With temperatures in the 70s and plans for improvement, Northwestern’s Qatar campus is heating up.

Now in the second semester of its second year, NU-Q operates in a building of Carnegie Mellon University in Education City, a conglomeration of universities that includes Cornell University and Georgetown University.

Formal academic exchanges between the two campuses will be in place for the 2011-12 school year but could occur as early as next fall, said John Margolis, dean of NU-Q.

‘We are committed to an exchange of students between campuses,’ Margolis said.

The first step toward this goal is to foster a close relationship between the two campuses, Margolis said. This Spring Break, NU-Q will pay for 16 Medill and Communication students to travel to Doha to meet NU-Q students and participate in academic activities, he said.

‘NU-Q represents a very close partnership between the Evanston campus and Doha,’ Margolis said. ‘We think it’s very important for students, faculty and staff from each campus to have first-hand familiarity with the work on the other campus.’

The Spring Break trip follows two exchanges that took place last year, when approximately 80 NU administrators, faculty members and students visited NU-Q for its opening ceremony and eight NU-Q students visited Evanston in the spring. Margolis said another group of NU-Q students will visit NU’s Evanston campus in May or June.

University President Morton O.’ Schapiro visited Qatar last month.

‘I just have tremendous admiration for this incredibly creative idea to create Education City,’ he said. ‘It’s just mind-boggling, the expanse and just the whole vision of what they’re doing there.’

Quarter-long exchanges of students and faculty between the two campuses would be ‘fantastic,’ Schapiro told THE DAILY on Jan. 15.

When formal academic changes eventually take place, the similarity in curricula will allow students from one campus to profitably spend time at the other, said Margolis, who added that NU-Q is on the semester system rather than the quarter system.

Richard Roth, senior associate dean of NU-Q Medill, said the journalism classes in Qatar are modeled after those on Evanston’s campus.

‘It’s really the same curriculum, just packaged differently,’ he said.

Medill senior Elizabeth Weingarten is the second NU student to spend her journalism residency in Qatar.

‘My first impression is that it’s such a rich culture,’ said Weingarten, who is currently in Doha. ‘There’s so many things to explore here.’

Schapiro said he looks forward to a time when studying in Doha is part of an NU student’s experience.

‘It gives us a foothold there in this incredible, interesting part of the world,’ Schapiro said. ‘But it’s a startup ‘hellip; there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.’ [email protected]