Diane Nauffal

Dr. Diane Nauffal joined LAU in 2008 charged with the establishment of the Department of Institutional Research and Assessment. In 2017, she was promoted to Assistant to the President for Institutional Research & Assessment.

Dr. Nauffal provides decision-support research and analysis needed in planning and policy-formulation processes, accreditation, and institutional effectiveness activities. In addition, she supports all institutional assessment efforts covering the spectrum of activities related to programs, students, faculty and staff through her role as coordinator of the University Assessment Resource Cluster.

In 2017 she completed a study on the economic impact of LAU and its campuses on the national economy, that was the first of its kind in the Middle East. Additionally, she has conducted several sponsored research studies on topics such as employability and student engagement and has spearheaded several benchmark studies with peer institutions in the region.

Dr. Nauffal serves as a faculty member in the Department of Education, specializing in educational leadership and management. Her areas of professional interest are strategic planning, leadership and governance, educational policy, assessment of student learning, accreditation, and institutional effectiveness with an emphasis on higher education. She has several articles, conference papers and book chapters in these areas.

At the national level, Dr. Nauffal played a key role in drafting a law for the development of a Lebanese Quality Assurance Agency. She has participated in several capacity building projects and designed and delivered numerous workshops on quality assurance, institutional accreditation, program evaluation, teaching and learning effectiveness, governance, and strategic planning, among others funded by the EU and the World Bank.

Dr. Nauffal has served as president of the Middle East and North Africa Association for Institutional Research (MENA-AIR), an affiliate group of the Association for Institutional Researchers (AIR) in the USA since 2015. In 2011, she was asked to join the National Taskforce for University Governance within the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

Prior to joining LAU, Dr. Nauffal was a member of University of Balamand’s faculty, as well as Director of Special Programs encompassing freshman, special orientation, continuing education, and “Service Education, Experience Through Doing.”

Dr. Nauffal holds a B.S. in Mathematics, a Diploma for Teaching Mathematics at the secondary level, and an M.A. in Mathematics Education from the American University of Beirut, as well as a Ph.D. in Education, with an emphasis on educational management and policy, from the University of Birmingham, UK.