transformational leadership and innovation training; information and records management in public service and private corporations; digital forensics; cybersecurity; and food security.
EEC delivers training courses that are designed to address the specific needs of their partner organizations and business clients. More recently, EEC has worked with the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF) Board Management Office and added another recent highlight to its growing list of professional offerings – the Board Secretary Basics training.
Speaking on the learning objectives of the specially-tailored course, Rodolphe Boughaba, executive director of EEC, said: “The program structure was designed to target professional development and equip practicing and prospective secretaries with all required tools for managing their board or committee. An effective board secretary is ultimately vital as the custodian of an organization’s accurate documentation records, which in turn translates into bigger questions of confidentiality and compliance. This is why we made sure to cover a full range of topics from compliance issues to common concerns and practices the participants can expect to face in their professional lives. This high-level program sets the stage for subsequent programs with detailed focus on each of the covered topics.”
Owing to its successful pilot round, EEC is now planning to re-launch the course in 2019, making it available to self-driven individuals as well as local businesses and organizations that are interested in an exclusive course delivery for their employees.
The upcoming courses come against the backdrop of EEC’s successful conclusion of its recent executive training program, held in partnership with Texas A&M University in Qatar (TAMUQ), in Spring 2018. During this time, EEC and TAMUQ had opened an intensive, four-module course on Fundamentals of Cybersecurity to public registration. The program allowed 38 participants to delve into all core modules in-depth: Open Source Intelligence in Cyberspace; Applied Cryptography and Data Privacy; Penetration Testing and Forensics; and Mobile and Wireless Security. Successful completion of all four modules led to the award of a professional certificate, jointly issued by the two academic institutions.
Describing the objectives of the collaborative training program, Rodolphe Boughaba explained: “In recent years, cybersecurity has gained traction as a key academic discipline due to its real-life applicability. EEC’s partner institution TAMUQ has long realized the implications of cybersecurity to the country’s political and socio-economic stability, having led a similar course on the topic for Qatar Armed Forces in February of this year.”
Beyond national security implications, cybersecurity’s growing economic importance as a field is evidenced by the gradual shift in corporate asset structures. With a global emphasis towards digitalization, a trend that is also followed by Qatar, intellectual property (IP) and other intangibles on average now make up a company’s majority volume. As a result, Qatar’s market economics are projected to increasingly depend on current intellectual, educational, and financial investments in cybersecurity.
Since its conception, EEC has managed to assemble a pool of world-class educators and create a list of unique learning programs that fit within the specific requirements of Qatar’s business world. Additionally, EEC’s institutional mandate constitutes tailor-made courses that address topics that are relevant to Qatar’s industries, economy, and policies.