May 19, 2015, Cairo – Tarek Shawki, dean of the School of Sciences and Engineering at The American University in Cairo (AUC), was appointed as Secretary General of the Specialized Councils affiliated to the presidency, following a presidential decree by President AbdelFatah Al Sisi. “This decision is considered the last phase in finalizing the establishment of the Specialized Councils affiliated to the Egyptian Presidency as the councils will now have an administrative and executive role in the state. Having a general secretariat means that the councils will move from an administrative to a supervisory role and will also have the authority to execute the proposed projects,” said Shawki, “The councils will now be independent and will have the ability to communicate with the state’s institutions. We have 10 projects in the pipeline and now we will be able to move in the direction of executing the plans and fulfilling the promises,” he added.
Shawki explained that the councils are not competing with the government. “It is the contrary, we are working with them and appreciate their huge efforts and the president always encourages coordinating with them. The idea behind such councils is based on creating harmony between the experts, youth, the presidency and the government.”
"We are very pleased that Dean Tarek Shawki was appointed to such a critical role in the service to Egypt and its advancement," said AUC President, Lisa Anderson. "At AUC, we are particularly proud to see distinguished faculty and academic leaders like Dean Shawki who bring their expertise and knowledge to serve not just our students, but also the greater community and the country as a whole."
In his new post, Shawki will enjoy a minister’s liabilities with regards to all related financial and administrative affairs as well as to all staff members of the general secretariat and the subsidiary ones. As per the presidential decree, Sahwki has the ability to appoint one or more deputy. Last year, Shawki was chosen to head the first Specialized Council on Education and Scientific Research affiliated to the Egyptian Presidency. “With this decree, all the staff members of the former specialized councils, finances and assets will be directed to the new specialized councils affiliated to the presidency. The general secretariat will also supervise the four specialized councils, namely, the councils for Education and Scientific Research, Economic Development, Community Development and Foreign Policy and National Security,” Shawki noted.
Among the initiatives that were presented by the Specialized Councils in the past months are: a strategy for children without shelter, renewing the religious discourse, setting and unifying the efforts to develop the most underprivileged villages and setting a strategy for education and scientific research, in addition to reviewing certain laws like the investment law.
Shawki is a distinguished academic, consultant and international education executive. He holds a PhD in engineering from Brown University and spent a year as a post-doctoral research assistant at MIT. Shawki then accepted a position as professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana where her remained for the next 13 years. Shawki then left to work with UNESCO and spent more than a decade working between Cairo and Paris. He was a key player in the development of several innovative programs related to education and technology. Some of his most successful projects include establishing a set of universal benchmarks for teacher competencies in the use of informational communications technologies, as well as developing a global, multilingual and digital library of high-quality e-courseware content available free of charge to students and teachers around the world.
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