The Social Sciences Department in AAUP has some distinguish programs that reflect the needs of the Palestinian market of the experiences and skills that contribute in serving the community, its organizations and local and formal institutions. The department offers four excellent one of its kind Masters’ programs and one PhD program in Conflict Resolution which is the first of its kind in Palestine. The master’s programs of this department are:
The department deals and solves many of the social, political and contemporary literature cases that are related to the local and international topics and related to the Palestinian and Arab community. Courses are lectured by some excellent professors who are specialized in the social sciences and the international relations.
Despite the difference focus of these programs, but there are some common elements in the design of each program. By taking the courses of each program, students will learn the basic and most important theories for each topic, the historical roots, and the conflict about it. In addition, students will learn how theories and the theoretical and philosophical concepts started, and how it evaluated and changed during time.
Since its establishment, the department was keen to start and build number of international and local partnerships such as the partnership with Cordoba Private University, Universidad de Granada, University of Flensburg, and Coventry University in Britain. These partnership relations enhanced in opening new academic programs that fulfilled the Palestinian society and market needs.
The department also focuses on the community activities as it provides services to the local community and offers public lectures under collaboration with the Conflict Resolution Center in AAUP. It also provides training programs in the conflict resolution field, the international relations, diplomacy, media, press, and sustainable conflict resolution, and some of the department professors are also members of community and formal committees.
The social sciences department teaches its lectures in smart classrooms available at the faculty as this enables professors to do joint and interactive lectures with other graduate studies students in American and European universities using the Conference Call and Distance Learning way. This way enables students to communicate live with each other’s and have a fruitful discussion about the joint issues.
Aiming to focus on providing high quality programs to students, the department put a modern way to evaluate the program and guarantee its quality, by having a continuous communication with other centers, universities and organizations in order to evaluate the academic programs that the department offers, and provide a higher education with international standards. The quality assurance unit prepares a regular internal assessment about the courses offered, to guarantee using some learning and evaluation techniques.