The Faculty of Engineering (FE) at Antonine University (UA) is building, one agreement after another, increasingly solid ties with the world of industry, thus becoming an interactive platform for exchange and expertise in the region. After CISCO in 2006 and Oracle in 2016, the Faculty signed on February 9, 2021, with the approval of Fr. Rector Michel Jalakh, a new partnership with the prestigious Red Hat Academy and became one of the first Red Hat academies in the region.

Behind this new initiative, there is Dr. Chady Abou Jaoude, Dean of the FE, whose vocation is to train UA students at best, building a new generation of skillful and competent leading engineers. In order to achieve UA’s excellence-oriented goal, the University instances designed a roadmap that can be summarized in one simple sentence: making innovative partnerships with leading companies happen so as to bridge the gap between academia and industry. Their motto is to always step forward to train tomorrow’s experts. The result of this year’s action is nothing less than a new partnership with Red Hat, a worldwide leading company utterly famous in the IT field.

Settled on four continents, in more than 40 countries, Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions. The company offers a wide range of high performance software such as Linux, Cloud, Container, or Kubernetes, and simultaneously outfits universities with hands-on instruction, curriculum and labs, performance-based testing, and educator support. The reason behind the establishment of Red Hat’s education department was to support universities in their educational mission. As Ken Goetz, vice president of Training and Certification at Red Hat, explains: “Most higher education institutions seek to prepare their graduates to be "work ready," so it’s no surprise that many of them have incorporated Linux-related content into their curricular programs […] given its popularity in modern IT. But building these courses so they match the expectations of enterprises, keeping them up to date as technology rapidly evolves, and properly supporting them with hands-on labs and exercises can be a complex, difficult, and costly undertaking. This is why we created the Red Hat Academy.”

Thanks to this brand-new partnership, the UA instructors and students will be able to benefit from a whole range of free resources to advance their knowledge and skills development.