Case Study: Iraq
When Iraq needed to revamp the education system for its oil and gas industry, it reached out globally to find oil and gas expertise to provide students at the technician, collegiate and professional education levels. The country was unable to attract the expertise that it needed to complete its desired oil and gas education training programs through its various solicitations. There were many obstacles in providing the Iraqis with suitable training partners ranging from getting the word out to potential education service providers to assuring service providers that Iraq could be a friendly place to do business. Many potential education providers were unfamiliar with Iraqi culture and geopolitical climate and were concerned about doing business there. Other potential education partners expressed concerns about safety and possibly even possible corruption issues. Getting around all these concerns were going to be quite challenging for an education consultant and near impossible for the Iraqi Government to manage itself.
SmartSBC Case Study: Iraq
SmartSBC’s Education Group which is now taken over by Prestige Eco Energy Enterprises Education Group rose to the occasion and successfully recruited one of the top-rank US universities in oil and gas to provide an extensive collegiate program offering that would allow Iraqi students to obtain ABET-approved training curricula both online and in Iraqi classrooms with faculty that were either current university faculty members or ones that were recruited by the university specifically for this effort. While all designed course offerings were in English, SBC felt that it was important to provide teaching staff that was familiar with Iraqi customers and culture. The solution provided the students to obtain 4-year and graduate degrees from the university as well as various levels of participation certificates sought by industry professionals. As funding for the education project was limited to 8 years, the university need to develop a way to ensure that the education process did not stop once the project was over. To that end, the university and SBC agreed to establish a “teacher training program” such that newly minted Iraqi instructors could carry on the transferred knowledge to generations of Iraqi students and professionals for years to come.
SmartSBC also recommended to both the US university and the Iraqi education ministry that the US university and Iraq’s top 4-year oil and gas university be paired for an exchange of teaching methods best suited to Iraqi college students. This pairing was in addition to pairings with Iraq’s oil and gas institutes which specialize in a two-year development program. Iraq’s original solicitation for education partners only included oil and gas training companies that could not provide everything that the Iraqis needed for their future development. It was SBC’s education group that recommended and recruited a top-tier oil and gas university to answer the call. It was the first time that Iraqi and Western Universities have ever been paired.
