Ahmed Abdelal

As Provost, Ahmed Abdelal serves as the chief academic officer, overseeing long-term planning, curriculum, instruction, research, outreach and assessment, libraries and academic services. In his role, he is also a member of the Chancellor's Executive Cabinet. Prior to joining UMass Lowell, Abdelal served as Provost of Northeastern University ('02-'08), and Dean of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University ('92 -'02). Abdelal earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of California, Davis, and carried out post-doctoral research at the same institution and at the Institute for Microbiology at the University of Gottingen, Germany. While at Georgia State, Abdelal served as the Founding Director for the Middle East Center for Peace, Culture, and Development. At Northeastern, he established six international centers that focus on different world regions. Abdelal is strongly committed to a collaborative leadership approach. The success of this approach in tackling challenging issues in higher education was the subject of a case study, developed and published in 2002, by faculty from the Harvard Institutes of Higher Education.