General-Section-Undergraduate.Pdf
GENERAL SECTION General Information 1 A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT The Catalog is a guidepost to all those interested in learning about the University of Balamand. It is of particular importance to students who must familiarize themselves fully with its contents. While catalogs introduce students to the history as well as to the philosophy of the University, it remains essentially a set of rules. Rules are of value in themselves. They guide students, and faculty as well, to strictly comply with them to avoid error. I want to emphasize the priority of rules, particularly of the tendency in human nature to avoid them, to break them, or divert them from the public good, they are meant to uphold, to their private whims and needs. Rules teach us discipline, and they constitute the basic element in democracy. Rules equalize, and hence provide justice for all. In a university, rules provide the student with the objective facts they must work with to excel in their main purpose to enter a university. The purpose is to get a good education, to specialize in a field and become professionals in it, to develop the passion for reading, for publishing, for contributing to the public good. Consequently, I welcome all new students to our University, and look forward to interacting with them as much as possible. We are living in unusual times. We are living a trend of violence, chaos, and the permeating threat of extremism. It is our destiny to reverse it. Universities are founded on faith in the Divine, on dependence on reason, on the unity of the human family, and in the hope of an ideal civilization founded on truth, justice, equality, and freedom.
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