Northwestern has had preliminary conversations with the Qatar Foundation to open additional programs at the graduate or professional school level at NU’s future campus in Qatar, NU President Henry Bienen told The Daily on Friday.
“I think there will be further discussion with Qatar about other things, probably not at the undergraduate level,” he said.
Bienen said he hopes the Qatari school will not be NU’s last program overseas, and discussed current international graduate programs such as the School of Law’s partnership with the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid.
Bienen also clarified specifics within the Qatar contract. When NU announced in April it would open a journalism and communications school with the Qatar Foundation in Education City, officials originally hoped to open the school this fall.
NU finalized its contract about two weeks ago and announced it will officially open the campus’ doors in Fall 2008. Five schools operated by U.S. universities are already housed in Education City.
Bienen said legal matters were the real reason the contract was delayed, not curricula or money. The Qatar Foundation had worked with many other U.S. universities, and wanted “to take what they learned and put it into a new agreement” with NU, Bienen said.
However, Bienen said NU wanted the university’s agreement to be the same as the other universities’ contracts with the foundation.
“All of these things should be renegotiated all at once two or three years from now rather than we should be treated differently,” Bienen said.
He said the Qatar Foundation also got new lawyers around late spring who “raised a whole bunch of new issues that we thought had been settled and thus we lost months in doing that.”
At the Qatar campus, NU might temporarily use space in a building formerly used by Texas A&M’s engineering school, Bienen said. Ultimately, NU will have its own permanent space.
Bienen said he wants NU students and Qatari students to travel and study between Evanston and Doha.
“We certainly want some of our students to go abroad to Qatar and we will bring in Qatari students here, and that’s explicit in the arrangement,” he said.
However, Bienen said he foresees calendar problems because schools in Qatar begin in August and work on a semester schedule.
Since students in Education City also can take classes at the other American campuses, Bienen said he thought that “requires” NU’s Qatar campus to be on a semester schedule.
“It gives faculty and some students some adjustment problems, but I don’t think they’re insuperable,” he said.
Schedules are not the only difference between Evanston and Doha.
Islam forbids alcohol but Bienen said he noticed people drinking in his hotel and on his airplane.
“If I’m in a Muslim country, I typically never drink alcohol,” he said.
Bienen said he expects NU students in Qatar to respect the country’s laws.
“Whatever rules they would have on dormitories we would have to respect, of course, and we would expect our students to respect them,” he said.
Bienen said there are still details to figure out.
“None of this can happen completely glitch-free – that’s not the way the world works, no world that I’ve ever seen,” he said.
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