Engineers of tomorrow ready for university

Members of the first class of the Gleneg School attend their graduation ceremony at Emirates Palace.

ABU DHABI // The first class of students from the Glenelg School Abu Dhabi graduated yesterday at a bustling ceremony at the Emirates Palace hotel. All 24 graduates of the rigorous private school, which is owned and operated by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) will go on to university, many to pursue degrees in engineering, helping to cut a deficit of students in the field.

"It's harder and better and I think it has helped prepare us for university," said Shaikha al Wahedi, 17, an Emirati in the graduating class. Recognising a shortage of qualified engineers, Adnoc began to plan the Glenelg School Abu Dhabi in 2006 when a delegation of faculty from the Petroleum Institute visited private schools in the US. The oil and gas industry estimates it needs six or seven times the current number of engineering graduates to work in technical jobs.

Nearly two-thirds of the nation's graduates go into business, while only 23 per cent study science or engineering. A partnership was launched with the Glenelg Country School, an elite high school outside Washington DC, and the Glenelg School Abu Dhabi opened in September. When Glenelg was set up, the target was that roughly 90 per cent of its graduates would go on to the Petroleum Institute. Like the Petroleum Institute, which is owned and operated by Adnoc, Glenelg is intended to prepare students with the necessary skills in maths and science required of engineers and other professionals in the oil sector.

But as a high school its mandate is to offer a top-quality education with an emphasis on hard sciences, although Adnoc, as the manager of the school, guided the development of its curriculum. "You need a strong maths and science background", to succeed at a place like the Petroleum Institute, said Dr Michael Ohadi, the institute's provost and acting president. "We felt that the high school graduates that were coming to us were lacking these skills," he said.

"We thought the quick fix was to have our own high school." Like the Institute for Applied Technology, a network of public science and technology high schools, Glenelg was set up to produce more graduates in the sciences who are prepared for direct entrance to university. As has been the case with other major universities here, the Petroleum Institute has struggled to attract students who meet its entrance requirements.

Last year, just 12 per cent of students who applied to federal universities qualified to take the test that allows them to bypass remedial English courses. Seventy per cent of the approximately 1,100 students at the Petroleum Institute are Emirati, due to a strict quota system. Glenelg has no such quota system, though roughly 80 per cent of the 450 students enrolled in its first year are nationals.

According to Mr Obaid, about 80 per cent of the Institute's expatriate students, who must meet more stringent standards for admission, are able to proceed directly to university without a need for remedial classes. Two-thirds of Emirati students, by contrast, require bridge classes before they begin their university work, Mr Obaid said. Ms al Wahedi said the transition last year from a public school to Glenelg was not easy. "I wanted to go to the Petroleum Institute," she said, explaining that joining Glenelg was the logical step. "It was so hard. The English was really difficult."

But Ms Wahedi, who is waiting to hear if she has been admitted to the Petroleum Institute, said she does not regret the decision. She believed that she would not have got as far had she stayed in the public school system. Next autumn, Rebal Turjoman, a 17-year-old Syrian graduate, will start studies at Cornell University in New York. Mr Turjoman, the top student in the graduating class, moved to Glenelg from the Al Rafat school when the school opened last year. "My old school was getting worse," Mr Turjoman said.

For Salem al Junaibi, 18, part of the attraction to Glenelg was the Adnoc connection. Next year he will attend Iowa State University where he will study civil engineering. He hopes for a career in urban planning. Eissa al Tamimi, 18, agreed that the school is more rigorous. "In my old school the education was not that good," Mr al Tamimi said. "My average was about 95 per cent and then when I came here it dropped to 83 per cent."

Mr Tamimi has been awarded a scholarship from the Emirates Nuclear Corporation. "This school helped me a lot," Mr Tamimi said. "I passed all the exams." [e-mail]