813: How to Rapidly Expand Programs to Meet Economic Needs - with Dr. Muhammad Al-Saggaf, President, King Fahd University for Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM)

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we continue to make education your business. Hey guys, this is Joe Sallustio back again, recording with you here at EdUp. One maybe lesser known fact about this podcast is that somewhere between 15 to 20% of our audience is outside of the United States. We've had and spoken with presidents all across the world from Africa, the Middle East, China and so on. And that's an important part of what we do, because it's a global worldview of higher education that makes this podcast unique and makes education unique. We can't get siloed in our own countries and think that we do it best when there are others out there in other countries that are doing amazing work. So that's a little prelude to the conversation that we're going to have today.

I'm going to bring my guest right in. He is, I would say, a powerhouse. I'm going to give you a little bit of his background right now before I bring him in. He is a president of a university in Saudi Arabia. He worked for Saudi Aramco for a number of years overseeing things like aviation, marine transportation, training, safety, security, community and medical services. I mean, you think about the scope of that job. He has picked up a couple of degrees along the way. Let's see, he has his mathematics degree from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, better known as KFUPM. He has a Master of Science and PhD in Geophysics from MIT. And he picked up another MBA from KFUPM at some point. And he's a graduate of Harvard Business School's Program for Management and Development.

So when I say powerhouse, I mean it. Ladies and gentlemen, here he is. His name is Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf. He is the president of KFUPM. The sixth president. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Thank you very much for this glorious introduction that I humbly will accept, but I do not deserve.

Joe Sallustio: I can't stop the crowd. They just keep going. Dr. Al-Saggaf, would you set the stage for us? Talk to us about KFUPM. Where are you located? Who do you serve student-wise and how do you do it?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: KFUPM is the second university to be established in Saudi Arabia. It was established in 1963. It is located in a town called Dhahran on the eastern side of Saudi Arabia on the Arabian Gulf. Dhahran was a very small town but sort of connected up with two other towns and became a big metropolitan city. The university started as a pseudo-independent university. It had its own board of trustees and so on. And over the years, it really graduated some of the cream of the crop of leaders in Saudi Arabia, including numerous cabinet ministers, the minister of energy, the minister of IT and communication, the minister of investment, the minister of labor and so on. And also in the private sector, the head of the largest telecom company, the CEO of his competing second largest telecom company, the CEO of the national electricity company and so on. The CEO of Saudi Aramco and all of his deputies, the minister of energy in neighboring country of Bahrain and minister of labor there and so on and so forth.

So it really, despite its small size, it is a small university. The total student body is approximately 8,000 to 9,000 students. It really made a significant impact on the country and on its neighbors as well. Then in the 1980s, the university was attached to the government and the Ministry of Higher Education. And no fault of the Ministry of Higher Education, the university became a bit slower as the government more and more percolated within its ranks and decisions became a little bit slower and the university continued to evolve, but on a slower pace than it could have achieved. More recently, about four years ago, as part of newly found zeal in Saudi Arabia to really push forward the broad agenda of Vision 2030 and transform the entire country, the government decided to spin it off and that was done. And it has been an independent university ever since then reporting only to its board of trustees.

Joe Sallustio: Amazing. See, I told you I'd get that one in. That's a heck of a history there. What brought you out of Saudi Aramco to higher education? I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense when you look at it, right? It's learning, you're training, you're getting education and those people who are graduating university are going on to work at these large companies. But for you to transition from leading a business to higher education, which a lot of people wonder if they run the same, a lot of times they don't, what got you to move from Aramco to education?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: I'm not sure about your show, Joe, whether you want me to tell anecdotal stories that perhaps few have heard or not, but I have some like this that would be interesting maybe to the audience.

Joe Sallustio: Do it. Tell us.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: The question is, what brought me to Saudi Arabia? I was a KFUPM student many, many, many years ago. I'm not going to say how many, but -

Joe Sallustio: Just five years ago.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Yeah, measured in decades. Well, to be precise, I entered KFUPM as an undergrad in 1984. I'm not a young guy. I feel that I have a young spirit, but I am not a young guy. In KFUPM, I really did not know exactly what I would major in. So I started with electrical engineering because my older brother was electrical engineering. And then I said, not abstract enough. I need something challenging. I need something that would really fit somebody who considered himself at the time smart, although I think mistakenly so. So I moved to physics and then I said not abstract enough. So I moved to mathematics and then I said not abstract enough.

What do you think is beyond that? So I studied abstract algebra and things like topology and so on and really very geeky stuff and then when it was my junior year at the end of my junior year I was supposed to go and spend summer training in a company and I went there and my cousin was with me. He was computer engineering and he was talking to an officer there about different opportunities and then my turn came and the guy there responsible for training at the university told me "What is your major?" and I said "Math." He said "What? Math? Who would want you?" Yikes. And so that was a shock to me. At the time in Saudi Arabia somebody majoring in math would probably be a teacher and maybe a university professor and so on.

So that was when I started changing gears. I hadn't really considered work at the time. I was driven by really what appealed to me rather than the job prospects. And I was hit by the realities of life at the time. And so that is why I joined Saudi Aramco and they sent me to get my graduate degrees and so on. And then I stayed in Saudi Aramco for 30 years. I was essentially the second man in command reporting to the CEO and overseeing many of the company's activities. All the sectors you mentioned from security to community to marine to aviation. Yeah, a massive, massive infrastructure. I had an army of employees, 18,000 employees. It's amazing.

I was a high-flying corporate executive with my own corporate jets. Anything I wanted really because everything was under my control and marine vessels. And then I started to question myself and my mission in life. And that might seem strange, but I was asking myself, what is my legacy number one and how do I contribute to humanity? How do I contribute to the world? Who would remember Mohammed Al-Saggaf 10 years after he passes away? And nobody will even know but that is not really people knowing but how do I make a change that transcends the confines of a corporation into something that would have far-reaching implications on all of humanity? Really, and that is really what I wanted to achieve. And what better way to achieve it than engage in higher education and research and train the next generation of engineers and scientists and impress on them the duty that it isn't just our personal success that we should care about.

And I say this with all sincerity, I'm not making this up and really make a dent in tackling challenges that the world and humanity face from scarcity of water to hunger and so on and so forth. And that really was the main driver for me to come back to academia and of course take a big pay cut and lose all the corporate jet and so on and become a lowly University President but that gave me at the same time substantial satisfaction and it's still what drives me every day.

Joe Sallustio: It's an amazing story because you have to give up something. So you said high-flying, you have to give up this lifestyle that you know, probably traveling and moving a fast-paced business to university which can be a little slower paced. It can be cumbersome sometimes because you're dealing with learning and curriculum. What did you take away from your time at Aramco that you use at King Fahd? What learnings do you take with you that are still true today?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: At Saudi Aramco I took on many jobs. Even before my final job there, at one point the company wanted to become an international conglomerate and to change almost everything in the company. And so I was appointed as the head of the then so-called accelerated transformation program that touched the company from everything, from research and development to downstream, upstream, procedures, HR, and so on and so forth. It touched almost everything in the company to finance and accounting and it then really brought it up to be an international company that not only has international customers but that is run in an international manner and that later on helped it to be floated in the stock market and so on. It was very, very easy to do that because all the systems had been developed.

So one important thing I took is, two important things is the value of good people that if you want to achieve something, you cannot achieve it with money or with systems or with influence. You can only achieve it with a good team around you.

Joe Sallustio: That's amazing.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: I invested a lot of time, invested and I still invest a lot of time at KFUPM, really convincing and courting and attracting and trying to develop the best talent around you because this is really what is going to carry a successful organization. Nothing else, no matter what it is, can equal this. And the second thing is that transformation of a grand scale can indeed occur within a very short period of time if it is planned properly and delivered properly and if the stakeholders are engaged in the right manner. And so what might seem like an insurmountable challenge can actually be conquered and achieved if it is executed in the right way.

Joe Sallustio: That's amazing. Your point about people because it does always come down to that doesn't it? No matter what's around you, it's the people that make the difference and so you have to invest in your people as a leader. Is there anything you do that you can point to, so maybe something that's unique to you in leadership development, the way you view leadership, your leadership style that you think manifests itself in others?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Not sure I would talk in generalities rather than refer to myself, but I think a leader must be humble. I think this is really an underestimated trait of a good leader. A leader who sees himself above his people, who is unapproachable, who doesn't know about the people below him or would not be a pompous thinking too much of himself would not be successful. People are not stupid. They really understand things beyond what is said. They don't... A speech that tries to convince them of something has no consequence if they don't feel really the attachment to whoever is delivering it and they see it in his actions and so on.

I, in my years of work and my years of study, even in the U.S., I was fortunate when I was at MIT. One of my thesis advisors was Enders Robinson, who is credited with establishing the science of geophysical signal analysis. When he came for my thesis defense, my main advisor and everybody at MIT, because he had left to somewhere else, were competing to be photographed with him. That's the type of status that he had. And he was so supremely humble that it really reflected the type of person he is. So that's, I think, that is very, very important. But humility by itself is not enough. I think there are two traits that if achieved by a single individual - and they are very difficult to be achieved by the same individual - can be quite potent, really quite potent. And those two traits are the ability to articulate the big dreams and the ability to pursue them and bring them to fruition. And these two traits, unfortunately, many times are mutually exclusive.

Why are they mutually exclusive? There is really no reason for them to be mutually exclusive. But you see many people who talk with you and describe really ambitious dreams there, but they are so grandiose to the point many times I tell myself, can never be achieved because they don't have the trait of being able to ascertain what in a bold vision is at the same time achievable. And so if you just let yourself dream and with unbounded sort of constraints, you come up with something that in the end crashes and burns when you try to execute it. And on the other hand, there are many people who are good executors and leaders who are good executors but lack that bold vision. And therefore their ability to make a substantial even a substantive change is quite limited. And whoever has the combination of these two, it can really be a very competent leader. And that is why at KFUPM, our motto is dream big and accomplish.

Joe Sallustio: Dream big and accomplish.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: It's not good if you don't dream big. So what is then everything starts with a dream. You cannot achieve anything if it doesn't start with a dream. But a dream that is not realistic and that you cannot accomplish is nothing but a fantasy. And fantasies don't bring anything of value. So yeah, I think this being humble and being able to be bold and visionary and at the same time be able to execute are very important.

Joe Sallustio: I love what you're saying because it's the balance between aspirational and tactical. And then you'll have sometimes leaders around you that think really big but don't know how to do it. And then there are others that know how to do all of those things, but they're not thinking big enough. It's really hard to find that balance. Talk a little bit about the successes that you're having at KFUPM right now in your tenure as president. What are the things that you're most proud of so far?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Joe, these are many. Good to pick. Yeah, I try to be as, and some of them are considered big and they were not difficult. And some of them are considered small and they were exceptionally challenging. But one of the things that we tried to do from the beginning is to ask ourselves, how can you expand an economy? Especially an economy like that of Saudi Arabia, that is a mono-sector economy. It relies on oil and gas and with the new vision of Saudi Arabia and so on, the country wants to expand the economy. And so we said, the only way you can expand an economy that is a mono-sector is to create new sectors, sectors like pharmaceuticals and biotech and space and materials and logistics and so on and so forth.

But how do you create new sectors? Really, this question is so simple and so many people miss the answer to it. And everybody will say, well, you need investment and you need talent, right? Even in the US, you want to create a new sector, you need investment and you need talent. And without the talent, it will be difficult to achieve anything. This is firmly what I believe in. Without the talent, if you put in an investment, you can create a company, can create a factory, but you cannot create an entire sector. And also the statement that you need investment and talent in my view, and also being a mathematician is flawed. Because if you say "and", this implies a plus between them. And if it were a plus, then you could make up for talent by more investment. Can you not? And so it isn't a plus between them. It is a multiplication.

It is talent that amplifies and enables investment and without it you cannot create sectors. And so there was a lot of focus on selecting the right talent, ensuring the right talent. And we can talk a little bit more about the types of talent that I think are important in a university, but only if you ask about it. Based on this, we said to create new sectors, you need to establish new topics to be taught to the students such that when they graduate, they can hit the ground running and contribute to the economy of the future. And so we created over the past few years, 92 new programs, 92.

Joe Sallustio: That's a lot.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Yes. That's a lot. And some of them are graduate, some undergraduate, entirely new departments, and all of them are futuristic things, AI and machine learning, cybersecurity and blockchain, hydrogen mobility, quantum computing, visual computing, and cloud edge computing, thermal systems, nuclear power engineering, and so on and so forth. Because we want the students to be able to learn skills that are commensurate with what will be required tomorrow, not skills that are of yesterday or skills that will just get them by in the current economy.

The second thing I think that is important is that we identified the importance of AI very early on. That was four years ago. We said that AI to this generation is what mathematics was to the next.

Joe Sallustio: Absolutely.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: And you would not think of becoming an engineer without mathematics. And of course you still need mathematics. And so we started something we called AI plus X that you as a student of KFUPM, you must learn AI first and become competent in it and then learn X, which is your major. Mechanical engineering, petroleum. It is not something that can be an add-on because if you don't learn it as a foundation, then how can you utilize it in building your knowledge of your own major? So courses like Advanced Python for AI, AI and Machine Learning, Big Data and Data Science, Entrepreneurship and Business is part of the digital thinking. All of these became mandatory and the students loved them. And four years ago, and that is important, before the ChatGPT craze and large language models and everybody now jumping on the bandwagon, we have identified this. That is important.

And two other things I'm going to mention, research, but maybe only if you ask me about it.

Joe Sallustio: You get to say what you want. So let's hear it.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: But I don't want to be too long. In research in an academic setting, we tackled the intent behind research, the intent. What is the intent behind research if you ask a typical university faculty, they would say, yes, I want to publish papers, publish your marriage, I want citations, I want to be promoted. And we said that is all wrong. The intent behind research must be to make a positive impact on humanity, to improve the human condition. That research, whether in one year or 30 years, must result in a process or an equipment or an apparatus or a chemical or a material that would make a positive impact on society at large. That should be the intent. It does not mean that you don't pursue publications and citations, but it is not the primary intent. And you know what? When your intent is pure, then you produce good things that people tend to actually cite. The citations of KFUPM over the past four years, more than quadrupled. That was a byproduct. It wasn't a main intent.

And so that is something that we insisted on as well as interdisciplinary. And then another important thing that wasn't actually very difficult to achieve, but it required bold execution is that this university since inception has been a male-only university for the past 60 years. And we said that you cannot really develop an economy with half the population.

Joe Sallustio: You cannot win a game with half a team.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: And so we opened the doors for female students, faculty, researchers, the staff, and so on. What I'm going to say now will shock you, will shock you that it happens in Saudi Arabia within three years. KFUPM now has the highest intake of females in engineering anywhere in the world.

Joe Sallustio: Wow.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Yes, more than the US, more than MIT, more than Stanford, more than any US university. If you go to any US university, you will see the male-female split in the student population is always around 50-50. But in engineering, the overall average is around 17 to 19. Most universities are 10, 15, at best 20. And we are 50% females in engineering. So that was... And it wasn't very difficult to do. These things were, like I said, some things, it just required the right execution.

So these are some of the things. There are many, many other things I could mention because we believe at KFUPM that to be successful, you need to constantly reinvent yourself and to be fast. And fast for us is an acronym. It doesn't mean quick. Fast means flexible, agile, synergetic and transformative. FAST. And if this university is going to catch up with the big boys, like the big boys, Ivy League schools at US, it cannot move at the same pace as they are moving, right? Otherwise, we'll never catch them because already they are much, much further ahead than we are. We must act and execute at many multiples of their speed. And this is exactly what we are trying to do.

Joe Sallustio: Flexible, agile, synergistic?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Synergetic and transformative.

Joe Sallustio: Yes. Synergetic, I like that. What about some challenges? All right, so you talked about successes. What's on your mind when you go to bed at night? What's on your mind?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: In any transformation, and we have been through over the past four years and we will continue to be over the next few years in constant transformation, you need to be cognizant of the stakeholders. What is the speed by which the stakeholders will follow you and beyond which they will revolt? Because in any setting, you cannot, you are not, you are powerless, let alone in an academic setting. In an academic setting, it's even more difficult because it's a collegial environment, everybody, every faculty member thinks of himself or herself at the top of the pyramid and there is not really a boss. Unlike maybe in a corporate environment where you have a boss and he or she tells you what to do and so on and can fire you and so on. In a university setting it's even more difficult.

So defining the speed by which people will follow you and beyond which they will revolt is exceptionally important. And you have to define that speed. Change has to be gradual such that they can actually take it up. And in science, in physics, we studied entropy and we said when the change is big, it increases the entropy a lot, but even in social processes, gradual change always results in the least resistance. So that is something that is very important.

So who are the main stakeholders in a university? The main stakeholders are the faculty and the students. Of course, the university has staff and so on, but really the faculty and the students. And so the faculty have to really be interested in taking this journey that might seem difficult and in all honesty had they come four years ago and said this is what we are going to do nobody would have followed. They would have definitely rebelled and I saw an example in the US for one of the universities that brought an alum from an oil and gas company and he started by firing seven of his subordinates on the first day. It took him less than eight months before he himself was fired. And so you can't just take corporate tools and apply them to a university setting.

It took a long journey of listening to the faculty, empowering them, showing them respect. I meet every week with one of the departments and all of its faculty so I'm accessible. After all, we are a small university. We started by conducting what we call the rallies, in which every faculty member is invited to identify a problem and present a solution for it in the presence of the president and the entire administration. And so many of the faculty, of course, not everybody will take up change. The vast majority felt empowered. They felt the shackles were lifted and they became positive contributors. And you cannot create 92 programs in three years. In fact, in three years, the last year, we were just growing organically without the full empowerment and support of the faculty. And we have fantastic faculty.

The students are a different story. I found them much more resistant to change than the faculty.

Joe Sallustio: Really? That's interesting.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Yeah. The students, I was a student, all of us were students. They are very emotional. They see any change, whatever it is, we started by a lot of changes in their favor. And it didn't help, of course, that we started with COVID at the same time and so on. But I found them to be quite fragile and really restless. And so they need to be tackled with even more care. The good thing about the students, this shouldn't be taken out of context, is that they are recycled every four years. And so we really don't have to change. I mean, the seniors, it's difficult to change the seniors. Work on the freshmen and they can be uptakers of change much, much easier. And so that is really something important that we followed throughout this transformation.

And I thought all the time. Is this going to be accepted? Am I moving things too fast and in the face of resistance? How far should I retreat without abandoning my goal yet at the same time achieving a partial victory that will later on translate to a full victory and that sort of thing.

Joe Sallustio: It's a lot to think about. As we close out this episode, I want to give you an opportunity without a question just to talk about KFUPM. Is there anything else you want to say about the university? And then leave us with what you see as the future of higher education.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: KFUPM is quickly transforming university. It has grown through the ranks very quickly. Although rankings and so on are not the direct, do not represent a direct objective of ours, but it is now number 46 in chemical engineering worldwide. Ahead of many, we established US universities number 48 in civil, number 57 in mechanical, number 16 electrical. Alone, petroleum, we are number four worldwide. And mining, we are number six.

And so you may, some people might be shocked, a university in Saudi Arabia ahead of my own alma mater in the U.S. And yes, we are because we are making, I believe, the right changes. In fact, last year for 2022, KFUPM was ranked number three worldwide, three or four, I forgot, in the number of U.S. patents issued ahead of huge organizations like the University of Texas system that has over 10 universities.

So we have students from over 66 countries.

Joe Sallustio: Wow.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Chile and Uruguay and Ecuador to the West, going through US, Canada, Europe, Africa, to East Asia, China, India, Korea, and so on. It's quite diverse in terms of our faculty who come from over 60 countries as well. So it's quite diverse. The language of instruction and the language of administration is English. So it is an international university that has been like that, but has grown more so recently. And some of the top US universities send their students to us as exchange students, Texas A&M and University of Houston and Colorado School of Mines and so on. And you would not send your students somewhere else and then stamp their certificate if you don't believe they will be getting good education.

So that is what the university is about. It pushes the boundary in terms of research. We are... talk, everybody's talking about hydrogen and so on. We already graduated three cohorts in hydrogen mobility. Three cohorts in quantum computing. Some people think quantum computing will be 20 years in the making. We already graduated three cohorts and similarly in many other things. So it is moving in the right direction. And I believe at a pace that is exceptionally fast beyond which I think it can fall and crumble and so on and so I'm very satisfied with it.

As far as higher education is concerned, I think higher education is the pivot of success for industry, but the pivot for success in society. And without proper higher education, nothing really can be achieved. Higher education produces the most important element of any society or economy, and that's the right people. Unfortunately, we don't always hit the mark. We say at KFUPM, there are three types of university output graduates. First type is the economy burdening type. Those are the students who graduate and they are not needed in today's nor tomorrow's economy. They don't have the right skills. They don't have the right major or the major is good, but not needed in the volume that the universities produce. And this happens in Saudi Arabia. It happens in the US and the UK, all over universities churn out students whom the economy does not need. And they become a burden, of course. And then they have to be re-skilled or they take up menial jobs.

Then the second type is the economy maintaining output. Those are all the physicians and bankers and engineers and scientists and teachers and so on, and lawyers even maybe. Maybe. Who are really the majority in any economy and who maintain the current economy and keep it going. But our niche at KFUPM is the third type. And those are the students, the output that we call the economy creating output. Those are the few that are going to create the new sectors and create the new economy. They are not many, but they are distinguished and they have to be taught in the appropriate manner. And this is what we tell our students. We tell our students when they come in, you are not here to learn to get a job. You are here to learn to create a job.

Joe Sallustio: Wow. Create a job.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Otherwise, if you do get into KFUPM, it's a very competitive school and very tough, by the way. You are guaranteed a job. Our employability rate in the first six to 12 months is 96%.

Joe Sallustio: Amazing.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: So you just get in and you will get a job. The only reason we are not 100% are our students who want to stay with mom and dad in a village and so on and want to be part of the industry. They eventually get jobs, not until they are really convinced that they need to do well elsewhere. And so that is really our aim. Higher education must focus not only on maintaining economies, but on creating economies, because it is only through creating new sectors and new economies that you can give prosperity to society. How can you otherwise? It isn't. An economy that is not growing is an economy that is shrinking because other economies are growing. So relatively speaking, you are shrinking.

Higher education must constantly push the boundary. Higher education, and this would be my final point, must lead and must lead. And we say again at KFUPM, there are three types of postures for higher education institutions. The first type is the lagging type. Those universities who focus on teaching, are usually large and stable between quotes, i.e. really stagnant, who leave a lot on the table as far as technology development is concerned. And the second type is the tech-following type or the tag-alongs. Those universities that tag along whenever the industry comes with something that is hip or fashionable. And so when Nano Tech was hip 10 years ago, every university jumped on the bandwagon and Nano this, Nano that, Nano center, Nano, Nano, Nano, Nano. And then you don't hear about it anymore. It's still exceptionally important and critical, but it's not fashionable now. Now everybody, LLM, ChatGPT, large language models, that is very late.

Universities should be the third type, tech-leaping or tech-leaping. They are the ones who should foresee future challenges and develop solutions for them before the industry comes to them. And in that way, they are the ones who are going to push up and forward the tech development activities. And this is what KFUPM tries to do. And this is what higher education should do. We shouldn't sleep on the wheel. And when ChatGPT is developed, we say AI is very important. We should do, I would say, like if you've ended four years ago, when we said AI plus X, because AI is the future. Every student knows what ChatGPT is about because they know what, in fact, we embrace AI in our work. We are careful, of course, that it's not misused, but we embrace it. And I think that is what higher education should. It shouldn't shackle itself. And this gets us into long discussions about accreditation and what universities can do and how fast they change. But we say a university has to be bold. A university has to be fast.

Joe Sallustio: Yes. Flexible, agile, synergetic and transformative. Absolutely. Loved it. Well, this has been a true honor, sir, to... I've got some... I've gotten so many things written down here. So many takeaways on leadership, on leading from the front. I hope you enjoyed your time here. Ladies and gentlemen, he's my guest today. No, he is your guest today. He's Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf. He's the president of KFUPM in Saudi Arabia. And it's probably dinner time or getting close to bed. I don't know what time it is over there, but I think it's nighttime, isn't it?

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Yes, it's approximately nighttime. Yeah. After sunset.

Joe Sallustio: After sunset. Well, we wish you a good night, sir. Thank you for being on this podcast and for all your wisdom.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Saggaf: Thank you very much.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, you just ed-upped.