Just one year after welcoming the inaugural class of 2012, Northwestern University-Qatar is now beginning to resemble a university in its own right. A larger and more competitive group of students, a challenging range of courses and a growing faculty have come to shape the class of 2013.
The class of 2013 reflects increased competition to attend NU-Qatar, as well as growing international interest in the program, said NU-Q Dean John Margolis. Applications for the class of 2013 increased 72 percent from the previous year’s incoming class, he added.
“Because we had more applications, we were able to be much more selective,” Margolis said. “The profile of the class of 2013 is very impressive, and the faculty report that they enjoy teaching them and that the best students here in Qatar are every bit as good as the best students in Evanston.”
NU-Qatar is the most recent addition to six American institutions with satellite campuses in Education City, Doha, including Georgetown and Cornell universities. NU-Qatar first offered classes out of the Medill School of Journalism and the School of Communication, and has expanded its course offerings to include the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
To keep up with the demands of a larger and more diverse student body, NU-Qatar has begun to offer sophomore classes and more liberal arts courses through Weinberg. NU-Qatar professors such as James Schwoch have also introduced new courses designed to help students compete as media-savvy journalists.
“We introduce and explore all sorts of ideas that come up all the time in media studies,” Schwoch wrote in an e-mail. Students enrolled in his course “Exploring Global Media” will examine every mode of communication, from radio to iPhones.
New Medill courses in Arabic news writing also seek to serve students once they graduate and work as professional journalists in the region.
“Most of these students will end up living and working in the Arab world,” said Richard Roth, senior associate dean for the journalism program at Qatar. “They will learn what’s different about reporting here and what works here.”
In Qatar, where the government has expressed its intent to protect press freedom, Northwestern professors hope to have an impact on the country’s news and media.
“There’s a lot of self-censorship that goes on among the news media here,” said Prof. Patricia Roth, who teaches introductory courses in journalism and public relations. “Our hope is that we can motivate them to further uphold this beacon of freedom of speech.”
Plans for the future of NU-Qatar include the establishment of a new building by the year 2013 in order to accommodate an expanding staff and student population, Schwoch wrote.
In the meantime, NU-Qatar students can find a range of opportunities for internships and extra-curricular activities on campus. Most students participate in at least one internship per year – six students have worked at Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network with headquarters in Doha.
“It’s the same as in Evanston,” Roth said. “We learn by doing.”
In addition to a student government and original publications, NU-Qatar boasts a soccer team and a girls’ basketball team. Although NU-Qatar is several thousand miles away from Evanston, administrators, faculty and students strive to emulate what they can from the journalism and communication schools on NU’s Evanston campus.
“We recognize that we are in the Middle East,” Margolis said. “On the other hand, we are trying to replicate, insofar as possible, the academic and extracurricular experience that Northwestern students have in Evanston.”
