Last month, approximately 80 Northwestern administrators, faculty members and students traveled to NU’s satellite campus in Qatar, courtesy of funding by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Research and Community Development. The Evanston guests flew to Doha, the capital city, for the inaugural ceremony of NU-Q, the university’s first foreign degree-granting campus that opened in August.
The Qatar Foundation, a private nonprofit organization, funds the Doha campuses of all six American universities in its Education City initiative, which include NU’s Medill School of Journalism and School of Communication.
The Qatar Foundation will host another ceremony after the construction of NU’s own facility is completed in 2013, said NU-Q Dean John Margolis.
Margolis declined to comment on how much the Qatar Foundation spent on the ceremony and travel expenses.
The students who attended NU-Q’s inaugural ceremony included four from Medill, six from the School of Communication, four from the NU Saxophone Ensemble and one Medill graduate. They were selected by the deans and faculty of their respective schools.
The students chosen from Medill made multimedia presentations of their work to students during their trip.
“It was a hard decision because we have many, many students who have done great things,” Michele Bitoun, senior director at Medill, told The Daily in February.
Dominic Missimi, director of the musical theatre department, said he chose students from all class years to perform at NU-Q’s inauguration.
“Some of the students were people I’ve personally worked with, some were people who impressed me in performances and who I would like to show off to a larger audience,” he said. “I also picked people for this program who I thought would make nice ambassadors.”
The Qatar Foundation will also sponsor one dozen NU-Q students to visit NU’s Evanston campus this May, Margolis said. All NU-Q students who applied for the trip were accepted.
