As the first step of starting IREX partnership program for new Universities at the second year on 2-5th Feb 2015 a workshop held in Hawler. The program guided by Virginia Tech and IREX organization aims at developing higher education studies in Kurdistan, through helping and giving technical aids, developing English language programs in Kurdistan public Universities, the program is funded by American foreign Ministry.

This program started two years ago, and in 2015 four Asst. Lecturers  of Raparin University participated in a workshop in Hawler, and two of them (Rebwar Arsalan and Hawraz Qadir) participated as presenters.
The main purpose of the program is to build an academic relation between Kurdistan public Universities and the outside world in order to progress the scientific level of Asst. Lecturers and higher education in total, as a part of the higher education reform in KRG.
It is worth mentioning that the Iraqi Kurdistan Universities Rural Partnership Program (IKURPP) will implement in three steps, the first step was completed with the attendance of more than 36 Asst. Lecturers of universities of (Rparin, Slemani,Salahadin,Soran,Duhok,Zakho,Garmian,Halabce) on 2-5th Feb 2015. The second step is an online course from 7th Feb to 15th July 2015. The third and last step of the program is a training course that will held in Virginia Tech University in USA and lasts for three weeks, and it is not meant that all the workshop participants will be elected for it is runs with a private mechanism by Virginia Tech and IREX. The program ends on 22 Aug 2015.