Sami Akabawi Oral History

• Main Author: Sami Akabawi
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: sami
• Online Access: http://server15795.contentdm.oclc.org/u?/p15795coll17,508

Sami Akabawi, an Egyptian born in 1944, was a member of Egypt's first generation of computer specialists, working in the field in the 1960s and 1970s; he received his graduate degrees in the United Kingdom. Joining the American University in Cairo in 1983, he spent a decade in its Management Department, whose programs and personnel he covers, and he describes the development of computing at AUC in the 1980s and early 1990s. He served as Associate Vice President for Computing at AUC from 1994 to 2007, overseeing the massive expansion of the role of computing in university life and supervising Administrative Computing Services, Academic Computing Services, and University Network Services. Akabawi details his involvement with the adoption of email, internet access, networking, and internet-based telecommunications on the Old Downtown Tahrir campus, and the contributions of personnel in those areas as well as his working relationship with AUC administrators. He also outlines the adoption and implementation of university human resources, student, library, and financial systems (like SAP), as well as the Information Technology Infrastructure planning aspects of AUC's new campus in New Cairo. Akabawi rejoined the Management Department after 2007, and discusses developments there in the following decade.