March. 6th, 2002

  The US Institute of International Education (IIE) has awarded Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak the Duggan Award for International Understanding for her continuing efforts in promoting education in Egypt.

In her address at the award ceremony Mrs. Mubarak praised the role played by the IIE within the framework of educational exchange, noting that it provided services for 30,000 Egyptian students and scientists.

She said that the IIE was co-coordinating and co-operating with numerous educational institutions in both countries and had been widening the parameters of education exchange since the 1950s.

She accepted the Duggan Prize as an appreciation of Egypt's efforts to push the wheel of international understanding forwards through the exchange of educational expertise and students visits.

Mrs. Mubarak said that education had topped the priorities of Egyptian governments over the past 20 years as a means of achieving progress on both individual and social levels. She added that the number of young Egyptians being educated in schools and universities has doubled over the last two decades.

The Duggan Award is named after the institute's first president, Stephen P. Duggan, Sr., a distinguished professor of diplomatic history, who founded the Institute in 1919, together with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elihu Root and Nicholas Murray Butler, who himself received the Nobel Prize in 1931.