Towards Sustainable Desert Development for Egypt

[abstract not provided]https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1919/thumbnail.jp

Adli Bishay Oral History

Adli Bishay was a science faculty member at the American University in Cairo in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, serving as longtime chair of the Materials Engineering and Physical Sciences Department (through its various name changes), and was the founding Director of AUC’s Desert Development Center from the late 1970s into the 1990s. Bishay recalls his doctoral studies in glass technology in the United Kingdom and how he came to teach in AUC’s two-member Chemistry Department in 1955. He recounts taking several years’ leave from AUC for teaching and research in the United States, then returning to AUC in the early 1960s and becoming chair of the Chemistry Department. He details his and others’ efforts to complete the construction and equipping of the AUC Science Building erected in the 1960s. Bishay outlines the development of the department’s academic program in the 1960s and 1970s, with the introduction of a Masters degree program in solid-state science, and the department’s shift in focus as reflected in its change in name from Chemistry eventually to Materials Engineering and Physical Sciences. He also accounts for the expansion in the number of science faculty by securing support for AUC graduates to study for their doctorates abroad so they could return to teach at the university, and he mentions leading science faculty members over the years. Bishay’s both productive and contentious relationship with AUC presidents and deans is covered as well. Adli Bishay tells of the steps he took that resulted in the 1978 establishment of what became AUC’s Desert Development Center (DDC), including the preliminary conference, acquisition of land and building funds from the Egyptian government, and the application of solar energy technology. When required to step down as the DDC’s director upon reaching retirement age in the early 1990s, he set up a non-governmental organization called Friends of the Environment Development Association (FEDA), and he discusses its mission and activities in fragile environments in Egypt such as Cairo’s historic Gamaleya district