Administrators at Effat College, the first private women’s college in Saudi Arabia, have selected the McDonough School of Business to help develop the school’s business curricula.

Earlier this month, three Georgetown officials visited Effat, located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to meet with the school’s administrators and leading Saudi business figures to tour the college and discuss the terms of the cooperation.

Kasra Ferdows, Heisley Family Chair of Global Manufacturing in the MSB, was one of the university representatives who visited Effat. He said that Georgetown’s role in the initiative is to develop business majors, courses and internships that will be offered in the future at Effat.

“[Georgetown’s goal] is to help them with the design of a curriculum and help them create a business system with integrity,” Ferdows said.

The curriculum must “train these women for a career in business, not just for their first job,” he said. “We think that it’s really a noble cause . to go to a country like Saudi [Arabia] and see what we can do to help the young women there.”

Effat College was founded in 1999 by the late Queen Effat of Saudi Arabia. The college has since worked with several schools in the U.S. and the U.K. to develop different educational programs, including an adaptation of the engineering program at Duke University.

Effat’s mission is to elevate “the academic standards available to our women within the boundaries of our Islamic heritage,” according to literature obtained from the college.

Administrators at Effat first selected Georgetown for assistance in developing its curricula around six months ago after representatives of the college visited several U.S. schools last January, Ferdows said.

“We thought this was a very worthwhile cause for the university,” he said. “We also can learn from them.”

The cooperation is especially strategic for Georgetown at a time when the university is aiming to expand its role in education internationally. Ferdows said that there is increasing competition between universities in countries like the U.S. and China to spread their education systems to nations where higher education is still developing.

If both schools are pleased with the development of the business curriculum, there is potential for the partnership between Effat and Georgetown to advance to higher levels, Ferdows said. For example, he said that the schools could establish student or faculty exchange programs.

For now, however, the initiative is focused strictly on curriculum development, something which is “very useful, not a very heavy investment, and [will yield] very quick returns for both sides,” Ferdows said.

Effat College administrators hold “very good views about how graduates of Effat College should fit into society,” he said. “They have got very big visions for this college.”