Students at Northwestern University in Qatar graduated in the school’s first ever commencement ceremony last Wednesday, marking a significant academic milestone for NU’s recently established sister campus.
According to a news release from the University, NU-Q Dean Everette Dennis announced in his commencement address that the 36 members of the graduating class were eligible to receive their degrees, either in journalism or communication, during the official ceremony in Evanston on June 15.
Dennis was accompanied by a number of prominent officials, including President Emeritus Henry S. Bienen and Susan L. Ziadeh, the United States Ambassador to Qatar.
“The various celebratory events went very well, and it was a fitting send-off for a remarkable group of pioneers,” said University President Morton Schapiro in an email to The Daily.
Dennis described the ceremony as one filled with “complete exhilaration.” He remarked on both the strength of the graduating students and a sizeable audience that also included multiple officials from NU’s Evanston campus.
“It was like no graduation I’ve seen – and believe me, I’ve seen plenty – with the students about ready to explode and a seamless succession of inspired remarks, an important and sizeable delegation from Evanston including the president and provost, trustees, vice presidents, deans and former faculty who taught here in the beginning,” Dennis wrote in an email to The Daily.
Yara Darwish, a rising junior in the journalism program at NU-Q, said the ceremony reminded her that NU-Q was “not a secondary campus,” and was optimistic about the work the Class of 2012 will do after graduation, calling them potential “pioneers in communication and journalism in this region.”
Ramy Khouri, a Lebanese journalist and member of the NU-Q Joint Advisory Board, echoed this sentiment during his speech at the ceremony, saying the students had become an integral aspect of the Arab Spring, using their skills in journalism and communication to spread stories about social change and human rights.
“It is the single biggest story in a generation, and it is falling into your lap. You leave here with a formidable toolkit to cover it in all the ways you will find work in the region,” said Khouri in the University release.
“You are not just another ordinary graduating class. You are the story.”
Students at NU-Q also discussed the significance of the Arab Spring on their education. Omer Mohammad, the outgoing student body president for NU-Q, said he and his peers had greatly benefitted from the campus’s location in a dynamic and often turbulent region.
“The experiences they’ve gotten are more unique and more dramatic than a Medill junior or senior would get in Evanston,” said Mohammad, a communication student who personally worked on projects relating to poverty in Qatar. “Some of them have reported on revolutions, on huge movements across the Arab world.”
Although NU-Q was established in 2008, and now shares space in Education City, Qatar, with seven other universities from both the U.S. and Europe, administrators hailed the ceremony as an academic breakthrough for the small campus. In what Dennis called a “complete surprise,” two NU-Q students received the President’s Award, which recognizes students in Education City for academic excellence and community service.
Eighteen students from the six American universities in Education City were nominated for the award.
NU-Q students Sara Al Saadi and Zainab Sultan were both honored for their achievements at the ceremony, a turn of events that Schapiro said left NU officials “elated” in an email to The Daily.
However, Dennis also pointed out the overall strength of the entire graduating class, which he said was a worldly group that would use their international experience in whatever field they choose to enter.
“I think our program does offer a self-conscious global perspective assuming that these students are being prepared to navigate change and live almost anywhere,” Dennis wrote. “The important thing for us here to ascertain (is) that they are really worthy of Northwestern and I think they are. They will make all NU alums proud.”
