KUWAIT: A group photo taken during the ceremony. - Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat

By Ben Garcia

KUWAIT: For the first time since opening in 2016, Kuwait College of Science and Technology (KCST) organized its first ever graduation ceremony for the classes of two academic years: 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. The ceremony was attended by parents, some government and school officials at a jam-packed venue set-up at its school campus in Doha, west of Kuwait City. KCST is an accredited private university in Kuwait offering internationally recognized undergraduate education in engineering and other courses in science and technology. Its operations are regulated by the Private Universities Council of Kuwait and the Ministry of Education.

In his opening remarks, Dr Khalid Al-Begain, first founding president of KCST, welcomed the guests and thanked the parents who supported them until the very end to the first graduation ceremony. "We have several gigantic achievements for the last five years," started Begain. "We are proud that in June 2021, we received our first institutional accreditation from the Private Universities Council with the maximum five-year accreditation," he said.

A group photo taken during the ceremony.

"We have already completed the evaluation for the accreditation for our engineering programs with the American Accreditation Board, for engineering and technology," he added. He went on to say that he was proud of KCST students as they have won "almost all the competition in the technology and innovation since 2018 in Kuwait."

Begain also took pride as the KCST recently hosted and organized the 35th international conference of modeling assimilation in collaboration with the European Council for Modeling and Simulation. "In addition, we organized events for talented Kuwaiti young people such as the cyber accelerated program, jointly with the British Embassy as well as the Steven's Initiative for Next Generation Program, jointly with the US Embassy." He also mentioned a cube satellite project built by KCST students with plans to launch it into space before the end of the year.

Dr Khalid Al-Begain speaks during the ceremony.

KCST was established with the purpose of providing undergraduate degree courses in science and technology. The degree programs being offered include undergraduate degrees in computer science, computer engineering, and electronics and communications engineering. The computer science degree program takes four years whereas the engineering degree programs take four and a half years to complete.

The university campus has a large central library, a 500-seat main auditorium, and two 250-seat lecture theatres, as well as several lecture rooms, faculty and staff offices, and laboratories. The on-campus sports facilities include a football ground and tennis courts with plans underway for a swimming pool and additional sports facilities.