President's Message

Dear Student,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to IAU, the study abroad institute at The American College of the Mediterranean (ACM). As the oldest and largest American Institute in France, we have been educating students in the arts, humanities, and social sciences since 1957. During your stay, our faculty and staff will strive to provide you with a first-rate learning environment that is challenging, yet supportive of your academic and personal interests. We want you to succeed while you are here, and equally important, we want to help guide and prepare you for the global world.

As you will learn while reading through our website, our institute is evolving and striving to meet the needs of today's study abroad students. Our newly renovated buildings in Aix-en-Provence, France, create a welcoming campus atmosphere, which has allowed us to expand our curriculum and student services. In addition, we are reaching beyond France by opening new semester and summer programs in Barcelona and Madrid, Spain, as well as several academic seminars in Morocco.

Each of you will have the opportunity to travel and learn inside and outside of the classroom with some of the most talented faculty in international education because the synthesis of academic and experiential learning informs the pedagogical spirit of IAU. All of our courses connect the site-specificity of each country with the important linguistic and cultural heritage of the Mediterranean. Our team of talented full-time, tenured, and tenure-track faculty are dedicated to social issues across the curriculum. Many of our faculty are former diplomats, artists, journalists, practitioners of conflict resolution, and businessmen and women who have dedicated their lives to educating the future leaders of our world. Students at IAU are thus challenged to disentangle the complexities of racial identity, class struggle, and gender segregation in Europe and North Africa.

Note that through IAU's degree-granting college, ACM, you are welcome to return to Aix and complete a one-year M.A. degree in art history, French studies, international education administration, or international relations, a Global M.B.A. or a two-year MFA program. More information can be found at www.ACMFrance.org. 

In conclusion, in its over 60 years of existence, IAU has acquired an alumni roster of over 25,000 students; it has played a major part in preparing teachers, diplomats, linguists, international educators and administrators, Peace Corps professionals, and businessmen and women for their role in the present-day world. It is our hope that your participation at IAU will be just as fruitful. We look forward to welcoming you soon to one of the many study abroad programs at IAU.

Sincerely,

Carl Jubran, Ph.D
President
The American College of the Mediterranean

About Dr. Jubran
Dr. Carl Jubran, a 1992 alumnus of the Institute for American Universities (IAU) and previous member of the Council of Academic Advisors, became ACM's 5th President in May 2011. He completed his undergraduate education in linguistics, participated in a Master's program through the Sorbonne, Paris IV through New York University, and later earned his M.A. in Spanish Linguistics and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Jubran was a professor of Language and Literature at the University of San Diego and also served as an Associate Provost for International Affairs. He has developed courses in French, Spanish, Arabic, world civilizations, and global studies and has led and overseen programs in France, Mexico, Morocco, and Spain. Dr. Jubran's multilingual fluency in French, English, Spanish, Arabic, and Hebrew positions him well to lead students, faculty, and staff in developing multicultural understanding and learning the essential importance of the interconnections among social equity and justice, economic viability, and environmental vitality in building a sustainable community in today's world.