Assistant Professor of Management and Marketing, Colleen Foster, now in her 6th year at AUAF, is dedicating her efforts to advancing AUAF as a regional leader in entrepreneurship. Using the re-definition of entrepreneurship, “the mindset of identifying or creating an opportunity, marshaling the resources, and providing leadership”, Foster applied academic innovations into business curricula. AUAF’s “NewCo Awards” and “Entrepreneurial Pitch” contest are now a highlight of the Business Dept. Drawing on her own experience at the global 3M Corporation, she is regularly engaging in outreach efforts to strengthen entrepreneurship across Afghanistan, including the first /AUAF-Kandahar Workshop and the 2019 Higher Education/University Symposium on Entrepreneurship. Foster explains that “These activities reinforce AUAF’s continuing role as a center of "thought leadership" on entrepreneurship.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Asadullah Jawid recently had a particularly timely paper published in the Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy. Publication in such prestigious peer-reviewed international journals is one of the hallmarks of AUAF’s commitment to scholarly research. Originally from a remote village in Ghazni province, Professor Jawid first joined AUAF’s STM Department in 2012, and returned to us in 2019. He has a Bachelor degree in Mathematics from Kabul University. He won DAAD scholarships to pursue graduate studies, earning his Masters in Applied Mathematics at Bonn University in Germany, and in 2015 began his PhD at the University of Kiel. His paper addresses a key developmental issue in rural Afghanistan: farmers’ adaptation to climate change and the impact of external interventions. In the classroom, he urges students to understand the value of the opportunity they have at AUAF.

Dr. Victoria Fontan opened the Fall 2019 semester with three important pieces of advice for AUAF incoming students, stemming from her own student experience at the University of Limerick: 1) Take responsibility for your own learning, 2) Make the most of your time at AUAF and 3) Embrace diversity. As Dean of Faculty, Associate Provost and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at AUAF, Dr. Fontan draws upon a wealth of experience that she is regularly sharing across AUAF and beyond. She is the author of three books, and numerous peer-reviewed publications and commentaries. Her key research areas include Critical Terrorism Studies, Decolonial Peace Studies, and Transformative Education (Co-Creation of knowledge within classrooms). Dr. Fontan’s action research is also being featured in “Zero Impunity” (https://zeroimpunity.com), a trans-media project and documentary aiming to end impunity for sexual violence in conflict and peace. The film is currently featured in the official selection of several key film festivals around the globe. Later in September, she will join with the US Institute of Peace to convene a Peace Summit at AUAF, where students from multiple Afghan universities will shape a victims-centered peace framework for Afghanistan.

Many AUAF graduates go on to become CEOs of their own companies, but AUAF ITCS major, Shahzada Masood Asir, is already there. He is the CEO of MySkyPower®️ that provides professional IT and electronic services, and has already published eight successful software programs on softpedia.com. He comes to AUAF from Omid High School and quickly settled into the IT department where he is a work-study student helping with robotics and electronic technology. Masood also took first place in AUAF’s IT Poster Day this spring with his “Writing Assistant” project. He has developed several games, some already commercially available, and is at work on his latest effort, Afghan Commandos Game. Masood is also a student volunteer designing for TEDxAUAF. We look forward to seeing what this talented entrepreneur develops next.

Shougofa Alikozay is one of the many examples of our multitalented AUAF students. On campus, Shougofa is business major with dual concentrations in marketing and finance. But at home, she is a professional artist, producing stunning illuminations, calligraphy and portraits. Some of her photography of Afghan street children was on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Perhaps you saw some of her work on exhibit at Yummy’s last spring. She is one of the pioneering graduates of Sahar Speaks, a program to train Afghan women as international journalists and let Afghan women’s voices be heard. She has received multiple awards for her writing. At AUAF, she is a Renaissance woman—taking part in Math Day, Science Day, writing poetry, working to develop a newspaper/ blog to showcase student writing, running the AUAF Art Club—even while maintaining a strong GPA. See her BBC interview at https://www.bbc.com/persian/afghanistan-41652116.

This month’s spotlight is on Mohibullah Musazai, a senior Law student, who, like so many of our AUAF students, is focused on giving back to his country to build a better future for Afghanistan. As a young man, he watched his father struggle to adapt to war injuries and vowed to find a way to support war victims, which led to his work with the Rehabilitee Organization for Afghan War Victims where he now serves as Executive Director. He has expanded that effort to the Afghan Disability Network, an organization with over 200 NGO national and international members that are working to ensure employment opportunities for “enabled” Afghans. Following his graduation, Musazai hopes to do pro-bono legal aid work to improve access to quality legal representation for those who cannot who afford it.

This week’s spotlight is on two students, Marzia Azizi (Political Science) and Sughra Azizi Business), and their papers published in the latest volume of the Journal of Women in Public Policy. Their contributions, Turkey's Potential for Facilitating Regional Cooperation and Peace in Afghanistanby Marzia Azizi and Kabul-New Delhi Relations and the Future of Security in Afghanistan by Sughra Azizi, each provide an in-depth review of critical issues for Afghanistan. AUAF has a number of links with the Journal with including Dr. M. Bashir Mobasher, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Dr. Dr. M. Nazif Shahrani, a former AUAF professor, who are peer reviewers for the Journal, and Journal editor, Mariam Safi, Adjunct Professor of Gender Studies. Congratulations to Marzia and Sughra on their scholarly contributions.