Dr Nancy S. Dye, esteemed women's historian and President Emerita of Oberlin College, has been appointed the first Vice-Chancellor and President of the Asian University for Women (AUW). The University, sited in Chittagong in Bangladesh, aspires to become a leading institution of higher learning for women from across Asia.
As the chief executive of the university, Dye will lead the growth and development of all aspects of AUW, which is slated to welcome its first undergraduate class in fall 2009. The University will be the first of its kind: a private, regional institution of the highest quality, dedicated solely to women's education and leadership development, international in outlook but rooted in the contexts of people across Asia.
AUW's mission is based on the firm belief that education-especially higher education-provides a critical pathway to leadership development as well as more broadly in achieving sustainable development, economic progress, and social and political equity. AUW will educate promising young women from diverse cultural, religious, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, with a particular emphasis on the inclusion of women from poor, rural, and refugee populations.
The University's first program, a pre-matriculation Access Academy, will commence in April this year with 125 students recruited from communities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Nepal. The principal financial supporters of the project include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldman Sachs Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Citigroup Foundation, and the US Agency for International Development.
2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus, who was awarded an honorary doctor of humanities degree by Oberlin in 1993 and serves on the AUW Support Foundation's Bangladesh board of advisors, said of AUW: "The Asian University for Women will provide a much needed avenue for women to empower themselves to become enlightened leaders.-PR